event, but is the symbol of a period in the history of the nation, one of primitive simplicity, which had past away and lived only in memory, having been replaced by one of strife and conquest, power and pomp, a calculating and oppressive rule. " Sesostris, whose name according to Jablonski means the prince who gazes on or adores the sun, probably repre- sents a new dynasty. He is a conqueror, and the destroyer of the earlier principle ; with him too begin new buildings ; obelisks and pyramids succeed to the colossal images of former times. These ancient statues continue to exist, but the legend describes them as mourning over the glories of the past, and as fostering a languid hope of a future revival.[1]"
The reader will perceive from this specimen, which is perhaps but a scanty one, how copious a harvest of conjecture the subject is capable of yielding. But the question we are at present mainly concerned with, is not what notions the Egyptians attached to their Memnon, but in what manner he became known to the Greeks so as to fill a conspicuous part in their heroic poetry. This question has been profoundly investigated by Mr Jacobs, in a very learned and instructive essay published in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Munich, Vol. ii, and reprinted among his miscellaneous works. But as it may probably not be found in many libraries in this country, it may be doing a service to those of our readers who take an interest in such researches, to lay before them the substance of his opinions and arguments in some detail.
The essay begins with an enumeration of the monuments of Memnon scattered over Asia, for the knowledge of which, it is observed, we are indebted chiefly to incidental allusions. One of these, which I have not yet mentioned, is found in Dictys (De Bello Trojano vi. 10), where after the death of
- ↑ He conjectures that the sounds heard proceeded not from the statue itself, but from some local cause that operated in its vicinity (as Humboldt speaks of subterraneous sounds that issue at sunrise from the rocks on the Oronoko), and that this phenomenon was either applied by the adherents of the ancient system to an existing statue, or that a statue was erected there to take advantage of it. It is to be regretted that so ingenious a hypothesis should not have the minutest particle of historical ground to stand upon. See however Plutarch De Is et Os c. 30.
