Egypt and Libya, March 19 - April 2, 2006 / 20060323s_DSMRamses_ColossiOfMemnon
Ruth Milner, rmilner plus web at bookofmarvels dot net
After leaving
Hatshepsut's temple, we drove
past about a thousand alabaster "factories" (most of which are really
tourist traps) heading back toward the bridge over the Nile. Here are Dale,
Sarah, and Matthew with a
man who said his name is Ramses and that he's the caretaker of these
two statues, the
Colossi of Memnon (a likely story). The statue on the left is pretty much
original, carved out of a single piece of stone, but the one on the right
partially fell over and was cut into many pieces to be rebuilt. In its
crumbled state it would "sing" at dawn, probably due to the rising breeze.
They are statues of the pharaoh Amenhotep
III and were part of a massive temple to him that originally stood here
from about 1350BC but was largely destroyed, in the space of less than
200 years, by a
combination of repeated flooding and later builders stealing the stones
for re-use. It was here that we encountered our youngest hawker, a boy
who looked like he was about four years old.
