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Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Translation & interpretation
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The Language of Ruins - Greek and Latin Inscriptions on the Memnon Colossus (Hardcover)
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The Language of Ruins - Greek and Latin Inscriptions on the Memnon Colossus (Hardcover)
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A colossal statue, originally built to honor an ancient pharaoh,
still stands today in Egyptian Thebes, with more than a hundred
Greek and Latin inscriptions covering its lower surfaces. Partially
damaged by an earthquake, and later re-identified as the Homeric
hero Memnon, it was believed to "speak" regularly at daybreak. By
the middle of the first century CE, tourists flocked to the
colossus of Memnon to hear the miraculous sound, and left behind
their marks of devotion (proskynemata): brief acknowledgments of
having heard Memnon's cry; longer lists by Roman administrators;
and more elaborate elegiac verses by both amateur and professional
poets. The inscribed names left behind reveal the presence of
emperors and soldiers, provincial governors and businessmen, elite
women and military wives, and families with children. While recent
studies of imperial literature acknowledge the colossus, few
address the inscriptions themselves. This book is the first
critical assessment of all the inscriptions considered in their
social, cultural, and historical context. The Memnon colossus
functioned as a powerful site of engagement with the Greek past,
and appealed to a broad segment of society. The inscriptions shed
light on contemporary attitudes toward sacred tourism, the role of
Egypt in the Greco-Roman imagination, and the cultural legacy of
Homeric epic. Memnon is a ghost from the Homeric past anchored in
the Egyptian present, and visitors yearned for a "close encounter"
that would connect them with that distant past. The inscriptions
thus idealize Greece by echoing archaic literature in their verses
at the same time as they reflect their own historical horizon.
These and other subjects are expertly explored in the book,
including a fascinating chapter on the colossus's post-classical
life when the statue finds new worshippers among Romantic artists
and poets in nineteenth-century Europe.
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