292 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



we are not entitled from this to call in question the 

 simple and perfectly credible fact that it emitted sounds. 

 This property, indeed, it seems to possess at the present 

 day ; for we learn,* that an English traveller, Sir A. 

 Smith, accompanied with a numerous escort, examined 

 the statue, and that at six o'clock in the morning he 

 heard very distinctly the sounds which had been so cele- 

 brated in antiquity. He asserts that this sound does not 

 proceed from the statue but from the pedestal ; and he 

 expresses his belief that it arises from the impulse of the 

 air upon the stones of the pedestal, which are arranged so 

 as to produce this surprising effect. This singular 

 description is to a certain extent confirmed by the descrip- 

 tion of Strabo, who says that he was quite certain that he 

 heard a sound which proceeded either from the base, or 

 from the colossus, or from some one of the assistants. 

 As there were no Egyptian priests in the escort of Sir 

 A. Smith, we may now safely reject this last, and, for 

 many centuries, the most probable hypothesis. 



The explanation suggested by Sir A. Smith, had been 

 previously given in a more specific form by M. Dussaulx, 

 the translator of Juvenal. " The statue," says he, " being 

 hollow, the heat of the sun heated the air which it con- 

 tained, and this air, issuing at some crevice, produced the 

 sounds of which the priests gave their own interpretation." 



Rejecting this explanation, M. Langles, in his dis- 

 sertation on the vocal statue of Memnon, and M. Salverte, 

 in his work on the occult sciences, have ascribed the 

 sounds entirely to Egyptian priestcraft, and have even 

 gone so far as to describe the mechanism by which the 

 statue not only emitted sounds, but articulated distinctly 

 the intonations appropriate to the seven Egyptian vowels, 

 and consecrated to the seven planets. M. Langles con- 

 ceives that the sounds may be produced by a series of 



* Revue Encydope'dique, 1821, Tom. ix. p. 592. 



