statue, fifty-three feet high, was famed, as long as
the Egyptian priesthood lasted, for sending forth musical sounds
every morning at sunrise, when first touched by the sun's rays; and no
traveller ever visited Thebes without listening for these remarkable
notes. The journey through Upper Egypt was at this time perfectly open
and safe, and the legs and feet of the statue are covered with names,
and inscriptions in prose and verse, of travellers who had visited it
at sunrise during the reigns of Hadrian and the Antonines. From these
curious memorials we learn that Hadrian visited Thebes a second time
with his queen, Sabina, in the fifteenth year of his reign. When the
empress first visited the statue she was disappointed at not hearing
the musical sounds; but, on her hinting threats of the emperor's
displeasure, her curiosity was gratified on the following morning.
This gigantic statue of hard gritstone had formerly been broken in half
across the waist, and the upper part thrown to the ground, either by the
shock of an earthquake or the ruder shock of Persian zeal against the
Egyptian religion; and for some centuries past the musical notes had
issued from the broken fragments. Such was its fallen state when
the Empress Sabina saw it, and when Strabo and Juvenal and Pausanias
listened to its sounds; and it was not till after the reign of Hadrian
that it was again raised upright like its companion, as travellers now
see it.

[Illustration: 100b..jpg The Slumber Song]

From the painting by P. Grot. Johann

From this second visit, and a longer acquaintance, Hadrian seems to have
formed a very poor opinion of the Egyptians and Egyptian Jews; and the
following curious letter, written in 134 A.D. to his friend Servianus,
throws much light upon their religion as worshippers of Serapis, at
the same time that it proves how numerous the Christians had become in
Alexandria, even within seventy years of the period during which the
evangelist Mark is believed to have preached there:

"Hadrian Augustus to Servianus, the consul, greeting:

"As for Egypt, which you were praising to me, dearest Servianus, I have
found its people wholly light, wavering, and flying after every breath
of a report. Those who worship Serapis are Christians, and those who
call themselves bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis. There is
no ruler of a Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no presbyter of the
Christians, who is not a mathematician, an augur