On Luxor’s West Bank, two seated stone figures face east toward the Nile and the rising sun. Known collectively as the Colossi of Memnon, they represent Amenhotep III, a pharaoh of Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty who ruled in the fourteenth century BC. The University of Memphis describes them as quartzite statues about 19.6 metres high. They once marked the entrance to the king’s enormous mortuary temple at Kom el-Hettan, part of the Theban necropolis.
The setting helps explain their original purpose. The statues did not stand alone as scenic ornaments; they announced the approach to a royal complex built to preserve the king’s memory and support his cult after death. The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities describes the temple, known as the “Temple of Millions of Years,” as a vast construction begun in the first half of the fourteenth century BC. Its scale and decoration made the site one of the most ambitious royal foundations on Luxor’s western plain.
