VOCAL STATUE OF MEMNON. 293 



hammers, which strike either the granite itself, or sonorous 

 stones like those which have been long used in China 

 for musical instruments. M. Salverte improves this imper- 

 fect apparatus, by supposing that there might be adapted 

 to these hammers a clepsydra or water-clock, or any 

 other instrument fitted to measure time, and so constructed 

 as to put the hammers in motion at sunrise. Not satisfied 

 with this supposition, he conjectures that the spring of 

 all this mechanism was to be found in the art of con- 

 centrating the rays of the sun, which was well known to 

 the ancients. Between the lips of the statue, or in some 

 less remarkable part of it concealed from view by its 

 height, he conceives an aperture to be perforated, con- 

 taining a lens or a mirror capable of condensing the 

 rays of the rising sun upon one or more metallic levers 

 which by their expansion put in motion the seven 

 hammers in succession. Hence he explains why the 

 sounds were emitted only at sunrise, and when the solar 

 rays fell upon the mouth of the statue, and why they 

 were never again heard till the sun returned to the eastern 

 horizon. As a piece of mechanism, this contrivance is 

 defective in not providing for the change in the sun's 

 amplitude, which is very considerable even in Egypt, for 

 as the statue and the lens are both fixed, and as the 

 sounds were heard at all seasons of the year, the same 

 lens which threw the midsummer rays of the sun upon 

 the hammers could not possibly throw upon them 

 his rays in winter. But even if the machinery were 

 perfect, it is obvious that it could not have survived 

 the mutilation of the statue, and could not, short of a 

 miracle, have performed its part in the time of Sir A. 

 Smith. 



If we abandon the idea of the whole being a trick of the 

 priesthood, which has been generally done, and which the 

 recent observations of Sir A. Smith authorizes us to do. 



