A Question For Cecil Himself: The Secret Of The Vocal Memnon?

Factual Questions
1

Dear Sage of the Age,

I post this in the hope that you can resolve an ancient mystery.

In Avram Davidson’s interesting book, “Adventures In Unhistory”, he give passing mention of a mysterious statue, the Vocal Memnon, which allegedly emitted a mysterious sound, by unknown means. The statue is purportedly standing today, covered in the ancient, centuries-old, graffitti of people who actually heard it make these uncanny noises!

Can you tell us the Secret of the Vocal Memnon? And some background on it? What is the true Straight Dope?
yours,

Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor

2

One suggested explanation. (Note that the engineer in question is more usually known as Hero of Alexandria.)

The standard explanation is that it was the sound of the stone expanding as the temperatures rose and that the effect was inadvertently ruined when Septimus Severus had the statue restored.

3

I have an old (written in the '30s) book of essays attempting to explain such things (sea monsters and a few other things of that nature are also included) with a chapter devoted to the colossus of Mamnon. Alas, I can’t find the book right now, but here’s a summary:

It’s one of a pair of ancient statues in Egypt, in the form of a seated person (Pharaoh Amenhotep III); one made from a single piece of stone and does not make noise; the “vocal” one is built in three pieces stacked on top of each other. The uppermost block has a large crack in it. It made a sound somewhat like that of a large bell. It made the noise very infrequently (only every 200 years or so; it hasn’t in quite some time) and irregularly, and only at sunrise.

The author’s conclusion was that it was either pranksters inside the statue, or a shifting of the pieces of the broken block against one another due to expansion as they warm up in the sun.

4

I tried to e-mail Cecil, but it got sent back to me. :frowning:

AOL isn’t letting messages from hotmaik through. :mad:

5

Perhaps you should get a free hotmail or yahoo account for yourself? (Personally, I hope Cecil answers this question)

6

To clairfy–I have a Hotmail account.

The “Ask Cecil” e-mail addy is AOL.

AOL won’t take Hotmail messages.

7

Over a period of centuries various descriptions were given of the sound emitted by the statue, suggesting that it was gradually changing over time. It was said that the sound would be a daily event around dawn. Both of these points reinforce the impression that the noise was made by warming air escaping through a crevice, somewhat in the way that air can whistle out of a tea kettle.

While I don’t have a cite handy, this information is from an old collection of essays on Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not type subjects. I suspect it may be the same book from the 1930s mentioned by a previous poster.