Somewhat in advance of these temple-palaces of the two Rameses, stand on the cultivated plain the two great colossi of Thebes. The space between them is sufficient for a road or street. The easternmost of the pair is the celebrated vocal Memnon of antiquity. It is covered with Roman inscriptions placed upon it by travellers, who were desirous of leaving behind them a record of the fact, that they had not been disappointed in hearing the sound. That was an age when the love of the marvellous, combined with ignorance of what nature could, and could not, do, prepared, and predisposed men, for being deceived. There can be no doubt how the sound was produced. There is in the lap of the seated figure an excavation in which a priest was concealed, who, when the moment had arrived, struck a stone in the figure, of a kind which rang like brass. The Arabs now climb into the lap in a few seconds, and will for a piastre produce the sound for you at any hour of the twenty-four you please. The Emperor Hadrian heard three emissions of the sound on the morning he went to listen. This is a compliment we are not surprised to find the statue paid to the ruler of the world. This colossus was erected by Amunoph III., a name which, by an easy corruption, the Greeks transformed into Memnon, just as they changed Chufu into Cheops, Amenemha into Mœris, and Sethos into Sesostris. Behind these colossi stood a temple which had been erected by the same Amunoph. Nothing now remains of this temple but its rubbish heap, and its foundations. It was, however, once connected, architecturally, with the temple he had built at Luxor, on the other side of the river. The street that connected them was called Street Royal. This was the line Sethos, and the two Rameses, must always have taken, in going from their palaces on the western bank to Luxor and Karnak on the eastern side. It must have been about three miles in length. The line of this Royal Street is marked by the two still standing colossi. The fragments of a few others have been found. Those that remain are sixty feet in height. This must have been a grand street, with the two temples at its two ends, and part of it, at all events, consisting of a dromos of such figures.