Note 212 — Chapter XXI · THEBES.

These two statues—the best-known, probably, of all Egyptian monuments—have been too often described, painted, engraved and photographed, to need more than a passing reference. Their featureless faces, their attitude, their surroundings, are familiar as the pyramids, even to those who know not Egypt. We all know that they represent Amenhotep, or Amunoph III; and that the northernmost was shattered to the waist by the earthquake of B.C. 27. Being heard to give out a musical sound during the first hour of the day, the statue was supposed by the ancients to be endowed with a miraculous voice. The Greeks, believing it to represent the fabled son of Tithonus and Aurora, gave it the name of Memnon; notwithstanding that the Egyptians themselves claimed the statues as portraits of Amenhotep III. Prefects, consuls, emperors and empresses, came “to hear Memnon,” as the phrase then ran. Among the famous visitors who traveled thither on this errand, we find Strabo, Germanicus, Hadrian and the Empress Sabina. Opinion is divided as to the cause of this sound. There is undoubtedly a hollow space inside the throne of this statue, as may be seen by all who examine it from behind; and Sir G. Wilkinson, in expressing his conviction that the musical sound was a piece of priestly jugglery, represents the opinion of the majority. The author of a carefully considered article in the Quarterly Review, No. 276, April, 1875, coincides with Sir D. Brewster in attributing the sound to a transmission of rarefied air through the crevices of the stone, caused by the sudden change of temperature consequent on the rising of the sun. The statue, which, like its companion, was originally one solid monolith of gritstone, was repaired with sandstone during the reign of Septimius Severus.