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Almost every Egyptologist has their opinion when it comes to the structures of the Akhenaten and the colossi in particular. In order to identify and establish colossi, there are different exercises formed. The appearance of colossi has naturally caused relation to the “Osiris pillars” in terms of their architectural contexts. While numerous examples have been given to identify colossus, an author states the name of his wife as the name of colossus. For clearer identification, the inscriptions given served as a big help. Furthermore, numerous examples testify to the fact that it was common for a king to lend his facial features to representations of a deity.

Even before the first colossus was unearthed in 1925, the public was aware of the unusual artistic achievements of this period. The colossi were not identically conceived. Apart from the obvious differences in headgear there are subtle distinctions in the treatment of the face. Different issues about colossus such as colossal statues that are presented in this chapter lead to the exception of the battered images of the king flanking his boundary stelae at Amarna. Moreover, the point of view is of significance for an understanding of the artistic concepts behind the colossi.

There are different types of catalog derived from sources: (1) publications as indicated; (2) the archives of the Centre Franco-Égyptien d'Étude des Temples de Karnak (CFEETK); (3) the Journal d'Entrée and Temporary Register at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo; (4) personal observations of the fragments displayed in museums and those stored in the Sheikh Labib storehouse in Karnak; (5) observations and photographs by Robert Partridge of some of the fragments in the late 1990s; and (6) information and photographs supplied by Edwin Brock of objects discovered during his recent excavations at East Karnak. In connection with this, the discussion about colossi and its mutilation is presented for better understanding that gives a more detailed excavation on what happened. Moreover, classification of fragments is discussed in this chapter.

Sabina visited the famous “singing statue” of the Colossus of Memnon near Egyptian Thebes in November 130, just after Antinoös’ death. The proof is her first-person graffiti carved on a leg of this gigantic statue. Emperor and empress repeatedly visited the statue to hear its sound, as their companion the Seleucid princess Julia Balbilla records in her own verse graffiti on the stone. Her four poems, in a revival of Sappho’s Lesbian dialect with eroticized language, describe the empress, apparently to highlight the attributes of Sabina’s developed, official public persona: youthfulness, seductive beauty, piety, marital fidelity colored by institutionalized jealousy, and communion with the immortal. The chapter then reconstructs honors given Sabina in 131 in travel from Egypt to Anatolia and Athens. The chapter concludes with Hadrian’s forced return to Judaea in 132 to face the Bar Kochba revolt and examines recent evidence for extensive cultic honors to Sabina on Epirus.

Chapter 1 presents the colossus itself: an overview of the inscriptions and the ancient testimonials to the miracle of Memnon’s voice. While the transformation into a Trojan hero was mostly complete by the time Pliny visited in the latter part of the first century CE, the statue continued to be defined by a set of oppositions: Memnon was both dead and alive, mortal and divine, Egyptian and Greco-Roman, silent and speaking. Similarly, his colossality was both compromised and intensified by his fragmentary state; the marvelous voice emerged from a headless torso. The author argues in this chapter that it was precisely this combination of massiveness and fragmentariness that encouraged tourists and worshippers to engage with the statue. They did so by inscribing its surfaces and inhabiting its sacred space.

Chapter 2 begins with a discussion of Egypt as a destination for sacred tourism and as a repository of ancient culture, epitomized by the colossus, which functioned as a place of cultural memory. Imperial authors viewed Egypt as a place where Greek myth came to life. Visitors were inspired either by a kind of spiritual touristic impulse—the desire to witness the sacred (theoria)—or by an intellectual tourism and yearning to experience what they had already read or heard about. The inscriptions document these expressions of religious and intellectual wonder, crystallized at the moment of hearing Memnon’s voice. Whether visitors came as worshippers or tourists, in their minds the monument functioned as a material link to the past that miraculously came alive every morning at dawn. The colossus could elicit two distinct reactions—spiritual or intellectual—yet both fit within the framework of a fascination with the mythical past.

Chapter 5 concentrates on four epigrams by Julia Balbilla, comprising fifty-four lines of Greek elegiac verse—the largest corpus on the colossus by any single author. While most visitors chose to model their language on Homer’s, Balbilla’s style and Aeolic dialect are unmistakably Sapphic (although her elegiac meter is borrowed from epigram rather than lyric). This chapter assesses what it means for Julia Balbilla to imitate Sappho while at the same time honoring her royal patrons in the public context of dedicatory inscriptions. Previous scholars have derided the quality of Balbilla’s poetry, but this chapter recuperates her as a talented poet, a skilled diplomat, and a model for two other women who wrote on the colossus. This chapter argues that Balbilla’s poems testify to the power of the colossus to engage different segments of society: male and female visitors, of high and middle rank, and with varying degrees of literacy.

Chapter 6 starts with the accidental silencing of the statue in the early third century CE, and jumps ahead to its rediscovery in Europe. In the mid-eighteenth century, travelers reported seeing a huge statue with poems etched on its surface. Later, Napoleon’s surveyors brought back drawings scribbled down in their free time. The nineteenth century saw a craze for all things Egyptian: Hegel mentioned the colossus; Keats and Wordsworth turned Memnon into a Romantic hero. Memnon functioned as an alter ego for the poet himself, broken in body yet still striving to sing in the harsh environment of the real world. Just as he had in the imperial period, Memnon also represented something strange and inexplicable. The striking voice of Shelley’s “Ozymandias” is also heard only in the context of fragmentation and decay. The status of these statues as fragments, as colossal wrecks, allows for the magic of the voice.

This chapter details Erich Ludendorff’s postwar image and his claim to strategic talent, to the title Feldherr. It discusses the epithet “battle lord” (or battle master) that justified both Ludendorff’s claim to influence after 1918 and the “stab in the back” myth, as well as his many great strategic triumphs from swiftly knocking Romania out of the war in 1916 to managing the occupied territories known as Ober Ost, to defeating the Russian colossus at the end 1917. The chapter also highlights the aspects of the German war effort that Ludendorff used to cement his legend as Feldherr and as the embodiment of German revenge fantasies in the interwar period. Ultimately, it surveys his role in the Third Supreme Command after 1916, which earned him (in the minds of many, including himself) the sobriquet “Feldherr,” or “master of battle,” which became the preferred form of address among his followers.