THE STATUE OF MEMNOiV. 
22 ? 
cienoc that seems to depend on a certain state of the 
atmosphere, cannot he denied. The shelves of rock are full 
°f very narrow and deep crevices. They are heated dur ing 
the day to 48° or 50°. 1 several times found their tempe- 
rature at the surface, during the night, at 30°, the surround- 
Ul g atmosphere being at 28°. It may easily be conceived, 
that the difference of temperature between the subterranean 
;l Qd the external air attains its maximum about sunrise, or 
‘'t that moment which is at the same time farthest from 
the period of the maximum of the heat of the preced- 
ing day. May not these organ-like sounds, which are 
heard when a person lays his ear in contact with the 
^tone, be the effect of a current of air that issues out 
through the crevices ? Does not the impulse of the air 
against the elastic spangles of mica that intercept the 
crevices, contribute to modify the sounds? May we not 
?bmit that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, in passing 
‘hcessantly 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 
11 the statue of Memnon ? Perhaps, when ‘the rosy- 
hugered Aurora rendered her son, the glorious Memnon, 
ocal,’* the voice was that of a man hidden beneath the 
Pedestal of the statue ; but the observation of the natives 
1 the Orinoco, which we relate, seems to explain in a 
mural manner what gave rise to the Egyptian belief of a 
°ue that poured forth rounds at sunrise. 
4 lm ost at the same period at which I communicated these 
m ‘.lectures to some of the learned of Europe, three Erench 
to^ellers, MM. Jomard, Jollois, and Dcvilliers, were led 
0 p a balogous ideas. They heard, at sunrise, in a monument 
pai^UHc, at the centre of the spot on which stands the 
ace of Kurnak, a noise resembling that of a string break- 
age' ^° W comparison is precisely that which the 
r pp le nts employed in speaking of the voice of Memnon. 
e -1 reneb travellers thought, like me, that the passage of 
» ere ^ ese ar e the words of an inscription, which attests that sounds 
r «"n on , th e l^th of the month Pachon, in the tenth year of the 
6 ot Antoninus. See Monuments de l’Egypte Aucienne. 
Q 2 
