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MEMNON, HIS ANCIENT VISITORS AND SOME RELATED PROBLEMS
Adam Łukaszewicz
Memnon is known from ancient Greek sources as a king of Ethiopia.1 e notion of Ethiopia in Greek literature is very large and sometimes includes also the ebaid. In Egypt the name of Memnon is notori- ously associated with two famous colossal statues of Amenhotep III of the 18th Dynasty in Western ebes which once stood in front of an enormous temple, now almost completely vanished. At present, the temple is object of German excavations and many elements of it re- emerge on the site. e name of Memnon is a Greek misinterpretation of an Egyptian royal epithet. e Ramesside epithet Mery Amun pronounced approx- imately Meamun produced the Greek distortion into Memnon. Strabo states that the other name of Memnon is Ἰσµάνδης. at agrees with the names of a king called Usermaatre (Ἰσµάνδης) Meryamun (Μέµνων).2 e original Memnon was not Amenhotep III. Only the proximity of the colossi of Amenhotep III to the Memnonium of Ramesses II (Ramesseum), the Memnonium of Ramesses III (Medinet Habu) and to the western eban area called Memnoneia a£er these temples, encouraged the interpretation of the colossi of Amenhotep as statues of Memnon. e name of Memnoneia concerned particularly the area of Djeme,3 with the temple and palace complex of Medinet Habu built by Ramesses III. In the Later Roman period the temple precinct of
1 For the idea of two Memnons, the Trojan and the Ethiopian, Philostratus, Her. 3, 4. An extensive discussion of Memnon can be found in Letronne 1833; cf. idem 1881, I‚2‚ 1–236. For a more recent discussion see Bataille 1952‚ 1–21; Gardiner 1961, 91–99; Haeny 1966, 203–212; Bianchi 1982, col. 23–24; Bowersock 1984‚ 21–32; cf. Bernand 1960. 2 Von Beckerath 1984, 94. 3 Messiha 1991, 1586. 256 .
Medinet Habu was called κάστρα Μεµνονείων.4 Coptic documents mention pkastron Njhme.5 In the present writer’s opinion the complex of Medinet Habu is recorded in the History of Alexander by Curtius Rufus as Memnonis Tithonique celebrata regia that Alexander desired to visit.6 Tithonos, the mythical father of Memnon is thus recorded as a co-proprietor of the famous “palace”. ere is no satisfactory Greek etymology of the name of Tithonos.7 Already in the times of Ramesses II the god Tatenen is present in the titles of the Egyptian kings. He also appears in inscriptions as king’s father.8 Sethnacht, the father of Ramesses III, bore as his Nebty- name an appellation containing the name of Ptah-Tatenen. Also some later rulers of the 20th Dynasty, including Ramesses III, were—in their less important names—called aer that god.9 e name of T3tnn could easily be interpreted as Tithonos by the Greeks. It is common knowledge that Roman and other visitors came to the eban West Bank to hear a strange acoustic phenomenon—the “miraculous” voice of Memnon—caused probably by an earthquake at the beginning of the Roman period. e epigraphic records on the legs of the northern colossus, known to the Romans as Memnon vocalis, end at the beginning of the third century AD10 Philostratus—as his description shows—did not visit the colossi personally and his account is most probably posterior to the last real occurrence of the voice.11 e statue was silenced by restoration works of the third century. ose works are usually attributed to Septimius Severus following Antoine Letronne’s monograph of 1833. However, it was more prob- ably Antoninus Caracalla who ordered the restoration which hap- pened to silence the statue. ese works were presumably a part of the extensive preparations for Caracalla’s visit in 215 AD.12
4 Cf. UPZ II 180 b. 22–26, commentary p. 173; cf. Kees 1931, col. 650; Bataille 1951, 327 n. 3. 5 E.g. no 116 in: Crum 1912; cf. Till 1954, 212 f. 6 Curt. Ruf. IV 8.3. 7 See Würst 1937, especially col. 1512–1513. 8 Cf. Schlögl 1980, 56 «.; von Beckerath 1984, 89: Ramesses II; 94: Ramesses IV; 95: Ramesses VII. 9 Von Beckerath 1984, 93–95. 10 Cf. Bernand 1960. 11 Bowersock 1984‚ 21–32. 12 See Łukaszewicz 1993.