The first musical machine (maybe)

colosso di memnone The idea of building a machine capable of reproducing music has always existed.
The first machine “ musical ” We have news of is the colossal statue of Memnone in Thebes, built around 1500 BC. In reality, these are two twin statues representing the Faraone Amenhotep III (fifteenth century BC) in a sitting position, with hands on the knees and the gaze turned to the east, towards the river and the nascent sun. Only one of them, however, was sound.
The name by which these statues are still known, Memnone giants, was coined by Greek historians, who associated them with mythological hero.

Memnone, in fact, is a Homeric character: King Ethiopian, son of the Aurora and a Trojan prince, rushed to help Troy and perished under his walls at the hands of Achilles.
In the imagination of visitors of the classical age, the hero depicted in the statue greeted his mother (Eos Goddess of the alba) with a sound as a sound of cetra ropes that broke. The thing was explained with the presence, in quartzite in which the statue is carved, of crystals, which in a certain way were settled following the difference in temperature, truly remarkable in that area, between the night and the day. [hypothesis of prof. Barocas].
After a restoration, carried out in Roman times at the behest of the emperor Settimio Severo, in 199 AD. The sounds ceased to be audible.

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