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159 Memnon. 159 barrow. Hence it appears that according to all analogy Memnon must be admitted into the ranks of the Egyptian and Ethiopian gods. His graves are his sanctuaries, and his palaces are like many in Egypt, which were mansions not of the living but of the dead. Foreign as such buildings are to our usages and notions, they were familiar to those of the Egyptians, in whose eyes life had no import but that of a transition into the realm of death. Hence the magnificence of the sepulchral palace of Osymandyas ; and the Labyrinth was destined to a similar purpose. We meet with instances of the same usage in other parts of the East. The temple of Belus was sometimes called his palace, some- times his grave. Semiramis buried Ninus in her palace (Diodor. ii. 7) ; and Persepolis was at once the residence and the burialplace of the Persian kings : such therefore we may conclude was the character of the Asiatic Memnonia. I am conscious that this slight sketch has not done full justice to the arguments of a writer who is no less distin- guished by his eloquence than by his learning : yet I hope it will have enabled the reader to understand and enter into his opinions. I must now proceed to assign some reasons which prevent me from assenting to his hypothesis, and lead me to prefer a different view of the subject. The sum of his reasoning amounts to this : the supposition that the Greek legend of Memnon was founded on a historical basis leaves the most essential of its features, the death of the hero, and the rites with which he was honoured, wholly unexplained ; whereas the hypothesis just stated accounts satisfactorily for these and all the other circumstances of the case. I shall first say why I am not satisfied with this explanation, and shall then attempt to shew that the one I adopt is consistent with all the conditions of the question. And in the first place I must express my doubts as to the extent which Mr Jacobs attributes to the worship of the Ethiopian god or hero in Asia, as indicated by the Memnonia. Instead of presuming that these monuments once existed in far greater numbers than the fragments of ancient history disclose to us, I am inclined to suspect that we hear of more than ever existed. I collect from a passage in Mr J.'s essay that Jablonski entertained the same opinion : but as