Exploring Egypt: 19th Century Expeditionary Photography features photographs taken for a variety of purposes—preservation, Romantic attachment, and even architectural documentation. Yet the unique stories behind the objects, monuments and landscapes photographed are perhaps not evident to modern day viewers.
Consider Maxime Du Camp’s Goumah, Colossal Monolith of Amenhotep. The statue photographed is the easternmost one of a pair depicting Pharaoh Amenhotep III. The two statues are positioned at the approach to the Valley of the Kings. The photograph’s label describes it as having been taken in a “straightforward manner” which could suggest that Du Camp had a documentary approach to the subject. Look closely: the presence of a man between the statue’s legs indicates its immense size. The statues themselves are 60 feet tall and 18 feet wide across their shoulders. The massive size must be impressive, but so too is the historical mystique surrounding the eastern statue.
Sir John Gardner Wilkinson's 1847 Hand-book for Travellers in Egypt, a widely read and popular guidebook for nineteenth-century European travelers, described this statue as a wonder of the ancient world. He references ancient accounts that assert a “sound was uttered when the sun touched its lips” (Wilkinson’s Handbook pg 349). Mystery shrouded the statue and its morning “speech.” Elite Greeks and even Roman emperors traveled to Egypt to hear it. Scholars of various generations attempted to identify the source of the sound.
Wilkinson presents accounts describing the sound uttered by the statue as similar to the “breaking of a harp-string” or “a metallic ring” that could be heard “about the first or second hour after sunrise” (pg 350). However, as with most mysterious happenings, the sound’s origins were critiqued and debunked. Wilkinson believed that priests “contrived the sound of the statue” and “were artful enough to allow the supposed deity to fail occasionally,” which motivated visitors to return another morning to hear the statue’s sound (pg 350). He identifies the sound’s source as a stone in the statue’s lap that, when struck, emitted a metallic sound. Visitors could be deceived because a space was cut from a block behind the statue, leaving space for a person to hide and strike the stone. Wilkinson went so far as to test the stone himself, posting peasants below and climbing up the statue to strike the “sonorous block” with a small hammer (pg 350). The peasants heard the ringing sound and compared it to brass.
Nonetheless, a powerful aura remains in the eastern statue as photographed by Du Camp. The immense size, its position in front of mountains, and its mysterious purpose invite viewers to pause and feel a sense of wonder.
This exhibition is free and open through July 18.