SOUNDS IN GRANITE ROCKS. 295 



the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, in passing incessantly 

 up and down the Nile, had made the same observation 

 on some rock of the Thebaid, and that the music of the 

 rocks there led to the jugglery of the priests in the statue 

 of Memnon ?" 



This curious case of the production of sounds in granite 

 rocks at sunrise might have been regarded as a trans- 

 atlantic wonder which was not applicable to Egypt ; but 

 by a singular coincidence of observation, MM. Jomard, 

 Jollois, and Devilliers, who were travelling in Egypt 

 nearly about the same time that M. Humboldt was 

 traversing the wilds of South America, heard, at sunrise, 

 in a monument of granite, situated near the centre of the 

 spot on which the palace of Carnac stands, a noise resem- 

 bling that of a breaking string, the very expression by 

 which Pausanias characterizes the sound in the Mem- 

 nonian granite. The travellers regarded these sounds as 

 arising from the transmission of rarefied air through the 

 crevices of a sonorous stone, and they were of the same 

 opinion with Humboldt, that these sounds might have 

 suggested to the Egyptian priests the juggleries of the Mem- 

 nonium. Is it not strange that the Prussian and the French 

 travellers should not have gone a step farther, and solved 

 the problem of two thousand years, by maintaining that 

 the sound of the statue of Memnon was itself a natural 

 phenomenon, or a granite sound elicited at sunrise by the 

 very same causes which operated on the Orinoco and in 

 the Temple of Carnac, in place of regarding it as a trick 

 in imitation of natural sounds? If, as Humboldt sup- 

 poses, the ancient inhabitants of Egypt had, in passing 

 incessantly up and down the Nile, become familiar with 

 the music of the granite rocks of the Thebaid, how could 

 the imitation of such natural and familiar sounds be 

 regarded by the priests as a means of deceiving the 

 people ? There could be nothing marvellous in a colossal 



