Fodor's Expert Review Colossi of Memnon

Standing (sitting, actually) nearly 18 meters (60 feet) tall, these statues of Amenhotep III once guarded his mortuary temple, which is slowly being excavated to the northwest. Alongside the legs of the colossi are standing figures of the king's mother and his queen, Tiye. Relief carvings on the bases of the colossi depict the uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt.

These colossi were well known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and after an earthquake fractured one of the monuments in 27 BC, it was said to sing softly at dawn. For the Greeks, that sound recalled the myth of Memnon, who was meeting his mother Eos (the goddess of dawn) outside the walls of Troy when Achilles killed him. In the 3rd century AD, Roman Emperor Septimius Severus had the statue repaired and accidentally silenced the song.

The Colossi of Memnon are usually a perfunctory early-morning stop for tour groups to the West Bank.