Speaker 1: These stones alas these gray stones. Are they all, all
Speaker 1: of the famed and the colossal, left by the corrosive
Speaker 1: hours to fate and me? Not all the echoes answer me?
Speaker 1: Not all prophetic sounds and loud arise forever from us
Speaker 1: and from all ruin unto the wise, as melody, from
Speaker 1: mem Non to the sun. Welcome to stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your mind from How Stuff Works dot Com. Hey you
Speaker 1: welcome to stuff to blow your mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about stones that sing, and we'll sing the
Speaker 1: phrases of stones that talk and sing. That's right. And
Speaker 1: we started things off here with an expert from Edgar
Speaker 1: Allan Poe's poem The Colosseum, which directly mentions the Colossi
Speaker 1: of Memnon, which which is the prime thing we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about today. These these two statues, these two
Speaker 1: stone coloss i, one toppled and then rebuilt, and then
Speaker 1: another that still stands the test of time. And one
Speaker 1: of them, the toppled colossus, is said to have emitted sounds,
Speaker 1: at least in ancient times. I love the idea that
Speaker 1: posts as all ruins must sing. Really, yeah, because they
Speaker 1: kind of do. Ruins are Why do we love ruins
Speaker 1: so much? We actually talked about this in another episode recently.
Speaker 1: Uh they seem to suggest something about the folly of
Speaker 1: human civilization. Yeah, I mean which that that's of course
Speaker 1: brings us to to Shelley's Osa Ma Andiez, which it
Speaker 1: is said was also at least partially inspired by these
Speaker 1: particular ruins. Right, look on my work, see Mighty and Despair,
Speaker 1: which which takes on a meaning different than the king
Speaker 1: originally meant. Right, So he's saying, look on my work,
Speaker 1: see Mighty and Despair, and you would despair because he's
Speaker 1: so powerful and he's gonna bash your head in if
Speaker 1: resist him. But of course we should look on his
Speaker 1: works in despair because now there's not much left except
Speaker 1: the loan and level sands stretching far away. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: cannot help but be enthralled by ancient ruins. And the
Speaker 1: thing is this was true in ancient times as well,
Speaker 1: because during classical Antiquity, UH, tourists such as tourists from
Speaker 1: throughout the Roman Empire would visit to the ruins of
Speaker 1: Thebes in Egypt, which was already ancient even in their time.
Speaker 1: This is something we've touched on before about ancient Egypt.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like that fact about dinosaurs where you know,
Speaker 1: more time separates like the stegosaurus from the Tyrannosaurus rex
Speaker 1: than separates us from the Tyrannosaurus rex. Uh. If you
Speaker 1: were to go back to ancient Rome, there was stuff
Speaker 1: from ancient Egypt that was older to them than ancient
Speaker 1: Rome is old to us. Yeah. It's it's mind boggling
Speaker 1: to think about, isn't it that these people who are
Speaker 1: ancient to us Day's gaze back in time at an
Speaker 1: even more ancient people that were just as ancient to them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean on the scale of Egyptian civilization, ancient Rome
Speaker 1: is fairly modern. Yeah, right down to the disrespectful tourist graffiti, right.
Speaker 1: Because the Roman tourists, when they would they would come
Speaker 1: out and they would look at the the two stone
Speaker 1: Colossa or the Syringes as they would also call them.
Speaker 1: They would make little notes on the base of the
Speaker 1: fallen colossus describing what they saw and or heard, uh
Speaker 1: maybe even who they were and when they visited. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like a an ancient trip Advisor page. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we can talk more about those inscriptions later because
Speaker 1: they tell us interesting things about the history of the
Speaker 1: statue or the statues and how people experience them. But so,
Speaker 1: what what are these colossi, the colossi of Memnon that
Speaker 1: we're going to be focusing today. Primarily they are what
Speaker 1: remains of the Great Temple of m in Office the
Speaker 1: Third or m and Hotep the Third, who was a
Speaker 1: pharaoh of Egypt in the fourteenth injury b c. That's right,
Speaker 1: And there's a there's at least one level of misinterpretation
Speaker 1: that gets thrown on top of of these ruins as
Speaker 1: well discussed. But why we're talking about them today, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously we love any chance to talk about ancient ruins
Speaker 1: and and uh and in olden times. But there's a mystery.
Speaker 1: There's a mystery here, yes, and that in the mystery
Speaker 1: here is that for a period of time, uh mere
Speaker 1: centuries really, in the longer lifespan of these uh, these
Speaker 1: two statues, they were said to speak or to Emit
Speaker 1: sounds that is often described as like the cracking the
Speaker 1: breaking of a liars string. Sometimes people allude to it
Speaker 1: as more of a voice. But everyone seemed to view
Speaker 1: these more or less as some sort of a natural
Speaker 1: phenomenon that was taking place. I've read it described as
Speaker 1: a harp, or as a twang, or as a breaking string.
Speaker 1: Uh so, yeah, very interesting. Why now that that would
Speaker 1: be different if we were reading reports from the ancient
Speaker 1: world that people went to, say, a statue of a
Speaker 1: ruin of a statue in ancient Egypt, and that it
Speaker 1: told them what to do, right, right, they have some
Speaker 1: sort of an oracle, right, then we would start to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: these people may be listening to I don't know, wind
Speaker 1: sweeping over the sand and think they hear something. There
Speaker 1: may be a bit of paradolia going on, their auditory paradolia,
Speaker 1: or they might just be hallucinating. But no, these are
Speaker 1: sounds that are described as sort of mechanical sounds, and
Speaker 1: they're described in a very lucid way that seems to
Speaker 1: indicate there really was probably some sound coming out of
Speaker 1: the statues. We're not just getting like embellished stories of
Speaker 1: people having a rapturous experience. Yeah, there's a sense that
Speaker 1: this is a curiosity, that this is um you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's like, oh, this this statue is emitting a
Speaker 1: sound and it's the darndest thing. It's not a matter
Speaker 1: of the gods are speaking through it, at least not
Speaker 1: in a literal sense tho. Though though some historians doom
Speaker 1: have some fun with the sort of mythological ramifications of this,
Speaker 1: right that gets laid on it. But there is enough
Speaker 1: reporting of the straightforward character of the sound that it
Speaker 1: does seem like these statues probably just made some sort
Speaker 1: of sound. So what was the sound? Uh, that's what
Speaker 1: we're going to be exploring today, and we are going
Speaker 1: to be referring to a couple of key resources, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. So the first, and i'd say really the
Speaker 1: main source here is Miracle of Memnon, and this is
Speaker 1: by G. W. Bauer Sock, published in the Bulletin of
Speaker 1: the American Society of Paparologist nineteen eighty four. And then
Speaker 1: we also refer to Memon the Vocal Statue by Massimo Patirino,
Speaker 1: published in the International Phonetic Association. That was a little
Speaker 1: more conspiratorial, but we can get into that later. But yeah,
Speaker 1: before we get into the theories about the sound, the
Speaker 1: origin of the sound, we should talk about the origin
Speaker 1: of the class eye themselves. Like we said, there are
Speaker 1: these two great statues, and we mentioned they were built
Speaker 1: by this pharaoh I'm in office or m and Hotep
Speaker 1: the third. That's right. He was a powerful ruler, and
Speaker 1: it's it's said that his excess served as a catalyst
Speaker 1: for the cultural revolution that that followed him, posed by
Speaker 1: his son and successor, Kinnaton, who many of you might remember.
Speaker 1: He's best remembered for abandoning the polytheistic religion of the
Speaker 1: past in favor of the monotheistic worship of the Sun
Speaker 1: disc Otten, and then of course after after his death,
Speaker 1: the worship of Otten was was then abandoned in favor
Speaker 1: of the polytheistic model that was previously established. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't think his model quite caught on right, But you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes you got to rebel against your your your parental
Speaker 1: units and and make a statement. Here's a question, just generally,
Speaker 1: do you think it's harder to by force impose monotheism
Speaker 1: on a polytheistic culture or by force impose polytheism on
Speaker 1: a monotheistic culture. Well, you would think, I mean, just
Speaker 1: off off the hip, I would say that it would
Speaker 1: be easier to impose monotheism on poly is it seems
Speaker 1: like it's gone that way more often yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean clearly it didn't. It didn't take in this case. Granted,
Speaker 1: there's more employ here than merely h getting a bunch
Speaker 1: of people into a room and just sort of testing
Speaker 1: their opinions on different um models of religion. But I mean, basically,
Speaker 1: on on one hand, you could you would be making
Speaker 1: an argument that say, hey, actually this one guy do
Speaker 1: you all believe in? Well, actually there are many different
Speaker 1: avatars with this god, and I can see that working.
Speaker 1: And then the other argument is, hey, all these gods
Speaker 1: that you believe in, well, actually they're one god and
Speaker 1: you're just looking at different faces of the one true
Speaker 1: Being or something to that effect. Right, So, if you're
Speaker 1: a king like Akat and then you want to impose
Speaker 1: a new paradigm for the religious views of your country,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of theological wiggle room for you to
Speaker 1: play with. It's not just like stop believing in that.
Speaker 1: Believe in this now, yeah, I mean, if if you
Speaker 1: if you do it right, right. But but anyway, like
Speaker 1: we said, this change did not really take. But but
Speaker 1: but let's get back to I'm Inhotep the third again.
Speaker 1: He was a powerful ruler. He made powerful statements in
Speaker 1: the way that ancient Egyptian rulers did, made statues, made temples,
Speaker 1: created these works of stone, and a lot of times
Speaker 1: when you look at the rulers of the ancient world
Speaker 1: building all these monuments, you know, to their own glory
Speaker 1: and to themselves, it can look kind of ostentatious to us.
Speaker 1: But another and I mean it probably would be fair
Speaker 1: to say it is kind of ostentatious. But on the
Speaker 1: other side, people have pointed out that the rule of
Speaker 1: Amenhotep the Third was a period of like cultural flowering
Speaker 1: in Egypt where it was sort of like the peak
Speaker 1: of artistic achievement in ancient Egypt. Yeah, so you can
Speaker 1: see why Houghton wouldn't really take off, right because everybody
Speaker 1: was probably in love with the with with with the
Speaker 1: previous ruler and in the world he'd created. So it
Speaker 1: was kind of a golden age, right, And part of
Speaker 1: that golden age is the design of this temple for
Speaker 1: Amenhotep the Third on the west side of the Nile,
Speaker 1: all around Thebes, and this is now the temple where
Speaker 1: these these statues are what's left these statues now known
Speaker 1: as the Colossi of Memnon. Now, of course they're not
Speaker 1: statues of Memnon. We'll get into who Memnon is in
Speaker 1: a minute. They are statues of the Pharaoh. I'm in Hotep,
Speaker 1: the third right, that's right, So let's let's just describe
Speaker 1: them a little bit. The landing page for this episode
Speaker 1: is stuff to Blow your Mind. Dot Com should feature
Speaker 1: a prominent image too, if I can make it work.
Speaker 1: But but there are plenty of paintings, illustrations and photographs
Speaker 1: of these statues. So each one is roughly sixteen meters
Speaker 1: high or fifty two ft uh. And they are both
Speaker 1: represent seated humans with large heads. But there there's a
Speaker 1: key difference between the two. So the southern or left statue,
Speaker 1: this one survives as a single block of sandstone. This statue,
Speaker 1: though clearly ancient, is still in one piece. But then
Speaker 1: the north were there in a right statue. This is
Speaker 1: where he gets interesting. From the waist upward. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you look at it today, it's been hastily restored with
Speaker 1: rough stone cuttings topped with the original head. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like it fell apart from the waist up and
Speaker 1: then somebody put it back together with just like some
Speaker 1: blocks and then stuck ahead on it. Right. I've actually
Speaker 1: seen video and One of the funny things about it
Speaker 1: is because it has this block construction. Now there are
Speaker 1: all these gaps in it, and so I've seen videos
Speaker 1: of of people visiting these statues in modern times, and
Speaker 1: there will be birds living in the colossi of Memnon
Speaker 1: in the the statue that's broken, the right statue. So
Speaker 1: it's got these gaps in it, and birds are just
Speaker 1: nesting in them and flying in and out all the time.
Speaker 1: It's pretty funny. Now. In earlier times, the top half
Speaker 1: would have been just toppled ruins with the head and
Speaker 1: other pieces strewn out on the ground beside it. And
Speaker 1: we mentioned all that ancient graffiti on them, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the eggs here on the toppled statue are inscribed with
Speaker 1: ancient graffiti one hundred and seven texts, but I've also
Speaker 1: read a hundred and eight. Uh. Basically, it gets into
Speaker 1: a sort of a contest of determining how many you
Speaker 1: can actually decipher and uh and and and point out
Speaker 1: as individual inscriptions. Sixty one of them are in Greek,
Speaker 1: roughly forty five of them are in Latin, and there's
Speaker 1: apparently one that's a bilingual inscription. And these inscriptions are
Speaker 1: from the first three hundred years of the Common Era,
Speaker 1: and they were inscribed by ancient tourists, and these would
Speaker 1: have been tourists of the Roman Empire or at least
Speaker 1: of the Roman Imperial period. Yeah. I can often see
Speaker 1: tourists going to ancient landmarks today and think that it's
Speaker 1: kind of gross, like the behavior that display you know,
Speaker 1: do do in the selfies and all that. I don't
Speaker 1: want to criticize selfies too much, but you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: at least selfies don't damage you know, the physical structure exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so tourists in the ancient world, we're actually much worse
Speaker 1: than we are today. They were trying to take pieces
Speaker 1: off of things and writing their name on things all
Speaker 1: the time. Yeah, that was pretty brutal, it is. But
Speaker 1: but as well discuss it did seem to take a
Speaker 1: while to get going, and they didn't necessarily seem to
Speaker 1: be in the regular practice of doing this sort of thing. Though.
Speaker 1: Of course, there are plenty of examples of graffiti, uh
Speaker 1: from the Roman Empire, so it's not like someone invented
Speaker 1: graffiti at this point. But uh, it's certainly the graffiti
Speaker 1: on them non picks up over time. Now. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing again, is that we can look at these inscriptions though,
Speaker 1: and and and gain intel about what they saw when
Speaker 1: they visited it. Right, So did they say I came
Speaker 1: here in whatever year the reign of Caesar whatever, and
Speaker 1: aliens were helping build structures. Well, no, not nothing on
Speaker 1: that scale, but they would give you know a time
Speaker 1: their name. Uh. And then the inscriptions also they give
Speaker 1: us an idea of what state the statue was in.
Speaker 1: They mentioned that the northern statue is missing, it's for half.
Speaker 1: And they also identified the statue as a likeness of
Speaker 1: the Greek mythological figure Ethiopian king and uh Homeric hero Memnon. Right,
Speaker 1: so this is how we get to the classical name
Speaker 1: of the statue, the Colossi of Memnon, even though it's
Speaker 1: not supposed to be statues of Memnon. So who was
Speaker 1: this Memnon in Greek myth? Well, he was actually supposed
Speaker 1: to be the son of Aos, the goddess of Dawn,
Speaker 1: and Tithanus, a Trojan prince. And in this classic legend,
Speaker 1: Aos the goddess falls in love with this mortal man Tithanus,
Speaker 1: but she realizes, oh he's a mortal man. He's going
Speaker 1: to die one day, and she weeps because that would
Speaker 1: be so horrible, and she moves Zeus with her tears,
Speaker 1: and Zeus very unfortunately grants Tiffannus the gift of eternal life,
Speaker 1: but without the accompanying gift of eternal youth. Yes, that
Speaker 1: is a that is a bad stu. But before the
Speaker 1: situation gets too bad, and does it get real bad,
Speaker 1: the two of them have a son. So the goddess
Speaker 1: of Dawn Aios and the the now immortal former man Tiffanius,
Speaker 1: they have a son, Memnon, who is the king of
Speaker 1: the Ethiopians, and he comes to fight in the Trojan War,
Speaker 1: only to get killed by Achilles and then granted immortality
Speaker 1: by Zeus again because of the tears of his mother Aios. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, if you're gonna die in the Aliad
Speaker 1: or or in the Trojan War in general, being slain
Speaker 1: by Achilles not a bad way to go. A lot
Speaker 1: of people went that way. Yeah, I I was looking
Speaker 1: this up just for fun. Uh So, if if you
Speaker 1: look at just the Aliad, and you just look at
Speaker 1: at named characters that are killed within the Aliad, then
Speaker 1: Achilles has a kill count of about twenty four four
Speaker 1: confirmed kills and named characters, right, right, and and that's
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. I do have to point out that
Speaker 1: Patroclus uh Achilles's friend or possible lover depending on the interpretation,
Speaker 1: and Odysseus, our hero, they both have high kill counts
Speaker 1: as well. And Odysseus's kill count is actually higher as
Speaker 1: one might expect. He's kind of the star. Odysseus is sneaky,
Speaker 1: he's cunning. So the ancient Roman tourists they referred to
Speaker 1: this these statues as as mim Noon. They associated them
Speaker 1: with this figure of Memnon right, because there was a
Speaker 1: there was a strong influence of Hellenistic culture throughout the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire and much it was often referred to in
Speaker 1: many ways as sort of like the Greek world or
Speaker 1: the Greek speaking world, even while Rome was in power, right.
Speaker 1: And then they also had other ideas about the history
Speaker 1: of the statute. For instance, they attributed it they attributed
Speaker 1: it its partial destruction to the invasion of Canvasses the
Speaker 1: second of the Acumenid or First Persian Empire. As to
Speaker 1: what actually caused the destruction, we can revisit that in
Speaker 1: a bit right right now. But the most important thing
Speaker 1: really for our purposes here is again, not that they
Speaker 1: just said who they were or when they visited these statues.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what they called them, how they misinterpreted
Speaker 1: the past. It's about the sounds that they described. Again,
Speaker 1: the this the sound of a breaking of a liar stream,
Speaker 1: of a vocal sound, or even a crackle. And I
Speaker 1: do have to say it does play nicely into this
Speaker 1: idea of Memnon though, right, because Memnon's mother is the dawn,
Speaker 1: and so many of these inscriptions are certainly the historical
Speaker 1: text that referred to it. They they they say, when
Speaker 1: you're supposed to hear the crackle or the sound, it
Speaker 1: occurs at dawn. So there's this kind of communication between
Speaker 1: the sun and this statue of allegedly Memnon. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that was one of the ancient interpretations, was that dawn break,
Speaker 1: Aos would come over the horizon and shine her light
Speaker 1: onto this western statue on the western side of the nile,
Speaker 1: and then of course the son of Aos, mem On,
Speaker 1: would sing to his mother. Yeah, but of course he's broken.
Speaker 1: So it just comes out as a kind of a crack,
Speaker 1: all right, because it plays into this idea too, of
Speaker 1: this this fallen thing, this thing that was once great,
Speaker 1: that is now reduced. H But these are of course
Speaker 1: all just sort of uh flavorful interpretations based upon the
Speaker 1: fact that it was making or seem to have been making,
Speaker 1: some sort of sound. All right, well, I think maybe
Speaker 1: we should take a quick break and when we come
Speaker 1: back we can discuss ancient descriptions of the sound the
Speaker 1: statue made and then get into what could have caused it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Alright, we're back, so
Speaker 1: let's discuss uh, the singing and a bit more detail here.
Speaker 1: Bower Stock writes that the inscription tells us that quote often,
Speaker 1: as the sun rose at dawn, the surviving part of
Speaker 1: the colossus would admit a mysterious twanging sound that seemed
Speaker 1: to all who heard it unearthly and unforgettable. It seemed
Speaker 1: as if the god himself were speaking in some way.
Speaker 1: That he should be speaking from the waist down seemed
Speaker 1: not to any particular problem among the viewers, and he
Speaker 1: did not oblige unfailingly every morning. Some visitors, including the
Speaker 1: imperial retinue with Hadrian, had to wait for the miracle
Speaker 1: to occur. Yes, supposedly they went there to hear it,
Speaker 1: and then it didn't happen. The first day, so they
Speaker 1: had to wait around for a while. And I think
Speaker 1: he touches on two details that are very telling here.
Speaker 1: One that a famous person comes to view it and
Speaker 1: they have to wait, which does make it sound like
Speaker 1: it was it was indeed some sort of natural phenomenon
Speaker 1: that could not be depended upon and you just had
Speaker 1: to be patient with it, no matter how powerful you were.
Speaker 1: And then also the fact that it seems like if
Speaker 1: you were making the story up, it would be the
Speaker 1: head of the statue that's right there that would be speaking,
Speaker 1: not essentially like the legs and and groin region of
Speaker 1: the of the broken Titan, right. I mean, there is
Speaker 1: a certain kind of symbolic joy you can get from
Speaker 1: the idea of a god's statue with a talking pelvis,
Speaker 1: But it just doesn't seem like that's what they'd really
Speaker 1: be producing if this was, say, a band of priests
Speaker 1: attempting to uh to trick people into thinking a statue
Speaker 1: made a sound, which is something that some people have proposed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see this as we'll discuss. You see this this
Speaker 1: drift in the narrative as you deal with like second
Speaker 1: and third hand accounts where they basically tweak it, where
Speaker 1: like it'd really be a better story if it was
Speaker 1: the head speaking, etcetera. Okay, so Bowersock, at the time
Speaker 1: he was writing, summarizes what was generally thought about the
Speaker 1: production of the sound in the ancient statue, right, yes,
Speaker 1: and he was. He was also referring to some of
Speaker 1: the writings of philosotrosts who would have lived around roughly
Speaker 1: one seventy through two forty seven CE. But he points
Speaker 1: out that that that we can be fairly sure that
Speaker 1: to what toppled this statue was an earthquake that we
Speaker 1: know occurred in in twenty six b c E. We
Speaker 1: have other historical accounts that reference the earthquake, so everything
Speaker 1: lines up there. But then as far as the earthquake
Speaker 1: damage goes, this is uh. This is the idea that
Speaker 1: that Bowersock touches on quote. The earthquake damage evidently allowed
Speaker 1: air to penetrate well inside the colossus in such a
Speaker 1: way that the sudden warmth of the sun at dawn
Speaker 1: affected a noisy discrepancy between the quickly heated exterior and
Speaker 1: the still cool channels within. The sounding. Colossus was a
Speaker 1: great tourist attraction under the Roman Empire. The Greeks of
Speaker 1: that age identified it with the mythical hero Memnon. At
Speaker 1: the end of the second century, A D. Septimius Severus
Speaker 1: repaired the statue, it is alleged, and thereby silenced it.
Speaker 1: So in this he touches on two really important facts here.
Speaker 1: First of all, a long standing theory as to how
Speaker 1: this sound was emerging from the top old colossus, that
Speaker 1: that it only started after the earthquake, that it only
Speaker 1: started after the earthquake damage. Yes, and then it ended
Speaker 1: after the restoration of the statue. So you got this window,
Speaker 1: this window of the talking statue. It didn't talked before,
Speaker 1: and it didn't talk after, right, doesn't talk now if
Speaker 1: you visit it now that nobody is hearing a sound
Speaker 1: from this uh, this stone. So clearly something happened to it.
Speaker 1: We're pretty sure it was earthquake damage, and it caused
Speaker 1: the stone to to speak, if you will, uh, on
Speaker 1: particular mornings when conditions were just right, and then someone
Speaker 1: came along and restored it and therefore caused the phenomenon
Speaker 1: to to cease forever. So this particular summation Bowersock rides
Speaker 1: popped up in virtually every modern mention of the coloss
Speaker 1: I and likewise the the These these different modern interpretations
Speaker 1: leaned extensively on the writings of French archaeologist Jean and
Speaker 1: Anton Latron, who lived set eight uh, and he supported
Speaker 1: the Severest hypothesis for the silencing of the Colossus. But
Speaker 1: Bowersock points out that all we really know is that
Speaker 1: Severus visited the coloss I in one fourth century St.
Speaker 1: Jerome did back up the notion that the sounds had
Speaker 1: east based on his visit. But the curious thing here
Speaker 1: is he assumed that it had stopped at the birth
Speaker 1: of Christ, because Christ had essentially put an end to
Speaker 1: all this pagan nonsense. Now wait a minute, that sort
Speaker 1: of throws the timeline off, right, because we we were
Speaker 1: supposed to have it making sounds well into the second century,
Speaker 1: right there, the second century CE. Uh, So that would
Speaker 1: kind of not line up with the birth of Christ.
Speaker 1: But right, well, basically, I guess we're not positing that
Speaker 1: as a real explanation. No, no, no, So this is
Speaker 1: an account, and I mean this is a case of
Speaker 1: someone showing up and saying, those things not making a
Speaker 1: sound anymore must have stopped at some point, probably when
Speaker 1: Jesus was born, because why would why would there be
Speaker 1: any kind of like pagan weird magic stuff going on
Speaker 1: under this new covenant. But ultimately he had no intel
Speaker 1: to go on there and was not bothering to read
Speaker 1: the trip Advisor reviews on the legs. Right, it's like
Speaker 1: now the pharaoh's magicians can no longer do miracles themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's ultimately kind of ridiculous thing to say,
Speaker 1: but it's he's one of the many famous visitors. Uh.
Speaker 1: You see this pop up in various writings about the
Speaker 1: coloss I. Yeah, And most importantly, as as Bowersock points out,
Speaker 1: it does a test that by a certain point nobody
Speaker 1: was hearing these sounds anymore. Right, But it also becomes
Speaker 1: difficult to really judge when it stopped based on the
Speaker 1: the end of the inscriptions, because it's likely they simply
Speaker 1: ran out of room to record it on the statues
Speaker 1: legs statues are that covered with inscriptions. But that being said,
Speaker 1: we can still look at the dated duh inscriptions on
Speaker 1: the statue and try and figure out when they stopped.
Speaker 1: And uh, previously the last dated text used to be
Speaker 1: held as a one, which certainly does line up with
Speaker 1: this idea that that Severus visited in one, but later,
Speaker 1: as Bowersock writes, an description from two oh five c
Speaker 1: E was noted, and there's another superimposed over that, so
Speaker 1: Bowersock says, quote It therefore becomes quite impossible to imagine
Speaker 1: that the sound was terminated in one by Severust, so
Speaker 1: people were still reporting hearing the sound after Severust visited
Speaker 1: right now. The earliest known description of the singing is
Speaker 1: from the geographer Strabo in twenty four b c E,
Speaker 1: and he described this the scene as everyone else did,
Speaker 1: with one statue partially destroyed by an earthquake. Because this
Speaker 1: led many to assume that a known, again known and
Speaker 1: recorded earthquake from b c would have been the culprit
Speaker 1: and toppling one of the coloss i, though Bowersock he
Speaker 1: he adds that that Strabo is being a bit vague
Speaker 1: if he's describing an earthquake that occurred two years ago,
Speaker 1: but he admits that based based on the evidence, it
Speaker 1: seems that the sound was quote exclusively a phenomenon of
Speaker 1: the Roman imperial world. So we still have a pretty
Speaker 1: solid time frame that we can look to in which
Speaker 1: this this uh this statue was generating a noise specifically
Speaker 1: it was sometime after b c E and stopping somewhere
Speaker 1: around down the end of the second century CE. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: well about two years of a singing statue and bad yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And during that time you have a lot of people
Speaker 1: visiting it, a lot of people been writing about it, uh,
Speaker 1: and then people writing about those writings or writing about
Speaker 1: other people's interpretations of it. Strabo himself wrote about it
Speaker 1: in the first century d C. And then you had
Speaker 1: Bassanius come around and he wrote about it in the
Speaker 1: mid second century CE. And these two voices alone helped
Speaker 1: to make it famous. Yes. So Pausanius was a Greek geographer.
Speaker 1: He wrote about places all over the Mediterranean world. And
Speaker 1: so here's his piece on this, from the translation by
Speaker 1: Bostock and Riley quote, the colossus in Egypt made me
Speaker 1: marvel far more than anything else in Egyptian Thebes. On
Speaker 1: crossing the Nile to the so called pipes, I saw
Speaker 1: a statue still sitting which gave out a sound. The
Speaker 1: many call it mem Non, who they say from Ethiopia
Speaker 1: over ran Egypt and as far as Susa. The Thebans, however,
Speaker 1: say that it is a statue not of Memnon, but
Speaker 1: of a native named famine Off, and I have heard
Speaker 1: some say that it is cessastrous. The statue was broken
Speaker 1: into by Cambyses at the present day, from head to
Speaker 1: middle it is thrown down, but the rest is seated,
Speaker 1: and every day at the rising of the sun it
Speaker 1: makes a noise, and the sound one could best liken
Speaker 1: to that of a harp or a liar when a
Speaker 1: string has been broken. I like that, I really like that.
Speaker 1: But the interesting thing is that there is quite a
Speaker 1: bit of this. There are a lot of different UH
Speaker 1: writings from the period that we tell this story. Some
Speaker 1: of them are first hand, and some of them have
Speaker 1: dubious descriptions of its state of disrepair or or the
Speaker 1: details about the sound. It clearly indicate that this was
Speaker 1: at at least a second hand UH description, if not
Speaker 1: a third hand description of of the phenomenon that was
Speaker 1: taking place. And then sometimes there's some of the writers
Speaker 1: just having fun with it. For instance, Uh Lucian the
Speaker 1: writer joked about the statue speaking to him through its mouth.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it have been funnier, though, for the statue to
Speaker 1: speak to him through its pelvis? Yes, through through the butt? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: you we can only wonder you know what versions of
Speaker 1: of mem Non inspired dirty jokes, etcetera. Body humor was
Speaker 1: was passed about during the ancient world. I mean, clearly
Speaker 1: people that did have a sense of humor in these times.
Speaker 1: People were more or less like they are today in
Speaker 1: many respects. So uh, there were probably ridiculous jokes about
Speaker 1: Memnon speaking through its bottom. Uh. And of course plenty
Speaker 1: of the individuals just had some took some poetic license
Speaker 1: with Memnon as well. For instance, Roman poet Juvenal wrote
Speaker 1: that the sound was the voice of a melancholy god,
Speaker 1: upset over the destruction that was that was wrought against it,
Speaker 1: this time by Cambaesis, who again was the destroyer in
Speaker 1: many of the common tales about the statue, not the
Speaker 1: earthquake that we later found out was probably the real cause.
Speaker 1: Right now, to come back again to this idea that
Speaker 1: that Severusts restored it, Bowerside points out that there is
Speaker 1: ultimately no evidence that this took place. Uh. Now, Severists
Speaker 1: certainly visited the area, and he could have visited the
Speaker 1: coloss I. I mean it certainly, it's lines up. It's
Speaker 1: not like saying Charlemagne appeared and fixed the statue. Um.
Speaker 1: But he didn't leave any graffiti for what for what
Speaker 1: that's worth, but there also could have been very little
Speaker 1: space for him to inscribe it at that point anyway.
Speaker 1: But by the fourth century it certainly was a silent
Speaker 1: statue again by all accounts, and uh. And here we
Speaker 1: encounter commentators like Jerome who believed that well, it just
Speaker 1: it must have been silent for a long time um
Speaker 1: Or for instance. We also have one commentator, Ammianus Marcel Lenis,
Speaker 1: for instance, who knew the coloss i but didn't seem
Speaker 1: to know the story of the sound. So we see
Speaker 1: like deep tales of the phenomenon beginning to pass out
Speaker 1: of common knowledge and not of common circulation. Someone it
Speaker 1: it stopped being the statue that speaks, and it became
Speaker 1: the statue that used to speak if you knew the stories.
Speaker 1: And Bowersock goes on. He admits that while we don't
Speaker 1: have any real proof again that Severus ended the sound
Speaker 1: by restoring the statue, we we still have to figure
Speaker 1: out who might have restored it and then conceivably shut
Speaker 1: down the sound, because that does seem the best based
Speaker 1: on the timeline, that does seem to be what happened.
Speaker 1: Somebody restored the statue. Somebody messed with the with the
Speaker 1: remnants of the statue and in doing so ended the sound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they put a hand on the drumheads. Yeah, basically, uh.
Speaker 1: And Bowersock has a little pet theory about this, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: He presents Queen Zenobia of Palmyra as a possible culprit here.
Speaker 1: So she led an Arabian army into the region um
Speaker 1: during this period, and during her occupy occupy of Egypt,
Speaker 1: she presented herself as a new Cleopatra. So she championed uh,
Speaker 1: the Egyptian greatness of old and uh, and and did
Speaker 1: so as like, you know, as a swipe at Roman imperialism.
Speaker 1: This is not the country of the Romans. This is
Speaker 1: the country of the noble Egyptians, and I am one
Speaker 1: of you. And bowers I proposes that Zenobia and her
Speaker 1: son may have carried out several restoration projects in the area.
Speaker 1: That would make sense if she's trying to ingratiate herself
Speaker 1: at the locals. Yeah. So it ultimately makes more sense
Speaker 1: than severus because you can at least begin to in this. Again,
Speaker 1: it's a pet theory, but it at least involves more
Speaker 1: reasoning as to why this is taking place. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I think we should take another quick break. When we
Speaker 1: come back, we will discuss what could have made a
Speaker 1: statue making noises like like was reported for so many years.
Speaker 1: Thank thank alright, we're back. Now we're discussing what could
Speaker 1: have caused the Colossi Mimnon, the especially the one top
Speaker 1: old statue to make sounds as people reported at dawn
Speaker 1: for so many years. And so to look at that,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, are there other cases where stones
Speaker 1: appear to sing or make noises? There are actually plenty
Speaker 1: of examples of things that are called singing stones, but
Speaker 1: what that tends to refer to is that they sing
Speaker 1: when struck, and that doesn't exactly fit the description of
Speaker 1: what's going on. Right. So there's one study fromen I
Speaker 1: came across in Time and Mind by Paul Devereaux and
Speaker 1: John Wosencroft, uh, and this was about the role that
Speaker 1: sound may have played in the selection of the huge
Speaker 1: stones at Stonehenge. Now you've probably read that, you know
Speaker 1: the bluestones. These huge stones at stone Hinge Stonehenge were
Speaker 1: moved over great distance to their final location. They weren't
Speaker 1: just dug up out of the ground. And then placed
Speaker 1: where they are. Why would you go through the effort
Speaker 1: of moving huge, gigantic stones so far? And the papers
Speaker 1: are reported on a project surveying once of a supposed
Speaker 1: source of the stones and asking quote, what might stone
Speaker 1: age eyes and ears have perceived in this landscape and
Speaker 1: what aspects made it become important to the builders of stoneheinge.
Speaker 1: So one factor that they come up with is that
Speaker 1: stones from this site in geologically similar sites nearby seem
Speaker 1: to produce a tone a ring when struck with a hammer.
Speaker 1: It's not just the dull thud you'd get from a
Speaker 1: lot of stones, but but a more distinctive, tonal kind
Speaker 1: of ringing. And they say, you know, if if this
Speaker 1: is a religious site, this could have been a selection criterion.
Speaker 1: It seems intuitively hinge e right, that you'd want the
Speaker 1: stones to kind of ring and sing when you bang
Speaker 1: on them. Yeah, But but again, clear clearly this is
Speaker 1: not what's going on with the Colossi of m Non.
Speaker 1: Nobody's talking about striking the base of the toppled strat
Speaker 1: statue and producing a noise. Yeah, And so there are
Speaker 1: other stones like this around the world, but it all
Speaker 1: always seems to be the same story that there are
Speaker 1: locations in the world with singing stones or stones that ring,
Speaker 1: but it tends to be when you hit them together
Speaker 1: with one another. And I've read about this a good bit.
Speaker 1: It seems to be that there is it's hypothesized that
Speaker 1: there's something about the internal mineral structure of these stones
Speaker 1: where they're there are certain types of strain relationships between
Speaker 1: the minerals within them that produce this elastic effect that
Speaker 1: makes the stones more like a drum that kind of rings,
Speaker 1: and less like a thudding regular stone. But that's not
Speaker 1: apparently what's going on. We're not talking about people banging
Speaker 1: on it with a hammer. We're saying the light of
Speaker 1: dawn comes in and then it twang's yeah. Likewise, I
Speaker 1: have read before various arguments about the the sacred aspects
Speaker 1: of caves for ancient people's uh, which of obviously, if
Speaker 1: you're in the cave and you make a sound, that
Speaker 1: sound will be echoed, and it could be various supernatural
Speaker 1: interpretations of that. But again, clearly that's with a cave,
Speaker 1: not with just a large statue. You can shout at
Speaker 1: a statue all you want, uh, and there may be
Speaker 1: some reverberation of of your sound waves, but but not
Speaker 1: to to any like real practical extent. And that's not
Speaker 1: what people are described. Yeah, they're not they're not hitting it,
Speaker 1: they're not shouting at it. They're showing up. The sun
Speaker 1: is rising, and then there is this distinct crackle, and
Speaker 1: of course that leads us back to that heated air
Speaker 1: argument that we've already discussed. And this really, this really
Speaker 1: seems to be the one that most people are focusing on.
Speaker 1: This seems to be curiously, it is a case where
Speaker 1: where ancient minds pretty much figured it out and nobody
Speaker 1: really has a more effective answer. Yes, so this is
Speaker 1: as put by bower Stock. Just to refresh you, bower
Speaker 1: Stock writes that quote, earthquake damage evidently allowed air to
Speaker 1: penetrate well inside the colossus in such a way that
Speaker 1: the sudden warmth of the sun at dawn affected a
Speaker 1: noisy discrepancy between the quickly heated exterior and the still
Speaker 1: cool channels within. Now, I kind of wish we could
Speaker 1: have more detail on exactly what's going on there, but
Speaker 1: this does seem to be what most people are referring to.
Speaker 1: There's some kind of version of this, there's some heating difference,
Speaker 1: a difference in heat potential from the outside and the inside,
Speaker 1: and there are certain kind of cracks or channels within
Speaker 1: the stones that cause it to make some shifting, adjusting
Speaker 1: kind of sound. Yeah, now, I know what you're you're
Speaker 1: all thinking. You're thinking, well, that sounds pretty good to me.
Speaker 1: Joe and Robert seim on board with it. Is there
Speaker 1: anybody that has a problem with this interpretation, and there
Speaker 1: is so. Earlier we mentioned the article from the International
Speaker 1: Phonetic Association mem Non the Vocal Statue by Massimo Petterino,
Speaker 1: and Petterino does have a problem with this, he says, quote,
Speaker 1: the main objection against this kind of hypothesis is that
Speaker 1: the other colossus, which stands still intact, made of the
Speaker 1: same material, having the same side in shape, has always
Speaker 1: been silent. If the environmental conditions were exactly the same,
Speaker 1: why weren't there any microfractures of the sandstone on both. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: this hypothesis cannon explain why after the restoration the block
Speaker 1: formed by the pedestal and the legs has stopped talking. Therefore,
Speaker 1: this hypothesis leaves many questions unanswered. I don't really follow
Speaker 1: that reasoning there because so like he's ignoring the possibility that, right,
Speaker 1: the earthquake damage or whatever caused the damage is what
Speaker 1: contributed to that one particular statue making the noise, and
Speaker 1: the idea that restoration changed the load, changed the strange,
Speaker 1: changed the pressure on the rock, and that affected what
Speaker 1: sounds it could make. Yeah, I mean, it's I don't
Speaker 1: really follow the argument either, because it's kind of like saying, well,
Speaker 1: you have these two twins. Why does one have a
Speaker 1: broken arm and the other doesn't. Well, because one twin
Speaker 1: fell out of a tree house and the other did not.
Speaker 1: One of the one of the coloss i toppled due
Speaker 1: to an earthquake, and then the argument is, of course
Speaker 1: that it it causes sort of micro fractures and necessary
Speaker 1: for this phenomenon to emerge. The other does not meet
Speaker 1: that criteria. Yeah, I mean, so the heated air or
Speaker 1: the channels within explanation I think is a generally reasonable
Speaker 1: sounding explanation. Though I do to take Petterino side for
Speaker 1: a minute, I do wish there was a little bit
Speaker 1: more detail, like we could get more detail and exactly
Speaker 1: how that works. Yeah, I agree, now, uh, even though
Speaker 1: I do not agree however, with many of Petorino's arguments here,
Speaker 1: I do think they're they're worth looking at because he
Speaker 1: is kind of, at the very least, he's a devil's
Speaker 1: advocate here, because not only does he have problems with
Speaker 1: the established hypothesis, he has an alternate hypothesis. He suggests
Speaker 1: that the sound might have been the result of an
Speaker 1: artificial device UH that was positioned either in the head
Speaker 1: of the statue or kind of like stuck up in
Speaker 1: one of the nooks and crannies UH involving mirrors that
Speaker 1: conveyed the sun's rays onto a set of metal levers.
Speaker 1: Dilation due to h due to heating then would make
Speaker 1: them hit stone keys and produce sound. And he sources
Speaker 1: this as well to an eighty nine French paper, but
Speaker 1: I was not able to really follow his um his sourcing,
Speaker 1: so perhaps this is this is based in a more
Speaker 1: elaborate argument, but for from the occult sciences, right, But
Speaker 1: basically I do I do have a lot of problems
Speaker 1: with this because it does seem like a far less
Speaker 1: elegant UH solution to say that instead of it being
Speaker 1: a naturally occurring phenomenon that has a definite start and
Speaker 1: stop date based on damage or restoration to the statue.
Speaker 1: It instead requires a device and a plot and maintenance
Speaker 1: of the of the device over the course of at
Speaker 1: you know, two to three centuries. Now, He's not the
Speaker 1: only person to suggest that trickery was involved, right, This
Speaker 1: is actually sort of an ancient meme that maybe what
Speaker 1: the sound was was some priest class, some priesthood that
Speaker 1: was dedicated to always tricking people into thinking that the
Speaker 1: statue made a sound. I don't think we have any
Speaker 1: way to rule that out, though Petterino gets very specific
Speaker 1: in what he thinks they might have done, right, you know,
Speaker 1: having this like thermally activated technological devices within the statue itself,
Speaker 1: another way you could you could get that kind of
Speaker 1: effect without going to quite such technological and specific links
Speaker 1: as to say there was a priest hiding behind the
Speaker 1: statue who would strike it with a with a hammer, right,
Speaker 1: you know. Now, Now, even Peerino, he he even admits
Speaker 1: that one of the problems with this is that, uh
Speaker 1: is that if it was a device, then why would
Speaker 1: the statue need to be destroyed to produce the sound.
Speaker 1: So even he admits that that is a potential hole
Speaker 1: in the plot here, you know. And then also why
Speaker 1: would the Egyptians, presumable we have installed it to begin with.
Speaker 1: But but he also gets into another interesting area here.
Speaker 1: Part of his criticism of the phenomenon is that he
Speaker 1: doesn't think it would have really been that much of
Speaker 1: a phenomenon that people are seemed to have gone crazy
Speaker 1: for the coloss I have memnon and this curious sound
Speaker 1: that it's making. But he argues that if it was
Speaker 1: indeed just a cracking sound emerging from stones, that this
Speaker 1: was happening elsewhere in the world and would not have
Speaker 1: been seen as a big deal. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean maybe so maybe this is a normal natural phenomenon.
Speaker 1: It doesn't occur all that often, but lots of people
Speaker 1: just haven't heard it. This is the only one they've heard.
Speaker 1: I mean, how often have you heard a stone singing?
Speaker 1: That's true, I have not heard one. And if I
Speaker 1: heard one stone singing, it doesn't mean I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to check out another one. It's still interesting. But but anyway,
Speaker 1: that's that's his argument he and he actually points to
Speaker 1: some other examples of of of of alleged a stone
Speaker 1: crackling sounds that were uh known of at various points
Speaker 1: and written about it. Various points in human history. So
Speaker 1: he lists sounds mentioned by Charles Darwin, by Alexander von Humboldt,
Speaker 1: by members of Napoleon's Commission of Egypt, etcetera. So there
Speaker 1: are other accounts of stones making noise. That is true. Now.
Speaker 1: Being a big Alexander von Humboldt fan, since I read
Speaker 1: Andrea Wolfe's excellent book about him a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: I wanted to look up what the Alexander von Humboldt
Speaker 1: passages were, and so I found the passage that Petterino
Speaker 1: seems to be directly referring to is actually not Von
Speaker 1: Humboldt describing something he directly saw, but he's quoting a
Speaker 1: report from some seventeenth century explorer named Father Acuna, who
Speaker 1: I suspect is probably the Spanish missionary explorer Christo bald
Speaker 1: Diatristan d Acuna Akunya, I think. And so here's the
Speaker 1: section from von Humboldt's personal narrative of the travels to
Speaker 1: the Equinoctal regions of America. Quote on the north of
Speaker 1: the confluence of the Kuppatuba and the Amazon says Akuna
Speaker 1: is the mountain Parawaxo, which when illumined by the sun,
Speaker 1: glows with the most beautiful colors, and thence from time
Speaker 1: to time issues a horrible noise. All right, but there's more.
Speaker 1: So von Humboldt, in another section does actually describes rocks
Speaker 1: making noises. So maybe this is what what Petterino was
Speaker 1: obliquely referring to. So von Humboldt is narrating his journey
Speaker 1: with companions down a river in an area that I
Speaker 1: believe would now be in Venezuela. They're on the Orinoco,
Speaker 1: and von Humboldt writes the following quote, The granitic rock
Speaker 1: or granite rock on which we lay is one of
Speaker 1: those where travelers on the Orinoco have heard, from time
Speaker 1: to time towards sunrise subterraneous sounds resembling those of the organ.
Speaker 1: The missionaries called these stones laxa stay musica. It is witchcraft,
Speaker 1: said Brujas, said our young Indian pilot who could speak Spanish.
Speaker 1: We never ourselves heard these mysterious sounds, either at car
Speaker 1: China Vieja or in the upper Orinoco. But from information
Speaker 1: given us by witnesses worthy of belief. The existence of
Speaker 1: a phenomenon that seems to depend on a certain state
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere cannot be denied. The shelves of rock
Speaker 1: are full of very narrow and deep crevices. They are
Speaker 1: heated during the day to forty eight or fifty degrees.
Speaker 1: I several times found their temperature at the surface during
Speaker 1: the night at twenty eight degrees. It may easily be
Speaker 1: conceived that the difference of temperature between the subterranean and
Speaker 1: the external air attains its maximum about sunrise, or at
Speaker 1: that moment, which is, at the same time farthest from
Speaker 1: the period of the maximum of the heat of the
Speaker 1: preceding day. May not these organ like sounds which are
Speaker 1: heard when a person lays his ear in contact with
Speaker 1: the stone be the effect of a current of air
Speaker 1: that shoes out through the crevices. Does not the impulse
Speaker 1: of the air against the elastic spangles of mica that
Speaker 1: intercept the crevices contribute to modify the sounds. May we
Speaker 1: not admit that the ancient inhabitants of Egypt, in passing
Speaker 1: incessantly up and down the Nile, had made the same
Speaker 1: observation on some rock of the Thebaid, and that the
Speaker 1: music of the rocks there led to the jugglery of
Speaker 1: the priests in the statue of memnon jugglery meaning like chicanery.
Speaker 1: So I think he's he's going with the idea that
Speaker 1: there there's uh, there's a theory that the priests were
Speaker 1: doing something nefarious there to make the sound. So picking
Speaker 1: back up with von Humbold, perhaps when quote the rosy
Speaker 1: fingered Aurora rendered her son the glorious memnon vocal unquote,
Speaker 1: the voice was that of a man hidden beneath the
Speaker 1: pedestal of the statue. But the observation of the natives
Speaker 1: of the Orinoco, which we relate, seems to explain in
Speaker 1: a natural manner what gave rise to the Egyptian belief
Speaker 1: of a own that poured forth sounds at sunrise. Almost
Speaker 1: at the same period at which I communicated these conjectures
Speaker 1: to some of the learned in Europe, three French travelers, Jomard,
Speaker 1: Jolois and de Villiers were led to analogous ideas they
Speaker 1: heard at sunrise in a monument of granite at the
Speaker 1: center of the spot on which now stands the Palace
Speaker 1: of Karnak, a noise resembling that of a string breaking.
Speaker 1: Now this comparison is precisely that which the ancients employed
Speaker 1: in speaking of the voice of Memnon. The French travelers
Speaker 1: thought like me that the passage of rarefied air through
Speaker 1: the fissures of a sonorous stone might have suggested to
Speaker 1: the Egyptian priests the invention of the juggleries of the Memnomium. Now,
Speaker 1: what I love about this passage is that it kind
Speaker 1: of has something for everybody, and you can you can
Speaker 1: kind of cherry pick and support any interpretation. You can say, well,
Speaker 1: von Hobald von Humbald here is talking about uh trickster
Speaker 1: at work in him Non. That's one possibility. And he's
Speaker 1: also talking about natural phenomenon. Seems very on board with
Speaker 1: the idea that yes, uh stones could create a cracking
Speaker 1: noise just based on the natural properties of of of
Speaker 1: the heating of the stone. Yeah. I think he doesn't
Speaker 1: fully have the the exact mechanism figured out here, either,
Speaker 1: But he says, look, we're on a big slab of granite.
Speaker 1: It's making sounds in the dawn. This other place has
Speaker 1: big blocks of stone apparently making sounds at the dawn.
Speaker 1: It could be a common natural cause. You don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have to go to the trickster priests hypothesis. Right now,
Speaker 1: Patterinho is using this as an example of Look, other
Speaker 1: people were talking about cracking stones. It's no big deal,
Speaker 1: but but it kind of is like, well, it's spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time here discussing it, and therefore it
Speaker 1: was it was clearly a matter of interest to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like von Humboldt, I don't encounter a lot
Speaker 1: of spontaneously noise making stone. Yeah, I mean unless you
Speaker 1: count Mick Jagger, right who who is still creating a
Speaker 1: noise Yeah, we can't quite explain it and is one
Speaker 1: of the greatest relics of the ancient world. He is. So,
Speaker 1: so you're probably wanted, well, okay, what is what is
Speaker 1: Petorino's full hypothesis here? Well he he points out that, okay,
Speaker 1: if it was a gadget, then you have to ask, well,
Speaker 1: who was capable of creating such a gadget? And at
Speaker 1: that time and he points to Greek mathematician and engineer
Speaker 1: heron or Hero of Alexandria, And Alexandria was a center
Speaker 1: of learning at the time, and uh and and it
Speaker 1: is is often mentioned that Hero had some ideas to
Speaker 1: what extent he actually built these out or fabricated them
Speaker 1: as uh. You know, it is an open question, but
Speaker 1: some of his ideas did resemble what would eventually become
Speaker 1: steam technology, Like he seemed to be aware of the
Speaker 1: basic uh natural processes that would uh that were necessary
Speaker 1: for that kind of technology to ex I don't want
Speaker 1: to deny that the achievements of Hero of Alexandria were cool,
Speaker 1: but this seems kind of like those conspiracy theories that say,
Speaker 1: like something weird happened in I don't know, nineteen twenty whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, there was this guy Tesla and he did
Speaker 1: all these inventions. Maybe he was the guy behind this
Speaker 1: thing that happened somewhere in the world. Yeah, so uh
Speaker 1: And it does get very conspiracy theorist here shortly, so
Speaker 1: Petterino says, all right, Hero is the kind of guy
Speaker 1: that or if not, the guy who could have made
Speaker 1: the gadget. And he then he points to a few
Speaker 1: different machines that he that Hero was said to have
Speaker 1: build a fountain that trickles due to the sun's heating
Speaker 1: of a water in airfield globe and then sucks it
Speaker 1: back up again in the shade. And it was also
Speaker 1: said to produce a hissing sound. So Petterino claims that
Speaker 1: such a gadget could have been placed on the left
Speaker 1: knee of the statue and as still visible cavity uh
Speaker 1: as in it's still visible today. But he also admits
Speaker 1: that you have to keep the thing working after, you know,
Speaker 1: for at least two centuries, so you have to expand
Speaker 1: the conspiracy theory a little bit to involve priests and
Speaker 1: guardians of the Temple of of amenof of the Third
Speaker 1: uh and they would have been the necessary keepers of
Speaker 1: the secret gadget, and he argues that they would be
Speaker 1: the ones that would benefit from it as well. His
Speaker 1: hypothesis tics another leap by entailing the possible murder of
Speaker 1: hero yeah and his accomplices in order to keep the
Speaker 1: work a secret, because clearly Heroes the sort of guy
Speaker 1: who would want to make his wonder gadget known at
Speaker 1: some point uh and uh. He also suggested the priests
Speaker 1: might have silenced anyone who figured out the secret. And
Speaker 1: I feel like we're definitely getting into a conspiracy theory
Speaker 1: here because the Da Vinci code. Yeah yeah. I have
Speaker 1: to ask myself at the end of it, why is
Speaker 1: it more believable to think that you had to have
Speaker 1: a like a secret cabal um that was attending to
Speaker 1: an ancient device and keeping it running for you know,
Speaker 1: two or three hundred years. Why is that a more
Speaker 1: easily digestible uh explanation? Then, oh, well, there's this temperature
Speaker 1: differential in the stone and it's causing this slight crackle.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you want to resort to a jugglery
Speaker 1: of the priest's explanation, yet again, I think it might
Speaker 1: be a lot easier to just say, well, there was
Speaker 1: I don't know, a priest hiding somewhere in next to
Speaker 1: the statue or in the statue, I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: there's a box or some reads or something like that
Speaker 1: you could hide in, and then they were just beating
Speaker 1: it with a hammer at dawn. That that seems to
Speaker 1: fairly enough match what people are describing. It's possible people
Speaker 1: might not have noticed this, and that's easier than saying, well,
Speaker 1: there was a special type of thermal autonomous musical instrument
Speaker 1: designed by an ancient inventor hidden within the statue, maintained
Speaker 1: the secrecy by by this cabal of evil priests, or
Speaker 1: maybe he's not saying the evil but of trick tricksy priests.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean I I'd go with the hammer.
Speaker 1: That's easier, right, right, Yeah, So, I mean, obviously we're
Speaker 1: having a little fun with this, but I do want
Speaker 1: a stress that betterinos argument here. It I think it
Speaker 1: is worth discussing just because it does serve as a
Speaker 1: kind of Devil's advocate argument against the more established interpretation
Speaker 1: of what was going on here, and it does bring
Speaker 1: us to our our final exploration in this episode, the
Speaker 1: idea that, yeah, these devices, while I think it's unlikely
Speaker 1: that one was installed at the at the colossi of Memnon,
Speaker 1: these gadgets are possible and uh can exist. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: fact that they are inspiring people, even in more recent years,
Speaker 1: to want to create solar thermal automata that make music right,
Speaker 1: essentially music making robots that work by sunlight. Yeah. You
Speaker 1: found a wonderful article this published in the Leonardo Music
Speaker 1: Journal in two thousand seven by Mr Duffy, the Vocal
Speaker 1: Memnon and Solar thermal Automata, And in this Duffy has
Speaker 1: just a non ice explanation of what one of these
Speaker 1: devices would entail. Yeah, the simple version is in the
Speaker 1: description of a memnonium named after me. That is a
Speaker 1: difficult word. I'm sure I'm gonna say it wrong if
Speaker 1: I try to say it again. A memnonium quote is
Speaker 1: a self actuating system that generates music using solar energy.
Speaker 1: So this is going to be based on the theory
Speaker 1: that it was the soul, it was not some jugglery
Speaker 1: of the priests, That it was the solar thermal energy
Speaker 1: heating the stone which caused some kind of thing to
Speaker 1: happen within it that made the breaking twang. That's right
Speaker 1: and uh and and in this article Duffy alludes again
Speaker 1: to the idea that that hero may have planned out
Speaker 1: something that that that created sound via steam expansion. Uh
Speaker 1: And He also points to an earlier Greek scientist, to Cbs,
Speaker 1: who would have lived five to two twenty two b c.
Speaker 1: That was also an incident, possibly the first head of
Speaker 1: the Library of Alexandria, and he was credited with designing
Speaker 1: basically a solar powered mini pipe organ that was driven
Speaker 1: by siphoning water between chambers to affect air pressure. Right. So,
Speaker 1: Duffy and the paper goes on to describe different types
Speaker 1: of solar thermal automata that could be created there's a
Speaker 1: there's a great picture of one prototype which is demonstrated
Speaker 1: at the Tank in New York City in July two
Speaker 1: thousand three, and it's described as you've got three parabolic
Speaker 1: solar concentrators, so sort of like a parabolic mirror that's
Speaker 1: going to reflect hot sunlight, and they're they're focused on
Speaker 1: these singing tubes that are supposed to create a chord triad.
Speaker 1: And in the photo there's somebody working on positioning them
Speaker 1: with some heavy eye protection in place, because obviously these
Speaker 1: things would be a little bit dangerous. I have to
Speaker 1: say that none of the memnonium devices depicted in here
Speaker 1: really strike me as a very you know, easibly easily
Speaker 1: hidden object. They look a bit uh obnoxious in their presentation,
Speaker 1: like it would be very hard I would think to
Speaker 1: just tuck it away in a statue. Yeah. I like
Speaker 1: the idea of memnonium as described by by the paper,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't exactly match because one of the things
Speaker 1: about the Colossi mnon is they say it happened at dawn, right,
Speaker 1: and then they don't say like, and then it happened
Speaker 1: all day after that, So you'd have to make a
Speaker 1: very special thing that It's not just like whenever their
Speaker 1: sunlight it's heating a certain device and that causes steam
Speaker 1: to rise and whatever. It would have to be only
Speaker 1: sunlight at a very specific angle or very specific thermal differential,
Speaker 1: like right when the sun rises or something. Do you
Speaker 1: think that this uh the story of the CLASSI im
Speaker 1: noon at all inspired the scene in Raiders of the
Speaker 1: Lost Arc where the the the ammulet to illuminate the map.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that, but it does make a sound,
Speaker 1: doesn't it When the when the sunlight goes through the
Speaker 1: amulet and it's focused down on the ground, it makes
Speaker 1: a kind of, uh, steaming kettle kind of sound. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I am. I am way overdue for another viewing of
Speaker 1: Raiders the Lost Arc, especially if we end up doing
Speaker 1: an episode on the Ark of the Covenant. Is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: another weird conspiracy theory about ancient technology, though though a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting one. Yeah, you know the one. The thing
Speaker 1: I love about about all these different tangents to the class,
Speaker 1: like memnon is that it does kind of come back
Speaker 1: around this azamandy as principle, right, the idea that you
Speaker 1: have some epic work of that that humanity has robbed
Speaker 1: and it just does not last. And and it applies
Speaker 1: certainly to the statues themselves, to the kingdom that they
Speaker 1: emerge from. It applies to this phenomenon that occurs with
Speaker 1: the sound, and it also applies to any kind of
Speaker 1: device one might build to produce such a sound. I
Speaker 1: think it should give us another avenue of perspective on
Speaker 1: the idea of restorations. I mean, there's always a question
Speaker 1: when you've got some kind of landmark of ancient significance
Speaker 1: that has deteriorated, should you do a restoration on it,
Speaker 1: Should you try to make it more like it used
Speaker 1: to be, or should you just let it be as
Speaker 1: it is? Uh? There are different schools of thought about that, right,
Speaker 1: But here we have one great example of where it
Speaker 1: looks like what happened is a restoration killed the most
Speaker 1: interesting thing about this great work of ancient art. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we've all seen examples of of works of
Speaker 1: ancient or older art that once they've been restored. On
Speaker 1: one hand, it's great because now you know, conceivably we
Speaker 1: can we can learn much more about the painting or
Speaker 1: the sculpture that we can we can perhaps appreciate it
Speaker 1: in new ways. But there's also sometimes this this effect
Speaker 1: where we look at it and it looks kind of fake.
Speaker 1: It doesn't look like the same piece. It does not,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have the same aura of of of time
Speaker 1: as it used to. I personally like the idea of
Speaker 1: replication as opposed to restoration. I mean, I'm not always
Speaker 1: opposed to restoration. There are some cases where it makes sense,
Speaker 1: especially if you need to protect an artifact from rapidly
Speaker 1: deteriorating further. That's in some condition where it's you know,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, But in a in a
Speaker 1: situation where it's not like that, I like the idea
Speaker 1: of leaving it as it is and it's presently deteriorated state,
Speaker 1: but then also creating in a different place a replica
Speaker 1: of what it would have been in its original state.
Speaker 1: The Parthenon of Greece is probably a great example of this,
Speaker 1: because the Parthenon as it stands now is of course
Speaker 1: in ruins, and the history of the Parthenon is a
Speaker 1: story of destruction and looting and of course just you know,
Speaker 1: things getting old and two varying extents falling apart, but
Speaker 1: but but mostly destruction and looting. So there have been, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, efforts there have been individuals who said, will
Speaker 1: let us restore it to its former glory. But if
Speaker 1: you if you do that, you're you're kind of erasing
Speaker 1: the past. Uh So it does seem like it's a
Speaker 1: better idea to keep things as in some cases, it
Speaker 1: seems like it's a better idea to keep things as
Speaker 1: they exist, keep the ruins as they exist. But maybe
Speaker 1: just build a replica I don't know, in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: See how it goes. Hey, that Nashville Parthenon ain't bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool. I recommend it if you're if you
Speaker 1: find yourself in Nashville. Personally, I think in Tennessee we
Speaker 1: should have more great monuments to human sacrifice that what
Speaker 1: arguably yes, arguably yes. All Right, So there you have it,
Speaker 1: the Colossi of Memnon. Hopefully we've we we've managed to
Speaker 1: take everyone um on a journey across millennia explaining why
Speaker 1: this uh this place, why these ruins are significant, and
Speaker 1: and why they're worth talking about here on stuff to
Speaker 1: buy your mind. It is fascinating. I'm sorry, we we
Speaker 1: we don't have an ant here for you on exactly
Speaker 1: what caused the sound, but but it's something to ponder.
Speaker 1: I think we can leave here though fairly confident that
Speaker 1: that it's the heat model, that the heat explanation, and
Speaker 1: not some sort of ancient gadget that was placed by
Speaker 1: by a secret cultist, unless there was also a jugglery
Speaker 1: of priests to maintain such a hoax along the rocks
Speaker 1: on the shores of the Orinoco. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: global conspiracy. That's the thing, right, all right. If you
Speaker 1: want to explore more episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: as well as blog posts and links out to our
Speaker 1: various social media accounts, be sure to check out Stuff
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Speaker 1: do that, huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio
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