He leads an army of combined Susianians and Ethiopians to the assistance of Priam, his father's brother, and, after greatly distinguishing himself, perishes in one of the battles before Troy.

At the same time he is claimed as one of their monarchs by the Ethiopians upon the Nile, and identified by the Egyptians with their king, Amunoph III., whose statue became known as "the vocal Memnon." Sometimes his expedition is supposed to have started from the African Ethiopia, and to have proceeded by way of Egypt to its destination.
There were palaces, called "Memnonia," and supposed to have been built by him, both in Egypt and at Susa; and there was a tribe, called Memnones, near Meroe.

Memnon thus unites the Eastern and the Western Ethiopians; and the less we regard him as an historical personage, the more must we view him as personifying the ethnic identity of the two races.
The ordinary genealogies containing the name of Belus point in the same direction, and serve more definitely to connect the Babylonians with the Cushites of the Nile.

Pherecydes, who is an earlier writer than Herodotus, makes Agenor, the son of Neptune, marry Damno, the daughter of Belus, and have issue Phoenix, Isaea, and Melia, of whom Melia marries Danaus, and Isaea Aegyptus.

Apollodorus, the disciple of Eratosthenes, expresses the connection thus:--"Neptune took to wife Libya (or Africa), and had issue Belus and Agenor.