WEBVTT - The Singing Colossus of Memnon 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.600 These stones alas these gray stones. Are they all, all 0:00:06.600 --> 0:00:09.920 of the famed and the colossal, left by the corrosive 0:00:10.000 --> 0:00:14.000 hours to fate and me? Not all the echoes answer me? 0:00:14.160 --> 0:00:19.440 Not all prophetic sounds and loud arise forever from us 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:23.520 and from all ruin unto the wise, as melody, from 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:31.960 mem Non to the sun. Welcome to stuff to blow 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:40.839 your mind from How Stuff Works dot Com. Hey you 0:00:40.920 --> 0:00:42.519 welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is 0:00:42.600 --> 0:00:45.320 Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.320 be talking about stones that sing, and we'll sing the 0:00:48.320 --> 0:00:51.240 phrases of stones that talk and sing. That's right. And 0:00:51.440 --> 0:00:54.200 we started things off here with an expert from Edgar 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:58.800 Allan Poe's poem The Colosseum, which directly mentions the Colossi 0:00:58.880 --> 0:01:01.800 of Memnon, which which is the prime thing we're gonna 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:05.040 be talking about today. These these two statues, these two 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:10.840 stone coloss i, one toppled and then rebuilt, and then 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:14.039 another that still stands the test of time. And one 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:18.840 of them, the toppled colossus, is said to have emitted sounds, 0:01:19.560 --> 0:01:22.080 at least in ancient times. I love the idea that 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:25.640 posts as all ruins must sing. Really, yeah, because they 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:28.959 kind of do. Ruins are Why do we love ruins 0:01:28.959 --> 0:01:31.680 so much? We actually talked about this in another episode recently. 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:34.720 Uh they seem to suggest something about the folly of 0:01:34.840 --> 0:01:39.160 human civilization. Yeah, I mean which that that's of course 0:01:39.800 --> 0:01:42.760 brings us to to Shelley's Osa Ma Andiez, which it 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.920 is said was also at least partially inspired by these 0:01:45.959 --> 0:01:49.440 particular ruins. Right, look on my work, see Mighty and Despair, 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:52.600 which which takes on a meaning different than the king 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.200 originally meant. Right, So he's saying, look on my work, 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:57.800 see Mighty and Despair, and you would despair because he's 0:01:57.840 --> 0:01:59.880 so powerful and he's gonna bash your head in if 0:02:00.080 --> 0:02:02.520 resist him. But of course we should look on his 0:02:02.560 --> 0:02:05.840 works in despair because now there's not much left except 0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:09.320 the loan and level sands stretching far away. Yeah, we 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:12.720 cannot help but be enthralled by ancient ruins. And the 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:15.080 thing is this was true in ancient times as well, 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:19.600 because during classical Antiquity, UH, tourists such as tourists from 0:02:19.600 --> 0:02:22.840 throughout the Roman Empire would visit to the ruins of 0:02:22.919 --> 0:02:27.000 Thebes in Egypt, which was already ancient even in their time. 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.680 This is something we've touched on before about ancient Egypt. 0:02:29.720 --> 0:02:32.200 It's kind of like that fact about dinosaurs where you know, 0:02:32.240 --> 0:02:36.239 more time separates like the stegosaurus from the Tyrannosaurus rex 0:02:36.240 --> 0:02:40.000 than separates us from the Tyrannosaurus rex. Uh. If you 0:02:40.080 --> 0:02:44.120 were to go back to ancient Rome, there was stuff 0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:48.520 from ancient Egypt that was older to them than ancient 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.720 Rome is old to us. Yeah. It's it's mind boggling 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:53.919 to think about, isn't it that these people who are 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.960 ancient to us Day's gaze back in time at an 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:01.440 even more ancient people that were just as ancient to them. Yeah. 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:04.320 I mean on the scale of Egyptian civilization, ancient Rome 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:09.880 is fairly modern. Yeah, right down to the disrespectful tourist graffiti, right. 0:03:10.360 --> 0:03:12.800 Because the Roman tourists, when they would they would come 0:03:12.800 --> 0:03:14.680 out and they would look at the the two stone 0:03:14.760 --> 0:03:18.320 Colossa or the Syringes as they would also call them. 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:21.040 They would make little notes on the base of the 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:26.640 fallen colossus describing what they saw and or heard, uh 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:29.280 maybe even who they were and when they visited. It 0:03:29.360 --> 0:03:33.880 was kind of like a an ancient trip Advisor page. Yeah, 0:03:34.200 --> 0:03:36.480 and we can talk more about those inscriptions later because 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:38.520 they tell us interesting things about the history of the 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:42.200 statue or the statues and how people experience them. But so, 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:45.760 what what are these colossi, the colossi of Memnon that 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:49.200 we're going to be focusing today. Primarily they are what 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:54.280 remains of the Great Temple of m in Office the 0:03:54.400 --> 0:03:57.640 Third or m and Hotep the Third, who was a 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:02.120 pharaoh of Egypt in the fourteenth injury b c. That's right, 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.160 And there's a there's at least one level of misinterpretation 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:07.920 that gets thrown on top of of these ruins as 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:11.600 well discussed. But why we're talking about them today, I mean, 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:14.200 obviously we love any chance to talk about ancient ruins 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:18.440 and and uh and in olden times. But there's a mystery. 0:04:18.520 --> 0:04:20.880 There's a mystery here, yes, and that in the mystery 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:24.640 here is that for a period of time, uh mere 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:29.080 centuries really, in the longer lifespan of these uh, these 0:04:29.120 --> 0:04:33.680 two statues, they were said to speak or to Emit 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:37.839 sounds that is often described as like the cracking the 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:42.080 breaking of a liars string. Sometimes people allude to it 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:45.760 as more of a voice. But everyone seemed to view 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:48.520 these more or less as some sort of a natural 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:51.240 phenomenon that was taking place. I've read it described as 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:55.080 a harp, or as a twang, or as a breaking string. 0:04:55.839 --> 0:04:58.880 Uh so, yeah, very interesting. Why now that that would 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:01.920 be different if we were reading reports from the ancient 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:05.560 world that people went to, say, a statue of a 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:08.359 ruin of a statue in ancient Egypt, and that it 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:10.640 told them what to do, right, right, they have some 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.559 sort of an oracle, right, then we would start to think, Okay, 0:05:13.560 --> 0:05:15.760 these people may be listening to I don't know, wind 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:19.120 sweeping over the sand and think they hear something. There 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:22.400 may be a bit of paradolia going on, their auditory paradolia, 0:05:22.960 --> 0:05:25.320 or they might just be hallucinating. But no, these are 0:05:25.400 --> 0:05:29.200 sounds that are described as sort of mechanical sounds, and 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:31.719 they're described in a very lucid way that seems to 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:35.480 indicate there really was probably some sound coming out of 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:39.080 the statues. We're not just getting like embellished stories of 0:05:39.080 --> 0:05:42.400 people having a rapturous experience. Yeah, there's a sense that 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:45.640 this is a curiosity, that this is um you know, 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:47.840 it's it's like, oh, this this statue is emitting a 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:50.320 sound and it's the darndest thing. It's not a matter 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:53.160 of the gods are speaking through it, at least not 0:05:53.640 --> 0:05:58.200 in a literal sense tho. Though though some historians doom 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:02.520 have some fun with the sort of mythological ramifications of this, 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:05.360 right that gets laid on it. But there is enough 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.120 reporting of the straightforward character of the sound that it 0:06:09.160 --> 0:06:12.200 does seem like these statues probably just made some sort 0:06:12.200 --> 0:06:15.359 of sound. So what was the sound? Uh, that's what 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:17.800 we're going to be exploring today, and we are going 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:20.520 to be referring to a couple of key resources, right, 0:06:20.800 --> 0:06:23.200 that's right. So the first, and i'd say really the 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:27.200 main source here is Miracle of Memnon, and this is 0:06:27.240 --> 0:06:31.560 by G. W. Bauer Sock, published in the Bulletin of 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:36.120 the American Society of Paparologist nineteen eighty four. And then 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:41.280 we also refer to Memon the Vocal Statue by Massimo Patirino, 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:44.560 published in the International Phonetic Association. That was a little 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:47.680 more conspiratorial, but we can get into that later. But yeah, 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:50.919 before we get into the theories about the sound, the 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:53.040 origin of the sound, we should talk about the origin 0:06:53.080 --> 0:06:54.840 of the class eye themselves. Like we said, there are 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.800 these two great statues, and we mentioned they were built 0:06:57.839 --> 0:07:00.760 by this pharaoh I'm in office or m and Hotep 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:03.719 the third. That's right. He was a powerful ruler, and 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.680 it's it's said that his excess served as a catalyst 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:10.600 for the cultural revolution that that followed him, posed by 0:07:10.680 --> 0:07:14.760 his son and successor, Kinnaton, who many of you might remember. 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:19.080 He's best remembered for abandoning the polytheistic religion of the 0:07:19.120 --> 0:07:22.040 past in favor of the monotheistic worship of the Sun 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:25.600 disc Otten, and then of course after after his death, 0:07:25.840 --> 0:07:29.160 the worship of Otten was was then abandoned in favor 0:07:29.520 --> 0:07:33.160 of the polytheistic model that was previously established. Yeah, I 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:36.600 don't think his model quite caught on right, But you know, 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:39.880 sometimes you got to rebel against your your your parental 0:07:39.960 --> 0:07:43.720 units and and make a statement. Here's a question, just generally, 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:47.360 do you think it's harder to by force impose monotheism 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:51.440 on a polytheistic culture or by force impose polytheism on 0:07:51.440 --> 0:07:55.200 a monotheistic culture. Well, you would think, I mean, just 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:57.000 off off the hip, I would say that it would 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:01.119 be easier to impose monotheism on poly is it seems 0:08:01.160 --> 0:08:03.960 like it's gone that way more often yeah, but I 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:07.200 mean clearly it didn't. It didn't take in this case. Granted, 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:11.600 there's more employ here than merely h getting a bunch 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:14.000 of people into a room and just sort of testing 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:20.720 their opinions on different um models of religion. But I mean, basically, 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:22.640 on on one hand, you could you would be making 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.320 an argument that say, hey, actually this one guy do 0:08:25.320 --> 0:08:27.360 you all believe in? Well, actually there are many different 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.120 avatars with this god, and I can see that working. 0:08:30.480 --> 0:08:32.760 And then the other argument is, hey, all these gods 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:35.200 that you believe in, well, actually they're one god and 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:38.319 you're just looking at different faces of the one true 0:08:38.320 --> 0:08:40.559 Being or something to that effect. Right, So, if you're 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:43.199 a king like Akat and then you want to impose 0:08:43.240 --> 0:08:46.120 a new paradigm for the religious views of your country, 0:08:46.200 --> 0:08:48.560 there's a lot of theological wiggle room for you to 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:50.960 play with. It's not just like stop believing in that. 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:53.439 Believe in this now, yeah, I mean, if if you 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:57.160 if you do it right, right. But but anyway, like 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.840 we said, this change did not really take. But but 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:04.320 but let's get back to I'm Inhotep the third again. 0:09:04.360 --> 0:09:08.400 He was a powerful ruler. He made powerful statements in 0:09:08.480 --> 0:09:13.400 the way that ancient Egyptian rulers did, made statues, made temples, 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:16.640 created these works of stone, and a lot of times 0:09:16.679 --> 0:09:18.800 when you look at the rulers of the ancient world 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:21.720 building all these monuments, you know, to their own glory 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:24.520 and to themselves, it can look kind of ostentatious to us. 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:27.640 But another and I mean it probably would be fair 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:29.400 to say it is kind of ostentatious. But on the 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.800 other side, people have pointed out that the rule of 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:36.479 Amenhotep the Third was a period of like cultural flowering 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:38.920 in Egypt where it was sort of like the peak 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.839 of artistic achievement in ancient Egypt. Yeah, so you can 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:45.920 see why Houghton wouldn't really take off, right because everybody 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:48.560 was probably in love with the with with with the 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:51.319 previous ruler and in the world he'd created. So it 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:53.640 was kind of a golden age, right, And part of 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:55.880 that golden age is the design of this temple for 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.880 Amenhotep the Third on the west side of the Nile, 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:04.160 all around Thebes, and this is now the temple where 0:10:04.200 --> 0:10:07.520 these these statues are what's left these statues now known 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:10.679 as the Colossi of Memnon. Now, of course they're not 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:13.840 statues of Memnon. We'll get into who Memnon is in 0:10:13.880 --> 0:10:17.200 a minute. They are statues of the Pharaoh. I'm in Hotep, 0:10:17.320 --> 0:10:20.120 the third right, that's right, So let's let's just describe 0:10:20.120 --> 0:10:22.559 them a little bit. The landing page for this episode 0:10:22.559 --> 0:10:25.080 is stuff to Blow your Mind. Dot Com should feature 0:10:25.160 --> 0:10:28.679 a prominent image too, if I can make it work. 0:10:29.360 --> 0:10:34.079 But but there are plenty of paintings, illustrations and photographs 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:39.480 of these statues. So each one is roughly sixteen meters 0:10:39.559 --> 0:10:42.920 high or fifty two ft uh. And they are both 0:10:42.960 --> 0:10:47.040 represent seated humans with large heads. But there there's a 0:10:47.120 --> 0:10:50.720 key difference between the two. So the southern or left statue, 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:54.400 this one survives as a single block of sandstone. This statue, 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:59.320 though clearly ancient, is still in one piece. But then 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:01.400 the north were there in a right statue. This is 0:11:01.400 --> 0:11:05.600 where he gets interesting. From the waist upward. Uh. If 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:08.280 you look at it today, it's been hastily restored with 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:11.600 rough stone cuttings topped with the original head. Yeah, it 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:14.960 looks like it fell apart from the waist up and 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:17.640 then somebody put it back together with just like some 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:21.120 blocks and then stuck ahead on it. Right. I've actually 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:23.439 seen video and One of the funny things about it 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:26.440 is because it has this block construction. Now there are 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:29.160 all these gaps in it, and so I've seen videos 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:34.160 of of people visiting these statues in modern times, and 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:37.440 there will be birds living in the colossi of Memnon 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:40.880 in the the statue that's broken, the right statue. So 0:11:40.920 --> 0:11:43.120 it's got these gaps in it, and birds are just 0:11:43.240 --> 0:11:45.680 nesting in them and flying in and out all the time. 0:11:45.720 --> 0:11:48.839 It's pretty funny. Now. In earlier times, the top half 0:11:48.960 --> 0:11:52.160 would have been just toppled ruins with the head and 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:56.520 other pieces strewn out on the ground beside it. And 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:59.640 we mentioned all that ancient graffiti on them, right, Yeah, 0:11:59.679 --> 0:12:03.600 the eggs here on the toppled statue are inscribed with 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:07.000 ancient graffiti one hundred and seven texts, but I've also 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:10.360 read a hundred and eight. Uh. Basically, it gets into 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.120 a sort of a contest of determining how many you 0:12:13.120 --> 0:12:16.720 can actually decipher and uh and and and point out 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:20.360 as individual inscriptions. Sixty one of them are in Greek, 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:23.600 roughly forty five of them are in Latin, and there's 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:28.319 apparently one that's a bilingual inscription. And these inscriptions are 0:12:28.360 --> 0:12:31.880 from the first three hundred years of the Common Era, 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:35.000 and they were inscribed by ancient tourists, and these would 0:12:35.000 --> 0:12:37.000 have been tourists of the Roman Empire or at least 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:40.079 of the Roman Imperial period. Yeah. I can often see 0:12:40.160 --> 0:12:43.720 tourists going to ancient landmarks today and think that it's 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:46.679 kind of gross, like the behavior that display you know, 0:12:46.800 --> 0:12:48.960 do do in the selfies and all that. I don't 0:12:48.960 --> 0:12:51.640 want to criticize selfies too much, but you know, I mean, 0:12:51.640 --> 0:12:55.960 at least selfies don't damage you know, the physical structure exactly. Yeah, 0:12:55.960 --> 0:12:59.080 so tourists in the ancient world, we're actually much worse 0:12:59.120 --> 0:13:02.320 than we are today. They were trying to take pieces 0:13:02.360 --> 0:13:05.000 off of things and writing their name on things all 0:13:05.040 --> 0:13:07.920 the time. Yeah, that was pretty brutal, it is. But 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:09.840 but as well discuss it did seem to take a 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.120 while to get going, and they didn't necessarily seem to 0:13:13.120 --> 0:13:15.959 be in the regular practice of doing this sort of thing. Though. 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:19.000 Of course, there are plenty of examples of graffiti, uh 0:13:19.240 --> 0:13:22.000 from the Roman Empire, so it's not like someone invented 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:26.360 graffiti at this point. But uh, it's certainly the graffiti 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:30.880 on them non picks up over time. Now. The interesting 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:33.160 thing again, is that we can look at these inscriptions though, 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:37.840 and and and gain intel about what they saw when 0:13:37.840 --> 0:13:40.320 they visited it. Right, So did they say I came 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:43.559 here in whatever year the reign of Caesar whatever, and 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:48.439 aliens were helping build structures. Well, no, not nothing on 0:13:48.600 --> 0:13:51.000 that scale, but they would give you know a time 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:54.679 their name. Uh. And then the inscriptions also they give 0:13:54.760 --> 0:13:56.560 us an idea of what state the statue was in. 0:13:56.679 --> 0:14:00.600 They mentioned that the northern statue is missing, it's for half. 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.200 And they also identified the statue as a likeness of 0:14:04.200 --> 0:14:10.679 the Greek mythological figure Ethiopian king and uh Homeric hero Memnon. Right, 0:14:10.720 --> 0:14:13.160 so this is how we get to the classical name 0:14:13.200 --> 0:14:15.839 of the statue, the Colossi of Memnon, even though it's 0:14:15.880 --> 0:14:19.280 not supposed to be statues of Memnon. So who was 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.520 this Memnon in Greek myth? Well, he was actually supposed 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:26.040 to be the son of Aos, the goddess of Dawn, 0:14:26.240 --> 0:14:30.520 and Tithanus, a Trojan prince. And in this classic legend, 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:35.479 Aos the goddess falls in love with this mortal man Tithanus, 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:38.800 but she realizes, oh he's a mortal man. He's going 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:41.480 to die one day, and she weeps because that would 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:45.280 be so horrible, and she moves Zeus with her tears, 0:14:45.320 --> 0:14:50.760 and Zeus very unfortunately grants Tiffannus the gift of eternal life, 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:55.480 but without the accompanying gift of eternal youth. Yes, that 0:14:55.680 --> 0:14:58.360 is a that is a bad stu. But before the 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:00.880 situation gets too bad, and does it get real bad, 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.040 the two of them have a son. So the goddess 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:09.080 of Dawn Aios and the the now immortal former man Tiffanius, 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:11.720 they have a son, Memnon, who is the king of 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:15.080 the Ethiopians, and he comes to fight in the Trojan War, 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:18.760 only to get killed by Achilles and then granted immortality 0:15:18.800 --> 0:15:23.240 by Zeus again because of the tears of his mother Aios. Well, 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:26.160 first of all, if you're gonna die in the Aliad 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:30.280 or or in the Trojan War in general, being slain 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:32.440 by Achilles not a bad way to go. A lot 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:35.120 of people went that way. Yeah, I I was looking 0:15:35.160 --> 0:15:38.080 this up just for fun. Uh So, if if you 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:41.120 look at just the Aliad, and you just look at 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:46.080 at named characters that are killed within the Aliad, then 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.920 Achilles has a kill count of about twenty four four 0:15:50.000 --> 0:15:55.440 confirmed kills and named characters, right, right, and and that's 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:58.040 that's pretty good. I do have to point out that 0:15:58.600 --> 0:16:03.640 Patroclus uh Achilles's friend or possible lover depending on the interpretation, 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:06.960 and Odysseus, our hero, they both have high kill counts 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:10.000 as well. And Odysseus's kill count is actually higher as 0:16:10.000 --> 0:16:13.640 one might expect. He's kind of the star. Odysseus is sneaky, 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:18.640 he's cunning. So the ancient Roman tourists they referred to 0:16:18.680 --> 0:16:22.640 this these statues as as mim Noon. They associated them 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:25.200 with this figure of Memnon right, because there was a 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:28.400 there was a strong influence of Hellenistic culture throughout the 0:16:28.520 --> 0:16:31.120 Roman Empire and much it was often referred to in 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:33.440 many ways as sort of like the Greek world or 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:37.000 the Greek speaking world, even while Rome was in power, right. 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:41.440 And then they also had other ideas about the history 0:16:41.480 --> 0:16:44.640 of the statute. For instance, they attributed it they attributed 0:16:44.680 --> 0:16:48.960 it its partial destruction to the invasion of Canvasses the 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:53.160 second of the Acumenid or First Persian Empire. As to 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:55.560 what actually caused the destruction, we can revisit that in 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:59.280 a bit right right now. But the most important thing 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:01.960 really for our purposes here is again, not that they 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:04.880 just said who they were or when they visited these statues. 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:07.880 It doesn't matter what they called them, how they misinterpreted 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:12.320 the past. It's about the sounds that they described. Again, 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:16.040 the this the sound of a breaking of a liar stream, 0:17:16.119 --> 0:17:19.679 of a vocal sound, or even a crackle. And I 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:22.200 do have to say it does play nicely into this 0:17:22.520 --> 0:17:26.439 idea of Memnon though, right, because Memnon's mother is the dawn, 0:17:27.000 --> 0:17:30.600 and so many of these inscriptions are certainly the historical 0:17:30.680 --> 0:17:33.680 text that referred to it. They they they say, when 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:36.320 you're supposed to hear the crackle or the sound, it 0:17:36.359 --> 0:17:41.040 occurs at dawn. So there's this kind of communication between 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:46.720 the sun and this statue of allegedly Memnon. Yeah, that 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:49.840 that was one of the ancient interpretations, was that dawn break, 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:53.320 Aos would come over the horizon and shine her light 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:57.040 onto this western statue on the western side of the nile, 0:17:57.320 --> 0:18:00.119 and then of course the son of Aos, mem On, 0:18:00.280 --> 0:18:03.359 would sing to his mother. Yeah, but of course he's broken. 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:05.960 So it just comes out as a kind of a crack, 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:09.119 all right, because it plays into this idea too, of 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:12.119 this this fallen thing, this thing that was once great, 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:15.200 that is now reduced. H But these are of course 0:18:15.200 --> 0:18:20.199 all just sort of uh flavorful interpretations based upon the 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:22.639 fact that it was making or seem to have been making, 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:24.920 some sort of sound. All right, well, I think maybe 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:26.560 we should take a quick break and when we come 0:18:26.600 --> 0:18:29.480 back we can discuss ancient descriptions of the sound the 0:18:29.520 --> 0:18:32.359 statue made and then get into what could have caused it. 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:36.240 Thank you, thank you, thank you. Alright, we're back, so 0:18:36.320 --> 0:18:39.600 let's discuss uh, the singing and a bit more detail here. 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:44.919 Bower Stock writes that the inscription tells us that quote often, 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.320 as the sun rose at dawn, the surviving part of 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:51.080 the colossus would admit a mysterious twanging sound that seemed 0:18:51.119 --> 0:18:54.240 to all who heard it unearthly and unforgettable. It seemed 0:18:54.240 --> 0:18:56.719 as if the god himself were speaking in some way. 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:59.600 That he should be speaking from the waist down seemed 0:18:59.640 --> 0:19:02.840 not to any particular problem among the viewers, and he 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:06.760 did not oblige unfailingly every morning. Some visitors, including the 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:10.359 imperial retinue with Hadrian, had to wait for the miracle 0:19:10.440 --> 0:19:13.399 to occur. Yes, supposedly they went there to hear it, 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:15.240 and then it didn't happen. The first day, so they 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:17.400 had to wait around for a while. And I think 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:20.600 he touches on two details that are very telling here. 0:19:21.280 --> 0:19:24.480 One that a famous person comes to view it and 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:27.520 they have to wait, which does make it sound like 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:30.040 it was it was indeed some sort of natural phenomenon 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:32.479 that could not be depended upon and you just had 0:19:32.520 --> 0:19:34.880 to be patient with it, no matter how powerful you were. 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:38.479 And then also the fact that it seems like if 0:19:38.520 --> 0:19:41.359 you were making the story up, it would be the 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:44.400 head of the statue that's right there that would be speaking, 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:48.720 not essentially like the legs and and groin region of 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.359 the of the broken Titan, right. I mean, there is 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:53.399 a certain kind of symbolic joy you can get from 0:19:53.400 --> 0:19:56.600 the idea of a god's statue with a talking pelvis, 0:19:56.600 --> 0:19:59.680 But it just doesn't seem like that's what they'd really 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:02.600 be producing if this was, say, a band of priests 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:06.240 attempting to uh to trick people into thinking a statue 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:10.160 made a sound, which is something that some people have proposed. Yeah, 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:12.639 you see this as we'll discuss. You see this this 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:16.439 drift in the narrative as you deal with like second 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:18.920 and third hand accounts where they basically tweak it, where 0:20:18.960 --> 0:20:21.560 like it'd really be a better story if it was 0:20:21.600 --> 0:20:25.280 the head speaking, etcetera. Okay, so Bowersock, at the time 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:29.760 he was writing, summarizes what was generally thought about the 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:32.840 production of the sound in the ancient statue, right, yes, 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:35.040 and he was. He was also referring to some of 0:20:35.040 --> 0:20:39.119 the writings of philosotrosts who would have lived around roughly 0:20:39.240 --> 0:20:44.639 one seventy through two forty seven CE. But he points 0:20:44.680 --> 0:20:47.880 out that that that we can be fairly sure that 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:51.639 to what toppled this statue was an earthquake that we 0:20:51.720 --> 0:20:54.800 know occurred in in twenty six b c E. We 0:20:54.840 --> 0:20:58.439 have other historical accounts that reference the earthquake, so everything 0:20:58.480 --> 0:21:01.320 lines up there. But then as far as the earthquake 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:04.840 damage goes, this is uh. This is the idea that 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:08.840 that Bowersock touches on quote. The earthquake damage evidently allowed 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:12.520 air to penetrate well inside the colossus in such a 0:21:12.560 --> 0:21:15.440 way that the sudden warmth of the sun at dawn 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:19.600 affected a noisy discrepancy between the quickly heated exterior and 0:21:19.640 --> 0:21:23.320 the still cool channels within. The sounding. Colossus was a 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:26.199 great tourist attraction under the Roman Empire. The Greeks of 0:21:26.240 --> 0:21:29.399 that age identified it with the mythical hero Memnon. At 0:21:29.440 --> 0:21:33.160 the end of the second century, A D. Septimius Severus 0:21:33.200 --> 0:21:36.280 repaired the statue, it is alleged, and thereby silenced it. 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:40.280 So in this he touches on two really important facts here. 0:21:40.320 --> 0:21:43.280 First of all, a long standing theory as to how 0:21:43.320 --> 0:21:48.240 this sound was emerging from the top old colossus, that 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:50.520 that it only started after the earthquake, that it only 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:54.000 started after the earthquake damage. Yes, and then it ended 0:21:54.080 --> 0:21:57.240 after the restoration of the statue. So you got this window, 0:21:57.720 --> 0:22:00.760 this window of the talking statue. It didn't talked before, 0:22:00.800 --> 0:22:03.560 and it didn't talk after, right, doesn't talk now if 0:22:03.600 --> 0:22:06.119 you visit it now that nobody is hearing a sound 0:22:06.359 --> 0:22:10.119 from this uh, this stone. So clearly something happened to it. 0:22:10.280 --> 0:22:13.200 We're pretty sure it was earthquake damage, and it caused 0:22:13.880 --> 0:22:17.040 the stone to to speak, if you will, uh, on 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:20.280 particular mornings when conditions were just right, and then someone 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:23.240 came along and restored it and therefore caused the phenomenon 0:22:23.320 --> 0:22:28.600 to to cease forever. So this particular summation Bowersock rides 0:22:28.600 --> 0:22:32.120 popped up in virtually every modern mention of the coloss 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:36.640 I and likewise the the These these different modern interpretations 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:39.760 leaned extensively on the writings of French archaeologist Jean and 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:44.639 Anton Latron, who lived set eight uh, and he supported 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:48.119