Catching up with the Colossi: the 2015-16 seasons The Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project continued the archaeological investigations and conservation work at Kom el-Hettan over three seasons in 2015/16. Hourig Sourouzian reports on the latest developments. The funerar y temple of Amenhotep III (1387–1348 BC)– his ‘House of Millions of Years’ – once was the largest of its kind. Surrounded by an enclosure wall 550 m long and 700 m wide, it included, among other buildings, temples of auxiliary deities, processional ways, a peristyle court and three pylons, each guarded by a pair of royal colossi. Badly hit by an earthquake around 1200 BC, subsequently quarried for building material and regularly disturbed by Nile floods, the complex was long thought to have been thoroughly destroyed. Yet work by the Temple Conservation Project since the late 1990s revealed significant remains. Work at the Colossi of Memnon During the 2015/16 seasons, we treated and desalinated a block that in the previous season we had placed at the rear right corner of the plinth of the South Memnon Colossus. This block had been reassembled from several pieces found scattered around the plinth over
many years and is now finally remounted at its original place, on its lower part, which had remained in situ , resting on the original sandstone pavement of the temple ground. In spr ing 2016 , we car r ied ou t soil investigations around the Memnon Colossi in cooperation with the Geological Institute of the Armenian Academy of Sciences. Among a series of sondages initiated by Rainer Stadelmann, the most recent one (pit no. 20) made by Ara Avagyan at the front right corner of the plinth of the South Memnon, revealed the lower part of the plinth with a protruding step at its bottom and a long crack in the pavement, illustrating again the effects of the ancient earthquake that shattered the northern statue. After mapping and photography, the pit was backfilled immediately. The colossi of the Second Pylon Two more colossi are now visible beyond the Memnon pair (image below), at the gate of the Second Pylon, where they were found
The colossi of the Second Pylon, visible in the background between the Memnon Colossi.
Photo: The Colossi of Memnon and Amenhotep III Temple Conservation Project
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