Statue of Memnon.
This celebrated statue was situated at Thebes, and was either injured by Cambyses, to whom the Egyptian priests ascribed most of the mutilations of the Theban temples, or else thrown down by an earthquake. The peculiar characteristic of the statue was its giving out at various times a sound resembling the breaking of a harp-string or a metallic ring. Considerable difference has prevailed as to the reason of this sound, which has been heard in modern times, it being ascribed to the artifice of the priests, who struck the sonorous stone of which the statue is composed—to the passage of light draughts of air through the cracks, or the sudden expansion of aqueous particles, under the influence of the sun's rays. This remarkable quality of the statue is first mentioned by Strabo, who visited it about 18 B. C., and upwards of one hundred inscriptions of Greek and Roman visitors, incised upon its legs, record the visits of ancient travelers to witness the phenomenon, from the ninth year of Nero, 63 A. D., to the reign of the Emperor Severus, when it became silent.