Homer's allusion to the treasures of the city, and to the size of its standing army, numbering 20,000 chari- ots, shows the early repute of Thebes for wealth and power. Its fame as a great capital had crossed the sea when Greece was yet in its infancy as a nation. It has been questioned whether Herodotus visited Upper Egypt, but he says, " I went to Heliopolis and to Thebes, expressly to try whether the priests of those places would agree in their accounts with the priests at INIemphis" (ii, 3). Afterwards he describes the feat- ures of the Nile valley, and the cliief points and dis- tances upon the river, as only an eye-witness would ba likely to record them. He iulbrms us that "from Heliopolis to Thebes is nine days' sail up the river, the distance 4800 stadia . . . and the distance from the sea inland to Thebes 6120 stadia" (ii, 8, 9). -In ch. xxix of the same book he states that he ascended the Nile as high as Elephantine. Herodotus, however, gives no particular account of the city, which in his time had lost much of its ancient grandeur. He alludes to the Temple of Jupiter there, with its ram-headed image, and to tiie fact that goats, never sheep, were of- fered in sacritice. In the 1st century before Christ, Diodorus visited Thebes, and he devotes several sec- tions of his general work to its history and appearance. Though he saw the city when it had sunk to quite secondary importance, he preserves the tratlition of its early grandeur — its circuit of 140 stadia, the size of its ]niblic edifices, the magnificence of its temples, the num- ber of its monuments, the dimensions of its private houses, some of them four or five stories high — all giv- ing it an air of grandeur and beauty surpassing not only all other cities of Egypt, but of the world. Dio- dorus deplores the spoiling of its buildings and monu- ments by Cambyses (1,40,46). Strabo, who visited Egypt a little later — at about, the beginning of the Cliristian iiera — thus describes (xvii,816) the city under the name Diospolis: "Vestiges of its magnitude still exist which extend eighty stadia in length. There are a great number of temples, many of wliich Cam- byses mutilated. The spot is at present occupied by villages. One part of it, in wiiich is the city, lies in Arabia; anothe,r is in the country on the other side of tlie river, where is the Jlemnonium." Strabo here makes tlie Nile the dividing line between Libya and Arabia. Tlie temples of El-Karnak and El-Uksur (Luxor) are on the eastern side of the river, where was probably the main part of the citv. Strabo gives the following de- X.-U
scription of the twin colossi still standing upon the west- ern plain : " Here are two colossal figures near each oth- er, each consisting of a single stone. One is entire ; the upper parts of the other, from the chair, are fallen down — the effect, it is said, of an earthquake. It is believed that ohce a day a noise, as of a slight blow, issues from the part of the statue which remains in the seat, and on its base. When I was at those places, with .'Elius (Jallus. and numerous friends and soldiers about him, I heard a noise at the first hour of the day, but whether proceed- ing from the base or from the colossus, or produced on purpose by some of those standing around the base, I cannot confidently assert. For, from the uncertainty of the cause, I am inclined to believe anything rather than that stones disposed in that manner could send forth sound" (xvii,46). Simple, honest, sceptical Strabo 1 Eighteen centuries later some travellers have inter- rogated these same stones as to the ancient mystery of sound; and not at sunrise, but in the glaring noon, the statue has emitted a sharp, clear sound like the ringing of a disk of brass under a sudden concussion. This was produced by a ragged urchin, who, for a few piastres, clambered up the knees of the " vocal Memnon," and. there etlectually concealing himself from observation, struck with a hammer a sonorous stone in the lap of the statue. Wilkinson conjectures that the priests had a secret chamber in the body of the statue, from which they could strike it unobserved at the instant of sunrise, thus producing in the credulous multitude the notion of a supernatural phenomenon. It is difficidt to conceive, however, that such a trick, performed in open day, could have escaped detection, and we are therefore left to share the mingled wonder and scepticism of Strabo (see '\!hom\mm, Photographic Views of E(jyp1, Past and Present, p. 156).
Pliny speaks of Thebes in Egypt as known to fame as "a hanging city," i. e. built upon arches, so that an army could be led forth from beneath the c'xty while the inhabitants above were wholly unconscious of it. He mentions also that the river flows through the mid- dle of the city. But he questions the story of the arch- es, because, "if this had really been the case, there is no doubt that Homer would have mentioned it, seeing that he has celebrated the hundred gates of Thebes." Do not the two stories possibly explain each other? May there not have been near the river-line arched buildings used as barracks, from whose gateways issued forth 20,000 chariots of war?