MEM'NON i Lat., from Gk. .31/proc). In Greek legend. a son of Tithonus and Ens (the dawn), King of the Ethiopians, who led an army fa aid Priam. King of Troy. Clad in armor made by Ilepluestus (or Vulean). he made great slaughter among the Greeks. and finally killed A to ilochus. who was defending his father, Nestor. Over the body of Antilochus he net Achilles and fell before him. Ilis mother obtained from Zeus his immortality. and his body, lir, in another story, his ashes were carried to his native coun try. The river Paphlagonins was said to flow blood yearly on the anniversary of his death. Ilk comrades were changed to birds. and it was said they returned yeFtrly from the south and fought around the funeral mound erected for their leader at Troy. In the o.arlier writers Alennion leads hi. fore', from the extreme East, or Assyria : later the native land was sought in Syria. and not earlier than t111. end of the fifth century tt.c. leas it localized in Egypt and _Ethiopia. Memnonia were said to exist at Susa in Persia, and at \bydos and in Egypt. Indeed. in holemnie tines the west hank of the Nile at Thebes was the Meninonium, as the east was Diospolis. Near by are Iwo colossal statues of King Amenhotep III. of the Eighteenth Dynasty. the southern one of which was said to give forth n sound when struck by the rays of the rising sun.
a sound probably doe to the smblen expansion of the sandstone eonolomerate from which the statue is hewn. Strata. 1c.20 loeg not mention the name of Memnon in deserihing this phenomenon. but early in the first century of our era the story gained that the statue represented 'Memnon, who thus greeted his mother in the morning. From the time of the Flavian emperors to that of Septimius Sevens, the world seems to have been fond of visiting this place, and the sides of the figure arc covered with names and verses referring to the legend. Among the visitors were Iladrian and his wife, Sabina, in A,o, l30, At some time before Strabo's visit, the upper part of the statue had been overthrown by an earthquake (popular tradition said by Cam byses), and when it was rebuilt by Severus the sounds ceased.
In art the combat of 'Memnon and Achilles in presence of Eos and Thetis, and the removal of the body of Aleinnon by his mother or by sleep and death, were favorite with the Attic vase painters. Consult: Jacobs, Ueber die Grata.). des Memnon (1;00) ; Thirlwall, in Philo logical Museum (Cambridge. 1832) ; Letronne, statue vocale de .Memnon," in .1/('Inoires de l'Institut Royal de France ( Paris, 1833) ; Cur zon, in Edinburgh Reriere (1886).