DOOK IV. This however is not the only mode, in which we may trace his connection with them. The Cabiri are sometimes said to be seven in number; and thus, with the head of their family, they make up the eight great gods of Egypt. But of those great gods Vulcan was reputed the chief and the oldest, as occupying the place of the venerable patriarch, who is indifferently described as being born from the ocean and from the arkite egg. Now it is a curious circumstance, that, although the Cyclopes are generally represented as being three brothers, the children of one father; they are sometimes also spoken of as constituting a company of seven persons, for such was the supposed number of the Cyclopes who built the walls of Tiryns.' When it is considered therefore, that they were Egyptian deities, and that their chief was Nilus or Cali or Vulcan, we can scarcely doubt, that the seven Cyclopes were the seven Cabiri, and that with their head they constituted the eight great gods. Their parent in short, the principal Cyclops, was Buddha in his character of the wonderful artizan Twashta or Taut: and the notion of their being expert workmen originated from the Noëtic family being the builders of the Ark. 4. One thing remains to be accounted for in the legend of the Cyclopes, the circumstance of their each having only a single eye in the centre of their foreheads. This mode of representing them seems to have arisen from the attachment of the ancients to symbols, which the Greeks perpetually misunderstood and perverted. Plutarch tells us, that the Egyptians depicted Osiris, in his quality of the universal lord and governor, by the hieroglyphic of an eye and a sceptre: whence an eye was frequently carved over the portals of their temples. From this manner of exhibiting their principal deity the fable in question probably originated. The statues of Buddha or Pali were of a gigantic size, and a single eye was the hieroglyphic of the great god of the Egyptians: the Greeks united the two ideas, and thus of the Shepherd Pali they formed the one-eyed Shepherd Polypheme. XXIX. I have supposed the chief Cyclops to be Mahiman or Buddha, offering such arguments in favour of my opinion as I have been able to collect together: and, agreeably to this conjecture, it is excellently observed by Mr. Wilford, that, in the countries of Persia, Syria, and Asia Minor, we find many traces of Mahiman and his followers in the stupendous edifices, remarkable for their magnificence and solidity, which the Greeks ascribed to the Cyclopes.' But, as he afterwards truly states, many of these same buildings were also given to the person, whom the classical writers call Memnon and I think we have only to investigate the history of this fabulous hero to assent to his opinion, that Memnon and Mahiman are one both in name and character, and consequently that Memnon is the same as Cyclops or Vulcan. 1. The word Mahiman signifies the great Manes or Menu: and the Sanscrit Maha, which denotes great, was pronounced by the Greeks as one syllable; for Hesychius tells us, that Mai is great in the language of the Indians, and it still bears the same import in modern Coptic. Now one of the oblique cases of Mahiman or Maiman is Mahimna or Maimna, which the Greeks could have pronounced in no other way than Maimna or Memna : and hence, Mr. Wilford supposes, that the name of Memnon originated.* I am willing to assent to his conjecture with a slight alteration or rather addition. Buddha or Mahiman is allowed by the Hindoos to be the triad expressed by their sacred monosyllable Om. But Om is evidently the On of the Egyptians; which was a title of the Sun, from the circumstance of the great father and his triple offspring being venerated in that luminary. Memnon then I should conceive to be formed rather from Maiman compounded with On, than from the oblique case Maimna: whence MaimanOn, Maimn-On, or Memn-On, will signify the great solar Menu. This person, according to the Hindoos, was the father of Sharmana-Cardama or Samana-Cadam by his wife Maha-Manya. But Samana-Cadam, as we have already seen, is the Cadmus of Greece, Egypt, and Phenicia; and the Somono-Codom or Buddha of Pegu and Ceylon: while Maha-Manya, which is clearly the feminine form of Mahi-Man, is the great arkite mother, the Maya and Mania both of the east and of the west. CHAP. V. BOOK TV. 2. Etymology however must by no means be allowed to decide a point, though it may be usefully added to circumstantial evidence as a secondary and subsidiary argument. Let us proceed then to examine the accounts of Memnon which have come down to us, that we may be enabled to judge, how far we are warranted in adopting the conclusion that he is the same as Mahiman or Buddha. (1.) The general story is, that Tithonus was the brother of Priam king of Troy, that he engaged the affections of Aurora, and that by her he became the father of Memnon. Aurora conferred upon him the gift of immortality, but unluckily forgot to render her gift really valuable by exempting him from the infirmities of old age. The consequence was, that he experienced all the inconveniences of Swift's immortals of Laputa, without the possibility of being released from them by the friendly hand of death. At length Aurora, pitying his deplorable situation, changed him into a grasshopper. During the period of their mutual passion she had, it seems, conveyed him to Ethiopia which lies to the southward of Egypt: and of this country his son Memnon, though a foreigner by descent and a mere cadet of the distant royal family of Troy, contrived in some unaccountable manner to make himself sovereign. His uncle Priam experienced the benefit of this lucky circumstance: for, as we are told in the true history of the siege of Troy, the swarthy warrior brought a considerable body of Ethiopian troops to the assistance of the Iliensians. In this noble field of chivalrous adventure he approved himself the worthy successor of Hector: until at length, in an evil hour having slain Antilochus the son of Nestor, he himself fell by the invincible hand of the vengeful Achilles. His body was burned on a funeral pile with much solemnity: and, at the request of his disconsolate mother Aurora, Jupiter conferred upon him an honour of a very peculiar nature, such as had never been heretofore bestowed on mortal man. While the blazing pile consumed the earthly remains of the hero, a flight of birds suddenly issued from the flames. Thrice they circled the burning mass which had given them birth: when, dividing themselves into two armies, they fought with such fury that more than half of them dropped deadinto the fire. But this was not all: the same mysterious occurrence took place every year, and the angry ghost of Memnon was annually propi- CHAP. V. tiated by the blood of the winged combatants." (2.) When the ancient historians seriously considered the legend of Memnon, they naturally enough wondered how he could manage to march an army. of Ethiopians all the way from the southern extremity of Egypt to the banks of the Hellespont: and well they might, considering the age in which Memnon is placed; though his making himself king of Ethiopia at all seems to me by far the most marvellous exploit of the two. However, by way of mending the matter, they shifted the scene from the African to the Asiatic Ethiopia. Thus Diodorus tells us, that Tithonus led an army from Troas into the eastern regions of Asia, that he penetrated as far as Ethiopia, and that this gave rise to the fable of Aurora being the mother of Memnon who afterwards assisted his uncle Priam with a body of Asiatic Ethiopian troops. He elsewhere gives the narrative more at large, dropping however entirely the emigration of Tithonus from Troy. When Teutamus was king of Assyria, his empire extended over all Asia; and Priam, the petty sovereign of the Iliensians, was one of his vassals. At that time Memnon, the son of Tithonus, was captain-general of Persia, and was held in high esteem by the king. Agamemnon invading the territories of Priam, Memnon was dispatched by his master to the assistance of the Trojan prince, who had called upon his superior lord for protection against the Greeks. In this expedition he commanded ten thousand Ethiopians and as many Susiani; and at length perished, fighting bravely at their head. As a proof that Memnon came out of Persia and the Asiatic Ethiopia, out of that country, in short, which the Hindoos call Cusha-dwip within, Diodorus informs us, that he built a palace in the citadel of Susa; which after his own name was styled Memnonia, and which continued in existence until the Persians obtained the sovereignty of the east. He also constructed a very magnificent public road, which even in the days of the historian continued to bear the appellation of Memnonium. To these circumstances Strabo Apollod. Bibl. lib. iii. c. 11. § 4. Hesiod. Theog. ver. 984. Ovid. Metam. lib. xiii. ver. 576–622. Hyg. Fab. 270, 112. Tzetz. in Lycoph. ver. 18. Mosch. Idyll. iii. ver. 43–45. Ælian. de anim. lib. v. ROOK IV. adds, that his tomb was shewn in the province of Susiana: and Pausanias, who likewise brings him, not from the African Ethiopia, but from Susa and the banks of the Choaspes, says, that his line of march to Troy was unquestionably established by the traditions of the Phrygians, who still continued to point out to the curious traveller his several successive encampments.' (3.) The story now begins to assume something more of the semblance of genuine history: but unluckily the airy fabric is dissipated, ere it is well constructed, by the candid statement of Diodorus himself. The Ethiopians of Upper Egypt obstinately refused to subscribe to the truth of this detail. They claimed the redoubtable Memnon as their countryman: and, more liberal than their Cuthic brethren of Asia, they added to his twenty thousand infantry two hundred war-chariots. But to this claim those brethren might demur on the score of circumstantial evidence: and they might shame the nationality of the Africans by adducing, as stubborn witnesses, the Memnonian palace, the Memnonian road, and the Memnonian tomb, all within the limits of the province Susiana. So we might imagine: but we shall find, that the Africans have just as much evidence of this description to produce as the Asiatics. They had equally, as Diodorus and Strabo fairly allow, a palace illustrated by the name of Memnonium: and they could moreover boast of a stupendous colossal statue of the hero, which possessed the singular quality of uttering musical sounds when the morning and evening rays of the Sun played upon it. They were likewise every fifth year witnesses to the mysterious battle of the Memnonian birds, which occurred in their country no less than in Troas and they could even produce one of their tribes, which was designated by the appellation of Memnones.* Thus it appears, that the claims of the two rival Ethiopias, the Cushadwip within and the Cusha-dwip without, are balanced with the nicest accu 2 'Diod. Bibl. lib. ii. p. 109. Diod. Bibl. lib. ii. p. 109. c. 26. Plin. lib. vi. c. 30. Strab. Geog. lib. xv. p. 728. Pausan. Phoc. p. 669. |