Zeus

made him immortal; Pallas gathered his ashes at Paphos in Cyprus. His tomb was shown on the Belus river near ’Akka in Palestine. Héphaistos made “ bright armour and a magic sword ” for Memnon, and all wept his death, while from his funeral pile birds (or souls) flew out, but fell back again after fighting each other. Virgil (4’n., i, 493) speaks of “the weapons of black Memnon,” and in Egypt no doubt his statues were of black basalt. The Memnon statue at Luxor was said to utter a note at sunrise, which has been supposed to have been due to the sudden heating of the stone by the rays of the rising sun: but after Septimus Severus repaired the statue about 196 A.c. it ceased to be a “ vocal Memnon” (see Prof. Goldziher, Academy, 6th November 1886). ‘There was a sacred pillar in the Arabian mosk at Taif which gave a Nakid, or “ note,” when the sun rose, and another at Askalon. The Jews in Arabia also said that the Statues in the castle of Ghumdan roared like lions when the wind blew on them. In the Arab romance of ‘Antar, which preserves many folk legends, we read of the hero who encamped “ near a mountain— one of the wonders of the world, from which black clouds and smoke rise, summer and winter; and that when the new moon rises it at once utters a cry, like that of a mother bereaved of her children.” The name Memnon may be connected with that of Agamemnon. Memphis. An ancient capital of Egypt S. of Cairo, near the mouth of the Nile before the formation of its delta. The name is thought to have been originally Men-nofr, or “ Fair-haven” as the Greeks understood it. The whole nome or district was sacred to the triad of Osiris with his son and his wife. 549