s’anam, idolum, with the lingual sâd. The plural, which is usually
as’nam, here takes the feminine form
s’anamât. That they were male figures had long since been indistinguishable from the battered heads. The stone of which the statues are formed is a peculiarly hard quartz brittle sandstone conglomerate, looking glazed, and with innumerable cracks. The frequent bursting of little particles of stone at sunrise, when the changes of temperature are most sudden, caused, according to my idea, the celebrated Memnon sounds, which were compared with the breaking of a violin string.
[96] [Herodotus II. c.c. 121-122.—K.R.H.M.]
[97] This King Ai was formerly a private individual, and took his sacerdotal title into his royal cartouche at a later period. He appears with his wife in the tombs of Amarna, not unfrequently as a noble and peculiarly honoured officer of King Amenophis IV., that puritanical sun-worshipper, who changed his name into that of Bech-en-aten.
[98] The above dimensions are here taken from Wilkinson’s Modern Egypt and Thebes, vol. ii. p. 220.
[99] [For an excellent description of such retreats, vide Floss, Quæstiones Criticæ de Macaris, cap. i. § 1. Coloniæ, Heberle, MDCCCL.—K.R.H.M.]