VOCAL STATUE OF MEMNON. 291 



this kind. They play a variety of notes and sounds, one 

 of which nearly imitates the scream of the tree-toad." 



Among the acoustic wonders of the natural world 

 may be ranked the vocal powers of the statue of Memnon, 

 the son of Aurora, which modern discoveries have with- 

 drawn from among the fables of ancient Egypt. The 

 history of this remarkable statue is involved in much 

 obscurity. Although Strabo affirms that it was over- 

 turned by an earthquake, yet as Egypt exhibits no traces 

 of such a convulsion, it has been generally believed that 

 the statue was mutilated by Cambyses. Ph. Casselius, 

 in his dissertation on vocal or speaking stones, quotes 

 the remark of the scholiast in Juvenal, "that, when 

 mutilated by Cambyses, the statue which saluted both the 

 sun and the king, afterwards saluted only the sun." 

 Philostratus, in his life of Apollo, informs us, that the 

 statue looked to the east, and that it spoke as soon as the 

 rays of the rising sun fell upon its mouth. Pausanias, 

 who saw the statue in its dismantled state, says that it is 

 a statue of the sun, that the Egyptians call it Phamenophis, 

 and not Memnon, and that it emits sounds every morning at 

 sunrise, which can be compared only to that of the breaking of 

 the string of a lyre. Strabo speaks only of a single sound 

 which he heard ; but Juvenal, who had probably heard it 

 often during his stay in Egypt, describes it as if it 

 emitted several sounds : 



Dimidio magicee resonant ubi Memnone chordae. 

 Where broken Memnon sounds his magic strings. 



The simple sounds which issued from the statue were in 

 the progess of time magnified into intelligible words, and 

 even into an oracle of seven verses, and this prodigy has 

 been recorded in a Greek inscription on the left leg of 

 the statue. But though this new faculty of the colossus 

 was evidently the contrivance of the Egyptian priests, yet 



