The form, name, dimensions, invention, material, and use of obelisks.

§1. Obelisks are monoliths, that is, they are made of one piece of rock only. Pieces set up in the form of an obelisk are never considered one. The lofty shaft at Washington, D. C., cannot, therefore, be styled an obelisk. In addition to being composed of one piece only, all obelisks are quadrangular, the sides sloping gradually and perceptibly but right-angled all the way to the top, where they are surmounted by a miniature pyramid or trapezium. They were, as far as we know, commonly erected in pairs at the entrance of the temples, evidently serving there in the capacity of guardians. The stone was polished to a high state of perfection, and the inscriptions added in intaglio-relievo by skilled stone-cutters under the direction of scribes. Whether the figures of these inscriptions were filled out with copper or gold, as some maintain, is extremely doubtful.

With the pyramidion it was different. While its usual dedicatory inscriptions remained undoubtedly as they were chiseled, the point or apex seems to have been surmounted by gold or gilded bronze. The sun would naturally in the early morning first touch with its rays this point and bathe it in splendor. It would appear from extant obelisks that, in order to have the gold added, the stone apex was not brought out to a fine point, but left rugged and incomplete. Yet this unevenness may also have been the result of time and the abrasion caused by the sand of the desert. We know of the Obelisk of Karnak, erected by queen Hatasu, that the apex of its pyramidion was covered with "pure gold", as the inscription on the obelisk itself states. Others, again, were covered with copper; for instance, the two obelisks of Heliopolis, of which but one remains now, which were seen in this condition by St. Ephraim Syrus (308 A. D.), Denys of Telmahre (840 A. D.), and a number of Arabic writers.

It is a very interesting fact, that in the inscriptions of the vth and vith dynasties in Memphis the obelisk has a curious shape, being represented by a short and singularly unproportional shaft on a high and wide pedestal, and crowned at the point of the pyramidion by a large disk of the sun. This figure, in the first place, closely resembles a pyramid or a combination of the pyramid and the obelisk, almost forcing on us the assumption that the obelisk grew out of the pyramid, and, in the second place, the disk of the sun plainly refers to the mystic sun-worship for which the obelisk primarily served as an index finger.

The sides of the obelisk were always intended to be inscribed, for they were to record the deeds and praise of a Pharaoh. That some obelisks have come down to our days without inscriptions is due to the fact, that the monarch who ordered them died, and his successor either would not spend the money on the monument of a predecessor to have it inscribed, or deemed it sacrilegious to put his own name on what did not belong to him. We find filial piety displayed only by Thothmes IV., who would not allow the monument of his great predecessor, Thothmes III., to lie half-finished in the quarry, but erected it, not, however, without succumbing to the sore temptation of adding his own name and using two thirds of the space of the whole obelisk. This is at present the Lateran Obelisk in Rome. Whether the obelisks were inscribed before being erected, or vice versa, cannot now be determined. From some uninscribed specimens we should infer that they were inscribed when in their proper position, while from the Lateran Obelisk we could draw the conclusion that they were first completed in all details before they were erected.

One effect of the removal of the obelisks by the Romans was to break off the edges at the bottom, so that there was reason to fear that re-erection would not make them safe. To obviate this danger, they placed bronze crabs at each corner to fill out the gaps. Why they should have hit upon the form of the crab or scorpion is not very evident. Perhaps they chose the crab from a religious point of view, in order to conform to the curious religious doctrines and superstitious notions entertained by the Egyptians under the Ptolemies, and elucidated by the inscriptions and papyri of that time.

§2. The word "obelisk" comes from the Greek signifying a "pointed instrument", and is, in turn, derived from another Greek word obelos "a spit". Afterwards this name was applied to a "pointed pillar", on account of the latter's resemblance to a spit. By the Egyptians the obelisk was called glyph tekhen. This word occurs quite frequently in inscriptions, especially on the obelisks themselves, where the "determinative" glyph alone is given without the literal complement, that is, the spelling.

The pyramidion of the obelisk, on the other hand, was called benben by the Egyptians. The prominent part played by it in the mysteries of sun-worship is attested by the inscription of king Piankhi (about 700 B. C.), for in it is mentioned the glyph (ha-t benben-t), "the temple of the pyramidion" in Heliopolis. The inscription tells us in this connection the following story: "His majesty entered the temple of Ra and his divine sanctuary with profound veneration. The first high-priest offered up a prayer to god in the star-chamber to ward off misfortune from the king, placed on his brow the fillet, and purified him with frankincense and holy water. Flowers of the temple of the pyramidion were brought to him and blossoms were given to him. He ascended the stairs to the grand niche to see the god Ra in the temple of the pyramidion. Such was done by the king himself. His chieftains stood apart, while he drew back the bolt, opened the door, and saw his father Ra in the temple of the pyramidion resting in the Maad-boat of Ra and the Sektet-boat of Tum. He then closed the doors and put on them clay and sealed them with the king's own ring." The frequent mention of the pyramidion and the evident importance attached by the king to his visit to this sanctuary plainly show that there was a deep signification lying hidden beneath the strange upper part of the obelisk. In it the Rising Sun, RÂ, and the Setting Sun, Tum, find their mutual points of contact.

§3. The dimensions of the obelisks which have come down to us vary very much. By consulting the list on pages 9-11 it will be seen that at present the height ranges between 2 to 105 feet. As has already been mentioned, the largest obelisks date back to the time when Egypt entered upon, or was already in, its golden age, that having been the time when the Pharaohs could erect monuments worthy of their reign. Before that time, when they served as grave-stones, the obelisks were of a comparatively small size. Still we find some very large specimens under later dynasties, as for instance that of Psametik II. on the Monte Citorio in Rome, which is 71 feet high, while that of the Ptolemies in PhilÆ, which is only a fragment, measures 33 feet. The Romans also erected large monoliths, Domitian's obelisk on the Piazza Navona in Rome being 54 feet, and that of Hadrian on the Monte Pincio 30 feet high. Constantine the Great erected the large obelisk at Arles in France, measuring 56 feet, which may have possibly been taken out of a French quarry.

There must have been some fixed rule for determining the thickness of an obelisk when the length was given. According to a measurement of all the obelisks we may state, that the base was generally 1/9 to 1/11 of the entire length. Thus the New York Obelisk is 7 ft. 9¼ in. by 7 ft. 8¼ in. at the base, which is about 1/9 of the entire length (69½ ft.). The obelisk of Hatasu is of a somewhat different proportion, the thickness at the base being only 1/13 of the total length. The obelisk with the thickest base is that which is still in the quarry at Assuan, the base measuring 11 ft. 1½ in. by 11 ft. 1½ in.

That monuments of such height and thickness weigh a great deal is self-evident. Our New York Obelisk would tip an adequate scale at the figure: 448,000 pounds. Eight of the extant obelisks, however, weigh still more, the heaviest being that of Assuan which, if it had ever been erected, would weigh 1,540,000 pounds, having for a second the Lateran Obelisk in Rome with 1,020,000 pounds.

§4. The material of which the obelisks are made is the granite of Syene. It was preferred by the Egyptians on account of its wonderful hardness, durability, lack of flaws (the so-called maladie de granite), and its reddish color. It is really the amphibole-granite, but is commonly called Syenite from the name of the place where it is found. Although flaws in it are of rare occurrence, they nevertheless sometimes appear in the obelisks. Whenever they were discovered after the block was detached from the native rock, they did not render the stone by any means worthless, as the Luxor Obelisk in Paris has proved. This had a crack in it at the base from the day of its erection in Thebes, which, when pinned by the Egyptians with a wooden plug at that early time, has not since then interfered in the least with the strength or stability of the obelisk.

The supply of this hard granite was and is still inexhaustible, being massed up in immense mountains in various parts of Egypt. It is found in the eastern desert near Thebes. Egyptian monuments also record the quarrying of stone at HammamÂt, on the road to KossÊr. It is, however, found best in the vicinity of the First Cataract and, as the name "Syenite" indicates, especially at Syene (Assuan). This city, of some importance under the Pharaohs, was called SyÊnÉ by the Romans, and glyph Sun-t by the Egyptians. It is situated opposite the island of Elephantine, called by the Egyptians glyph Âbu-t ("the ivory-city"), the most northerly island in the First Cataract, forming the southern boundary of ancient and modern Egypt. Where the chisel and the tools of the stone-cutters were kept in constant use, where men formerly battled with the stubborn rock, and most of Egypt's monuments were cut and embellished—no sound now greets the traveler. The place is deserted, itself a monument of an ancient people's diligence and perseverance.

§5. The question as to the invention of that wonderful, simple, yet strange figure we call obelisk, can be answered without hesitation. The invention belongs wholly to the Egyptians. As has been pointed out before, the people of the IVth and Vth dynasties already made use of this form of monument. Perhaps its first appearance dates back even further, although no such old obelisks exist to warrant this assumption.

The next question to be answered is: to what use were the obelisks put? The ancient dynasties did not use them for ornament's sake, as the tomb would hardly be a suitable place for works of art that were to be admired. They originally served as memorial tablets and tomb-stones. Afterwards their surpassing beauty as monuments of art was perceived, and they were placed in pairs in front of the gates and pylons of the temples for ornament. They broke the monotony of the straight and peculiar Egyptian style of building, and by their apparently thin and column-like appearance set off to advantage the massive and ponderous structures round about. A position in front of the temples was certainly the very best which could be assigned to them, and it can therefore be no matter of surprise, that the Pharaoh sought to commemorate his victories and virtues on such splendid tablets. We find the king in most cases use all the available space on the obelisk, and whenever he did not use all of it, another would be sure to add his own glorious name and deeds to those of some predecessor. We consequently find some obelisks that bear the inscriptions of as many as three different rulers; for instance, the Lateran, London, and New York Obelisks. These inscriptions would effectually serve the purpose of history, if they recorded events of vast political importance, but, unfortunately, of obelisk-inscriptions still extant, none are dated after the manner of other historical monuments.

The Romans immediately recognized the artistic merits of the obelisks, though they were perhaps more struck by their grandeur and elegance than anything else, and carried off many of them as trophies to sunny Italy. They adorned Rome with them, where, with all their rents and fractures, and after all the injury by the hand of man and havoc of the elements, the obelisks still baffle the ravages of time in the "City of the Seven Hills". As a "smart" people, however, the Romans tried to utilize them in some way: so they hit upon the idea to make them serve as sun-dials. Augustus experimented to this end with the obelisk now on the Monte Citorio in Rome, but, as he was not successful, this project was entirely abandoned.