In many parts of the East the custom still remains of proclaiming the sun by the sounding of instruments. That similar signals were given in Egypt is not to be doubted, since the custom is almost as old as solar adoration itself. That the sun was worshipped in that country, is equally established: both being rendered the more certain by the ceremony of sounding harps, at sunrise, having been introduced into Italy by Pythagoras, who had long sojourned with the Egyptian magi. The sounding of Memnon’s statue, then, might have been an artifice of the priesthood; to effect which many methods might have been adopted. Either the head of Memnon contained wires, like the strings of an Æolian harp; or the sounds might have been produced by the touching of a stone[275].
The real cause of the sound has lately been discovered by Mr. Wilkinson:—“In the lap of the statue is a stone, which, on being struck, elicits a metallic sound, that might still be made use of to deceive a visitor, who was predisposed to believe its powers; and from its position, and the squared space cut in the block behind, as if to admit a person, who might thus lie concealed from the most scrutinous observer in the plain below, it seems to have been used after the restoration of the statue; and another similar recess exists beneath the present site of the stone, which might have been intended for the same purpose, when the statue was in its mutilated state.”
This statue has frequently been mistaken for the statue of Osymandyas. Strabo says, that it was named Ismandes. These words were derived from Os-Smandi, to give out a sound; a property possessed, it was said, by this statue at the dawn of day and at sunset. Its true name was Amenophis. It was visited by Germanicus. On its legs are to be seen Greek and Roman inscriptions, attesting the prodigy of the harmonious sounds emitted by this colossus.
After the temples at Karnac and Luxor, the next grand building at Thebes was the Memnonium; that is, the tomb or palace of one of the Pharaohs, whom the Greeks suppose to be the same as Memnon. In the middle of the first court was the largest figure ever raised by the Egyptians,—the statue of the monarch, seventy-five feet high.
“The name Memnonium[276] is used by Strabo to designate some part of ancient Thebes lying on the western side of the river. Some modern travellers have applied it to a mass of ruins at a little distance to the north of Medeenet-Habou, which are by others identified with the palace and tomb of Osymandyas, described by Diodorus. The dimensions of the building are about five hundred and thirty feet in length, and two hundred in width: it is chiefly remarkable for the magnificent colossal statues which have been discovered within it. The ‘Memnon’s head,’ which forms so valuable an object in the collection of Egyptian antiquities contained in the British Museum, formerly belonged to one of these statues. It is generally supposed that the French, during their celebrated [Pg 434]expedition, separated the bust from the rest of the figure by the aid of gunpowder, with the view of rendering its transport more easy. They were compelled, however, from some cause or other, to leave it behind, and it was brought away by Belzoni.
“Close to the spot where the Memnon’s head was found, lie the fragments of another statue, which has been called the largest in Egypt. It was placed in a sitting posture, and measures sixty-two or sixty-three feet round the shoulders; six feet ten inches over the foot. The length of the nail of the second toe is about one foot, and the length of the toe to the insertion of the nail is one foot eleven inches. This enormous statue, formed of red granite, has been broken off at the waist, and the upper part is now laid prostrate on the back: the face is entirely obliterated, and next to the wonder excited at the boldness of the sculptor who made it, as Mr. Hamilton remarks, and the extraordinary powers of those who erected it, the labour and exertions that must have been used for its destruction are most astonishing.
“The mutilation of this statue must have been a work of extreme difficulty: Hamilton says that it could only have been brought about with the help of military engines, and must then have been the work of a length of time; in its fall it has carried along with it the whole of the wall of the temple which stood within its reach.
“We have remarked that this edifice, called the Memnonium, is by many travellers identified with that described by Diodorus, under the name of the monument of Osymandyas; his description is the only detailed account which we have in the ancient writers of any great Egyptian building. There is no one now at Thebes to which it may be applied in all its parts, or with which it so far agrees, as to leave no doubt concerning the edifice to which it was intended to apply by its author; and Mr. Hamilton expresses his decided opinion that Diodorus, in penning this description of the tomb of Osymandyas, either listened with too easy credulity to the fanciful relations of the Greek travellers, to whom he refers; or that, astonished with the immensity of the monuments he must have read and heard of as contained within the walls of the capital of Egypt, and equally unwilling to enter into a minute detail of them all, as to omit all mention of them whatever, he set himself down to compose an imaginary building, to which he could give a popular name. In this he might collect, in some kind of order, all the most remarkable features of Theban monuments, statues, columns, obelisks, sculptures, &c. to form one entire whole that might astonish his reader without [Pg 435]tiring him by prolixity or repetition, and which at the same time gave him a just notion of the magnificent and splendid works which had immortalised the monarchs of the Thebaid. It is evident that there is no one monument in Thebes which answers in all its parts to the description of Diodorus; yet it is urged that there is scarcely any one circumstance that he mentions that may not be referred to one or other of the temples of Luxor, Karnak, Goorno, Medeenet-Habou, or the tombs of the kings among the mountains. Others think that Diodorus used his best endeavours to describe a real place; and the chief agreements with that now called the Memnonium are in the position of the building and its colossal statues, which are supposed to outweigh the exaggerations of dimension; these being set down as faults of memory or observation. On the colossal statue mentioned by Diodorus as the largest in Egypt, was placed, as he tells us, this inscription:—‘I am Osymandyas, king of kings: if you wish to know how great I am, and where I lie, surpass my works!’ He speaks also of certain sculptures representing battle scenes; and of the famous sacred library, which was inscribed with the words, ‘Place of cure for the soul!’ Yet from this conclusion we learn that he has been describing what the tomb of Osymandyas was, ‘which not only in the expense of the structure, but also in the skill of the workmanship, must have surpassed by far all other buildings.’”
The following observations and history are taken from an exceedingly learned and agreeable work, “Egyptian Antiquities:”
“Those who visit the British Museum cannot fail to have observed, in the room of Egyptian antiquities, a colossal statue of which only the head and breast remain. It is numbered 66 in the catalogue and on the stone. Though this statue is commonly called the ‘Younger Memnon,’ a name to which for convenience we shall adhere, there is no reason in the world for calling it so, but a mistake of Norden, a Danish traveller, who visited Egypt in 1737. He then saw this statue in its entire state, seated on a chair, in precisely the same attitude as the black breccia figure, No. 38, but lying with its face on the ground; to which accident, indeed, the preservation of the features is no doubt mainly due. Several ancient writers, and among them the Greek geographer Strabo, speak of a large temple at Thebes on the west side of the Nile, to which they gave the name of the Memnonium, or Memnon’s temple. Norden fancied that the building, amidst whose ruins he saw this statue, was the ancient Memnonium: though he [Pg 436]supposed, that another statue of much larger dimensions than this in the Museum, and now lying in numerous fragments in the same place, was the great Memnon statue, of which some ancient writers relate the following fact:—That at sunrise, when the rays first struck the statue, it sent forth a sound something like that of the snapping of the string of a lute.