A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and ...

282 THE VOCAL MEMNON.
fabulous attributes of which have been sung and
cited by the poets and sages of antiquity, and
are worthy of the beautiful inventions which
invest even the grosser portions of the Greek
mythology with such a poetical charm. The so-
called Memnon, how^ever, is, according to Sir
Gardner Wilkinson, the Pharaoh Amunoph the
Third ; and its stupendous companion is, in all
probability, his brother, who reigned at the same
time with himself; but the latter supposition is
merely a conjecture of my own. The Vocal
Statue, silent now as the Desert in w^hich it
stands, has been so defaced that not a feature
has escaped the general destruction ; yet the
outline of the figure remains uninjured, and in
its calm majesty is imposing beyond the power
of words to convey. The lower part of the statue
is hewn out of one block of sandstone ; and the
legs still bear the ancient Greek inscriptions, that
testify to monarchs, and men of science from
distant lands, having heard those musical sounds
which caused the statue to receive its name.
The upper part is composed of five layers of
stone in blocks, cemented together as in the
walls of an edifice : and this singular difference
between the two parts would appear to bear out
the supposition advanced by some authors that