WEIUNON, a celebrated hero, the son of Tithonus and E06 or Aurora, who led to Troy a host of /Ethiopians, to support the cause of Troy after the fall of Hector. He was said to be clad in armor made by Hephtestus or Vulcan, and killed Antiloehus, son of Nestor, in single combat. He was killed in single combat with Ajax or Achilles. Others suppose he wa_s ruler of the nations betweeen Susa and Troy, or a vassal of the Assyrian monarch Teutarnus, who sent him. with 10,000 /Ethiopians, and as many Susians, to the 'Trojan war. After his death, his corpse was carried by Aurora to Susa, and buried in the acropolis of that town, Memnoneia; or his ashes, collected in a silver urn, borne to• his sister Himera at Paphos, and thence to Palliochis or Paltos; or to the banks of the I3elos, near Ptolemais. The river Paphlaffonios flowed from his blood, and his compan ions were changed into birds. But the6Memnon of the older writers obtained a still _greater renown by the name being transferred at a later period by the Greeks to a cele brated colossus, seated in the plains of Thebes, on the left or west bank of the Nile; while the name of Memnoneia was applied by the Egyptian Greeks to the sepulchral quarter of Thebes, as Diospolis was to the right or east bank. 3Iemnoneia, or supposed palaces of Memnon, also existed at Abydos. The two statnes—one of which is the celebrated vocal Memnon, one of the wonders of the old world—are at a place called Koum-el-Sultan. Both arc seated on thrones, and represent the monarch Amenophis III., -of the 18th dynasty, whose name and titles are inscribed on the plinths behind. At the sides of the throne are sculptured the wife and mother of the monarch, about 18 ft. high. The height of each of these colossi appears to have originally been 60 ft., and ,they are made of a coarse hard gritstone or breccia. They are at present known by the -sobriquets of Tammy and Shammy, and were originally placed before the propylon of .an.Amenopheion or palace-temple of Amenophis III. in this quarter at Thebes. The -easternmost of these colossi is the celebrated vocal statue, distinguished from its com panion by having been anciently broken and repaired from the lap upwards with blocks of sandstone, placed horizontally, in five layers. The statue was either injured by
Cambyses, to whom the Egyptian priests ascribed most of the mutilations of the Theban temples, or else thrown down by an earthquake. The peculiar characteristic of this -statue was its giving out at various times a sound resembling the breaking of a harp :string or a metallic ring; and considerable difference of opinion has prevailed as to the reason of this sound, which has been heard in rnodern times, it being ascribed to the lutifice of the priests, who struck the sonorous stone of which the statue is composed, the passage of light draughts of air through the cra,cks, or the sudden expansion of aque ous particles under the influence of the sun's rays. This remarkable quality of the statue is first mentioned by Strabo, who visited it iu company of .rElius Gallus, about 18 B.C. ; and upwards of 100 inscriptions of Greek and Roman visitors incised upon its legs, record the visits of ancient travelers to witness the phenomenon, from the 9th year of Nero, 63 A.D., to the reign of the emperor Severus, when it became silent. Amongst other visitors whose names are recorded are those of thz emperor Hadrian and his wife Sabina; Septimius Severus also visited the statue, and is conjectured to have restored it; for Juvenal rnentions it as broken in half, and no notice of it occurs under the Pharaohs or Ptolemies The identity of this statue and of -Memnon is mentioned in the gloss upon Manetho, and by Pausanias and the inscriptions.—Besides the niythieal Memnon, two historical personages of this name are known—one a Rhodian commander of tbe mercenaries of ArtabaZus in the war against Artaxerxes-Ochus, who subsequently fled to Macedon, and afterwards entering the Persian service, defended Persia against Alexander, 336 B.c.; but finally died at the siege of Mitylene, 333 B.C. the other, a Greek historian, who wrote a historv of Heraclea Pontica, iu 16 books, which have been epitomized by Photius—Welcker, kpisch. Cycl. 211; Strabo, xv. 728, xvii. 816; /Elian, H. A., v. 1; Jacobs, Die Grcseber des Memnon- Euschius, fileron, p. 154; Juvenal, xv. b; Letronne, Sur le Mon. d'Osymandyas; Wilkinson, Top. of Thebes, p. 33; Vossius, De Hist. Grcec. diVestermann, p. 226; Diodor. xvi. 52.