[95] Salamât “the greetings” are they called by earlier travellers. The proper pronunciation and meaning was first remarked to me by our intelligent old guide, Ἀuad. The Arabs are for confounding them, as [Illustration: Arabic] _salâm_, _salus_, is pronounced with the dental _sin_, [Illustration: Arabic] _s’anam_, _idolum_, with the lingual _sâd_. The plural, which is usually [Illustration: Arabic] _as’nam_, here takes the feminine form [Illustration: Arabic] _s’anamât_. That they were male figures had long since been indistinguishable from the battered heads. The stone of which the statues are formed is a peculiarly hard quartz brittle sandstone conglomerate, looking glazed, and with innumerable cracks. The frequent bursting of little particles of stone at sunrise, when the changes of temperature are most sudden, caused, according to my idea, the celebrated Memnon sounds, which were compared with the breaking of a violin string. [96] [Herodotus II. c.c. 121-122.--K.R.H.M.] [97] This King Ai was formerly a private individual, and took his sacerdotal title into his royal cartouche at a later period. He appears with his wife in the tombs of Amarna, not unfrequently as a noble and peculiarly honoured officer of King Amenophis IV., that puritanical sun-worshipper, who changed his name into that of Bech-en-aten. [98] The above dimensions are here taken from Wilkinson’s Modern Egypt and Thebes, vol. ii. p. 220. [99] [For an excellent description of such retreats, _vide_ Floss, _Quæstiones Criticæ de Macaris_, cap. i. § 1. _Coloniæ, Heberle_, MDCCCL.--K.R.H.M.] [100] Apuleii Asclepius, dialogue Hermetis Trismegisti, c. 24. [101] When I wrote the above, I did not think that the crime would be so soon avenged. See Letter XXXV. p. 372. [102] I have since learnt (_Rev. Arch._, vol. iv. p. 32,) that M. Ampère had been expressly sent to Egypt, by the Paris Academy, to copy the bilingual inscription at Philae, to which I had turned attention in my Letters. See Letter XV. p. 120, and note. Of the impression brought back to Paris, in which, however, the beginnings of the Demotic lines, and the date of the decree are wanting, the very diminished representation of Demotic text is taken, which M. de Saulcy has published in the _Revue Archéologique_. [103] [In Bunsen’s list of Determinatives, No. 5. I quote his description “Disk diffusing rays of light; light, as _sti_, a sunbeam, (sun’s ray); _ht_, daylight; _ubn_, to illuminate; _mau_, to gleam; _ui_, brilliancy; _hai_, light; _am_, a beam.” Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place, vol. i. p. 537.--Since writing the foregoing note in the first edition, I have read the Rev. Charles Forster’s Monuments of Egypt, and I find that he attempts to identify this royal sign with a grain of millet, “with its stamina and antheræ developed,” assigning for its pronunciation the word “pschent.” I forbear criticism upon this “discovery,” only referring the reader to p. 54 of the second part of the Primæval Language.--K. R. H. M.]