The Colossi of Memnon: Statues That Used to Sing

The Colossi of Memnon are two massive stone statues, each about 18 meters tall, standing on Luxor's West Bank as the last visible remains of Amenhotep III's mortuary temple, once the largest temple complex in Egypt before an earthquake and Nile flooding destroyed nearly everything else around them. Their name is actually a Greek misattribution — ancient Greek visitors, centuries after they were built, associated them with Memnon, a mythological king killed at Troy, rather than Amenhotep III. The bigger claim to fame: after an earthquake in 27 BCE cracked one of the statues, it reportedly began emitting a strange sound at dawn — most likely caused by temperature changes and moisture evaporating from the cracked stone as the sun hit it. Ancient tourists, including Roman emperors, traveled specifically to hear the "singing statue," and some even had their visit and the sound they heard carved into the statue's base as graffiti, some of which survives today. Roman-era repairs in the 3rd century CE unintentionally sealed the cracks and stopped the sound for good. Today the statues are usually seen as a quick stop on the way to or from the Valley of the Kings — worth the five minutes it takes, both for the scale and for a story stranger than most people expect from a pair of roadside statues.