The Vocal Memnon

Probably the most interesting and curious statue of antiquity is that known as the "Vocal Memnon," on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes, Egypt.

This statue represents Amenophis III. (about 1500 or 1600 B.C.), and is the northernmost of two colossal sitting figures of black stone, forming a part of a row of statues leading to the gate of the palace of Amenophis.

It is fifty feet high without the base, and must have stood sixty feet in the air before the soil of the Nile covered the desert on which it stands. The pedestal is a solid stone, thirty-three feet long, and twelve feet high.

According to tradition, sounds resembling the twanging of a harp-string, or the striking of brass, were heard issuing from this statue every morning at sunrise. On the lower part of the statue are seventy-two inscriptions in Greek and Latin, by the Emperor Hadrian, the Empress Sabina, and also by several governors of Egypt and other travelers, official and private, testifying that they have heard the sound.

The "Vocal Memnon" was thrown down by an earth-quake, 27 B.C., and lay undisturbed until A.D. 170. In the time of Roman occupation, during the reign of Septimius Severus, it was set up, and restored from the waist by brick-work and blocks of stone; but it ceased to give out sounds.

One theory advanced as to the sounds emitted by the statue was, that they were caused by the action of the sun's rays upon the dew that had fallen in the crevices of the broken figure; and another was, that a priest was concealed in the lap of the figure, and struck a metallic stone.

The Greeks of later ages confounded this statue with that of Memnon, the son of Aurora, and one of the defenders of Troy; and they believed that the sound was his morning salutation to his mother: hence the statue is known as the vocal or singing statue of Memnon.

As this sound was to be heard only as the first rays of the sun touched the statue, hundreds of persons, at different times, from all parts of Europe, have assembled, and lain all night at the base of it, that they might observe the phenomenon. Could an investigation be made now, since the discovery of converting light into sound, the mystery that puzzled the ancients might be satisfactorily solved.