Note 245 — Chapter III · (continued 3)

This must have been the structure which Strabo calls the Memnonium, and near to which he seems to place the two colossi (xvii. p. 816). The true name of the author of both temple and colossi might easily be confused with that of the mythical Greek personage which the Hellenic imagination persisted in discovering everywhere in Egypt, and the similarity of sound must have helped to perpetuate the mistake among all the foreign travellers who visited the country. A curious passage in Pausanias (Attica, 42) shows us, however, that the Egyptian scholars of his time knew how properly to convey the name of the prince represented in the colossi to foreigners: "I was less struck by that marvel," he says, in speaking of some sonorous stone which was shown to him at Megara, "than by a colossal statue which I saw beyond the Nile in Egypt, not far from the pipes. This colossus is a statue of the sun, or of Memnon, according to the common tradition. It is said that Memnon came from Ethiopia into Egypt, and that he penetrated as far as Susa. But the Thebans themselves deny that it is Memnon. They declare that it represents Phamenoph (Φάμενοφ), who was born in their own country...." The story told by Philostratus (Life of Apollonius, l. vi. p. 232) of the visit of the sorcerer to Memnon, shows that in his time the colossus was surrounded by nothing but ruins, such as broken columns and architraves, fragmentary walls and shattered statues. Even then the monumental completeness of the "Amenophium" had vanished.