moaning noise or the sharp twang of a harp-string. This was supposed to be the voice of Memnon responding to the greeting of his mother Eos. After the restoration of the statue by Septimius Severus (A.D. 170) the sounds ceased. The sound, which has been heard by modern travellers, is generally attributed to the passage of the air through the pores of the stone, chiefly due to the change of temperature at sunrise. Others have held that it was a device of the priests. Strabo (xvii. 816), the first to mention the sound, declares that he himself heard it, and Pausanias (i. 42, 3) says “one would compare the sound most nearly to the broken chord of a harp or a lute” (Juvenal xv. 5, with Mayor’s note; Tacitus, Annals, ii. 61).
The supporters of the solar theory look upon Memnon as the son of the dawn, who, though he might vanish from sight for a time, could not be destroyed; hence the immortality bestowed upon him by Zeus. He comes from the east, that is, the land of the rising sun. On early Greek vases he is represented as borne through the air; this is the sun making his way to his place of departure in the west. Both Susa and Egyptian Thebes, where there was a Memnonion or temple in honour of the hero, were centres of sun-worship. “Eos, the mother of Memnon, is so transparently the morning, that her child must rise again as surely as the sun reappears to run his daily course across the heavens” (G. W. Cox, Mythology and Folklore, p. 267)
See J. A. Letronne, La Statue vocale de Memnon (1833); C. R. Lepsius, Briefe aus Ägypten (1852); “The Voice of Memnon” in Edinburgh Review (July 1886); article by R. Holland in Roscher’s Lexikon der mythologie.
MEMNON OF RHODES, brother of Mentor (q.v.), with whom he entered the services of the rebellious satrap Artabazus of Phrygia, who married his sister. Mentor after the conquest of Egypt rose high in the favour of the king, and Memnon, who had taken refuge with Artabazus at the Macedonian court, became a zealous adherent of the Persian king; he assisted Mentor in subduing the rebellious satraps and dynasts in Asia Minor, and succeeded him as general of the Persian troops. In the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomica, ii. 28, stories are told of his methods of obtaining money, and evading his obligations; thus he extorted a large sum of money from the conquered inhabitants of Lampsacus and cheated his soldiers out of a part of their pay. He owned a large territory in eastern Troas (Arrian i. 17, 8; Strabo xiii. 587). He gained some successes against Philip II. of Macedon in 336 (Diod. xvii. 6; Polyaen. v. 44, 4, 5) and commanded the Persian army against Alexander’s invasion. Convinced that it was impossible to meet Alexander in a pitched battle, his plan was to lay waste the country and retire into the interior, meanwhile organizing resistance on sea (where the Persians were far superior to the Macedonians) and carrying the war into Greece. But his advice was overridden by the Persian satraps, who forced him to fight at the Granicus. After his defeat he tried to organize the maritime war and occupied the Greek islands, but in the beginning of 333 he fell ill and died (Arrian ii. 1, 1). (Ed. M.)
MEMORANDUM OF ASSOCIATION, in English company law,
a document subscribed to by seven or more persons associated
for any lawful purpose, by subscribing to which, and otherwise
complying with the requisitions of the Companies Acts in respect
of registration, they may form themselves into an incorporated
company, with or without limited liability (see Company).
MEMORIAL DAY (or Decoration Day), a holiday observed in the northern states of the United States on the 30th of May, in honour of soldiers killed in the American Civil War, and especially for the decoration of their graves with flags and flowers. Before the close of the Civil War the 30th of May was thus celebrated in several of the southern states; in the North there was no fixed day commonly celebrated until 1868, when (on the 5th of May) Commander-in-Chief John A. Logan, of the Grand Army of the Republic, issued a general order designating the 30th of May 1868 “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion”; Logan did this “with the hope that it will be kept up from year to year.” In 1882 the Grand Army urged that the “proper designation of May 30 is Memorial Day”—not Decoration Day. Rhode Island made it a legal holiday in 1874, Vermont in 1876, and New Hampshire in 1877; and by 1910 it was a legal holiday in all the states and territories save Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. In Virginia the 30th of May is observed as a Confederate Memorial Day. The 3rd of June (the birthday of Jefferson Davis) is observed as Confederate Memorial Day in Louisiana and Tennessee; the 26th of April in Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi; and the 10th of May in North Carolina and South Carolina.
MEMPHIS, the capital of Egypt through most of its early history, now represented by the rubbish mounds at Bedreshēn on the W. bank of the Nile 14 m. S. of Cairo. As the chief seat of the worship of Ptah, the artisan god (Hephaestus), Memphis must have existed from a very remote time. But its greatness probably began with Menes (q.v.), who united the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt, and is said to have secured the site for his capital near the border of the two lands by diverting the course of the river eastward. Memphis was the chief city of the 1st nome of Lower Egypt; in its early days it was known as “the white Walls” or the “white wall,” a name which clung to its citadel down to Herodotus’s day. The residence here of Pepi I. of the VIth Dynasty, as well as his pyramid in the necropolis, was named Mn-nfr, and this gradually became the usual designation of the whole city, becoming Menfi, Membi in late Egyptian, i.e. Memphis. It was also called Hakeptah, “Residence of the ka of Ptah,” and this name furnishes a possible origin for that of Egypt (Aἴγυπτος). Various dynasties had their ancestral seats elsewhere and individual kings built their palaces and pyramids at some distance up or down the valley, but Memphis must have been generally the centre of the government and the largest city in Egypt until the New Empire (Dyns. XVIII.–XX.), when Thebes took the lead. In the succeeding period it regained its ancient position. The government of the Persian satrap was seated in Memphis. After the conquest of Alexander the city quickly lost its supremacy to his new foundation, and although it remained the greatest native centre, its population was less than that of Alexandria. In the time of Strabo (xvii. 807) it was the second city of Egypt, inferior only to Alexandria, and with a mixed population like the latter. Memphis was still important though declining at the time of the Moslem conquest. Its final fall was due to the rise of the Arabic city of Fostāt on the right bank of the Nile almost opposite the northern end of the old capital; and its ruins, so far as they still lay above ground, gradually disappeared, being used as a quarry for the new city, and afterwards for Cairo. The remains of “Menf” were still imposing late in the 12th century, when they were described by ʽAbdallatif. Now the ruins of the city, the great temple of Ptah, the dwelling of Apis, and the palaces of the kings, are traceable only by a few stones among the palm trees and fields and heaps of rubbish. But the necropolis has been to a great extent protected by the accumulations of blown sand. Pyramids of the Old and Middle kingdoms form a chain 20 m. long upon the edge of the valley from Giza to Dahshur. At Saqqara, opposite Memphis itself, the step-pyramid of Zoser of the IIIrd Dynasty, several pyramids of the Vth and VIth Dynasties, and innumerable mastaba-tombs of the Old Kingdom, are crowded together in the cemetery. Later tombs are piled upon and cut through the old ones. One of the chief monuments is the Serapeum or sepulchre of the Apis bulls, discovered by Mariette in 1851. From 1905 J. E. Quibell was charged by the Service des Antiquités solely with the excavations in this vast necropolis. His principal discovery has been the extensive remains of the Coptic monastery of St Jeremias, with remarkable sculptures and frescoes. Flinders Petrie began the systematic exploration of the ruins of Bedreshēn, and in three seasons cleared up much of the topography of the ancient city, identifying the mound of the citadel and palace, a foreign quarter, &c. Among his finds not the least interesting is a large series of terra-cotta heads representing the characteristic features of the foreigners who thronged the bazaars of Memphis. They date from the Persian rule down to
