early Eyyptian History, 181 



remainder of the catalogue presents no further accordance, 

 either in the names or in the duration of the reigns. 



To return to Manetho : — amongst the monarchs of the ori- 

 ginal Egyptian race there was one named by him Amenophis, 

 (the eighth king of the eighteenth dynasty,) of whom it is 

 stated, in a note of Manetho' s preserved by Syncellus, that he 

 wa^'the Egyptian king whom the Greeks called Memnon. 

 The statue of Memnon at Thebes, celebrated through all anti- 

 quity for the melodious sounds which it was said to render at 

 sutirise, is identified in the present day by a multitude of Greek 

 inscriptions ; one of which, in particular, records the attestation 

 of Publius Balbinus, who visited the ruins of Thebes in tha 

 suite of the empress the wife of Adrian, to his having himself 

 heard the " divine sounds of Memnon or Phamenoph ;" which 

 latter name is Amenophis, with the Egyptian masculine article 

 <p prefixed, and omitting the Greek termination. The hiero- 

 glyphics carved on the statue, and coeval with its date, had 

 been very carefully copied by the French whilst in possession 

 of 'Egypt^* and were engraved in the splendid work, the 

 Description de VEgypte, to which their researches had given 

 rise. These hieroglyphics contain the alphabetic characters 

 Amnf (being the initial vowel and all the consonants of the 

 name Amenof ) inclosed within a ring ; a distinction which had 

 been previously observed to take place with the names of the 

 Roman emperors, and of the Grecian kings and tjueens ; and 

 as the rings have hitherto been found to occur in no other 

 instance whatsoever than when containing the names and tides 

 of sovereigns, they are regarded as characteristic signs. It 

 should be remarked, that in the hieroglyphic writing, as in the 

 languages of other eastern nations most nearly connected with 

 Egypt; the vowels are often omitted, and when expressed, have 

 not always a fixed sound. The coincidence of the reading of 

 the hieroglyphic name with that recorded by Manetho, and with 

 the Greek inscription on the statue itself, was so far confirma- 

 tory of Manetho's authority ; it was also highly interesting in the 

 evidence it afibrded of the employment of the same hierogly- 

 phic alphabet, that was in after use in the times of the Ptole- 

 mies and the Ca?sars, even in the very early periods of the 

 Egyptian monarchy ; for the reign of Amenophis was in the 

 dynasty preceding that of Sesostris; it also indicated the further 



