We may now return from these very interesting facts, to others on a far larger scale. Near the Kom-el-Hett’an, or the mound of sandstone, which makes the site of one of the palaces and temples of Amunoph III., are two sitting colossi, which seem to assert the grandeur of ancient Thebes. The easternmost of the two is doubtless the statue reported by ancient authors to utter a sound at the rising of the sun. It was said to resemble the breaking of a metallic ring, or harp-string. The superstition of its Roman visitors ascribed the colossus to Memnon, and a multitude of inscriptions attributed to him miraculous powers. The memory of its daily performance is still retained in the traditional appellation of Salamat, “salutations,” by the modern inhabitants of Thebes. It is said to have “saluted” the emperor Adrian and his queen Sabina twice; but some persons, of course of humble rank, were disappointed on their first visit, and obliged to return another morning to satisfy their curiosity. And yet there is ample reason to believe that the whole was an artifice of the priests. In the lap of the statue is a stone; and as sir Gardiner Wilkinson discovered, on examining the inscriptions, that one Ballilla had compared the sound the stone emitted, when struck, to the striking of brass, he determined to put the matter to the test. Accordingly, posting some peasants below, and ascending to the lap of the statue, he struck the sonorous block with a small hammer, and inquiring what was heard by the peasants, they answered, “You are striking brass.” “This,” says sir Gardiner, “convinced me that the sound was the sound that deceived the Romans, and led Strabo to observe that it appeared to him as the effect of a slight blow.” “The Theban priests,” he adds, “must have been considerable gainers by the credulity of those who visited their _lion_.” The reader who may have taken the delightful walk from Tunbridge Wells to the High Rocks, and examined particularly those huge masses, will not fail to remember the one called “the Bell Rock.” On entering the space between this one and the next, it may be struck with a stick, when a sound will be heard like that produced, on a large metallic body being smitten.