The History of Antiquity (Vol. 1-6). Duncker Max

Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," pp. 80–90.

[186] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," p. 81, 87; De Rougé, "Revue archéolog." 1860, 2, 310 ff.

[187] De Rougé, "Divers Monuments de Tutmes;" "Revue archéol." 1861, 4, 196 ff. 344 ff.

[188] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," p. 107.

[189] De Rougé, "Revue archéolog." 1861, 1, 345.

[190] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," p. 111.

[191] Brugsch, loc. cit. p. 114.

[192] Lepsius, "Briefe aus Ægypten," s. 216; Brugsch, loc. cit. p. 118.

[193] Brugsch, loc. cit. p. 114.

[194] Rosellini, "Monumenti Storici," 3, 1, 29, 114 ff.

[195] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," pp. 92, 93: cf. Rosellini, "Monumenti Storici," 3, 1, 332, 146, and Lepsius, "Königsbuch," s. 38.

[196] Brugsch, loc cit. pp. 108, 109.

[197] Dümichen, "Bauurkunde von Dendera;" Chabas in "Zeitschr. für ægypt. Sprache," 1865, s. 91 ff.

[198] Lepsius, "Briefe aus Ægypten," s. 113; Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," pp. 65, 66.

[199] Brugsch, loc. cit. p. 113.

[200] De Rougé, "Revue archéolog." 1865, 11, 354 ff.; Dümichen, "Bauurkunde von Edfu;" Brugsch, "Bau und Masse des Tempels von Edfu;" "Zeitschr. für ægypt. Sprache," 1870, s. 153 ff; 1871, s. 25, 32 ff.

[201] Champollion, "Lettres," p. 210; Rosell. M. St. 1, 219, 223, 236, 248.

[202] "Hist. Nat." 35, 11.

[203] Rosell. loc. cit. 3, 1, 216. The Greeks regarded the northern colossus as the statue of Memnon. The ruins of this temple, and other buildings on the west bank of the Nile, were called by them "Memnoneia."—Diod. 1, 47; Strabo, pp. 813, 816. The name is strictly limited to the temples and palaces on the west bank. Yet even the fortress of Susa is called "the Memnonia."—Herod. 5, 53, 7, 151; Strabo, p. 728; Diod. 2, 22; Paus. 10, 31. The name as applied to the Egyptian monuments may be a corruption of Amenophis, so that the name of the buildings of Amenophis has given the analogy for other similar structures. Still, it is more probable that the connection of these buildings with the divinity of the under world, and the death of Osiris, to which the death of Memnon was compared, is at the root of this nomenclature of the Greeks. The story of the Ethiopian Memnon, the son of the Morning, i.e. of the East, who came to aid the Trojans and found an early death before Troy, is known to the Odyssey (11, 522, 4, 187), the Homeric hymns ("In Ven." 219–239) and the Theogony (l. 984), and was treated in detail by Arktinus of Miletus about 750 B.C. In Homer's view the Ethiopians dwell in the far East, at the rising of the sun, beyond the Amazons, whose abode was on the Thermodon. Hence the ancient Susa, far in the East, the subsequent capital of the Achæmenids, might have been the dwelling of the son of the East. When it was known that the Ethiopians inhabited the Upper Nile, and the name Memnon was found in Egypt, the Greeks, after the time of Herodotus, began to search for the Homeric Ethiopians and Memnon, in and above Egypt. That the name is given to the northern colossus only is due to the following reasons. In the year 27 B.C. an earthquake broke this northern colossus and threw the upper parts to the ground. Then the pedestal and trunk occasionally gave forth a metallic sound at sunrise.—Tac. "Annal." 2, 61. This, in the poetic minds of the Greeks, was the greeting of the son to his divine mother, the Morning, while she in her sorrow for the early death of her son moistened the statue every morning with tears of dew. Greek inscriptions on the pedestal from the time of Nero give the names of witnesses who had heard the sound. Pausanias, who was of this date, tells us, loc. cit.—"At Thebes, in Egypt, is the sounding statue of a seated man, whom most authorities call Memnon, and say that he forced his way from Ethiopia to Egypt and Susa. The inhabitants of Thebes, however, deny that it is Memnon. They regard it as the statue of Phamenoph, a native Egyptian." Ph-Amenoph is Amenophis with the Egyptian article. The sounding statue was long regarded as a fable, until the savans of the French expedition, in the early morning, when the hot sunbeams followed on the cool of the night, as is usual in the climate of Africa, perceived in the great Egyptian buildings a small whispering, or singing tone, which must be due to those physical influences. This phenomenon may have been especially striking in the mutilated statue of Amenophis. In the time of Septimius Severus, when the colossus was restored—the upper parts are now composed of four pieces—the inscriptions and the marvel came to an end. The new weight placed upon the pedestal appears to have checked the vibrations. At present no sound is heard.—Letronne, "La Statue vocal de Memnon."

      CHAPTER VI.

      THE HOUSE OF RAMSES.

       Table of Contents

The Greeks inform us that Sesostris, or Sesosis, was the greatest warrior among the kings of Egypt. Herodotus was told by the priests that he was the first who set out with ships of war from the Arabian Gulf, and reduced the dwellers by the Red Sea, until he was checked by waters which were too shallow for navigation. On his return from this expedition, Sesostris, as the priests said, gathered together a great army, invaded the continent, and reduced every nation in his path. In the conquered lands he set up pillars, on which were inscribed his name and country, and that he had reduced the nation by his power. Wherever he found but little resistance he also caused female emblems to be engraved on the pillars. "So he passed from Asia into Europe, and reduced the Scythians and Thracians. Beyond these the Egyptian army did not, in my opinion, pass; for in the country of the Thracians the pillars of Sesostris are found, but not farther. The greater number of these pillars are no longer in existence; yet in Syrian Palestine I have myself seen them with the inscriptions and emblems. In Ionia also there are two images of this king hewn in the rock, one on the way from Ephesus to Phocæa, the other on the way from Sardis to Smyrna. At both places there is the figure of a man, 4½ cubits high, with a spear in the right hand and a bow in the left, armed partly as an Egyptian and partly as an Ethiopian. Across the breast, from one shoulder to the other, run Egyptian sacred letters, saying: 'I have conquered this land with my arms.' Who he is and from whence he comes, Sesostris does not tell us here, but on the other pillars. When Sesostris returned, he brought with him many prisoners from the tribes, and his brother, to whom Sesostris had entrusted Egypt, gave him a hospitable reception at Pelusium. But round the house in which Sesostris was with his wife and children he caused wood to be heaped, and set on fire. Then the queen cried out to Sesostris to take two of her six sons, throw them on the burning wood, and pass over their bodies as over a bridge. This