Recently, an original long lost manuscript resurfaced having been discovered in an ancient bookshop in the back waters of the southern states.
Ventriloquism Used In Ancient Eqypt
By the Mosaic Law, which was given about fifteen hundred years before Christ, the Jews were forbidden from consulting those having familiar spirits. So accustomed, however, were the Hebrews, who had evidently become acquainted with the voice during their captivity in Egypt, with this mode of divination that one of their prophets compares it to the power of sanctified utterance where he says (Isaiah 29: 4): ” And thy voice shall be as one that hath a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust.”
Just where the Egyptians obtained their knowledge of the art is uncertain, but in the performance of the ” mysteries ” which accompanied their worship of Osiris, the judge of the dead in the lower world, a seemingly unearthly voice, proceeding either from the earth or from overhead, played no unimportant part. Inasmuch as the voices described were such as have always been peculiarly identified with ventriloquism, the practice of this art by unscrupulous priests would seem to afford a natural solution of the mystery. This explanation might also be applied to the phenomenon attending the dawning of a new day upon the colossal statue of Memnon, which stood near Thebes in Egypt on the bank of the Nile, and became renowned as the ” Vocal Memnon.” According to ancient tradition, this statue when first touched by the rays of the rising sun emitted a musical tone, like the snapping of a harp string, which the imaginative Greeks conceived to be the voice of Memnon greeting his mother Eos (the dawn).