SOUNDS IN GRANITE BOCKS. 239 



in granite rocks at sunrise might have been re- 

 garded as a transatlantic wonder which was not 

 applicable to Egypt ; but by a singular coin- 

 cidence of observation, Messrs. 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 resembling 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 Memnonium. 

 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 

 granitic 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 supposes, 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 imi- 

 tation of such natural and familiar sounds be re- 

 garded by the priests as a means of deceiving 

 the people ? There could be nothing marvellous 

 in a colossal statue of granite giving out the very 



