Thebaic stone, which is sprinkled all over with spots like gold, is found in Africa, adjacent to Egypt; being peculiarly adapted, from its natural properties, for the manufacture of hones. In the neighborhood of Syene, too, in Thebais, there is a stone found that is now known as syenite, but was formerly called red-spotted granite.

Monarchs have entered into a sort of rivalry with one another in forming elongated blocks of this stone, known as obelisks,[244] and consecrated to the divinity of the Sun. The blocks had this form given to them in resemblance to the rays of that luminary, which are so called[245] in the Egyptian language.

Mesphres, who reigned in the City of the Sun, Heliopolis, was the first who erected one of these obelisks, being warned to do so in a dream: and there is an inscription upon the obelisk to this effect.

At a later period other kings had these obelisks hewn. Sesosthes erected four of them in the above-named city, forty-eight cubits in height. Rhamsesis, too, who was reigning at the time of the capture of Troy, erected one, a hundred and forty cubits high. Having quitted the spot where the palace of Apis stood, this monarch erected another obelisk, one hundred and twenty cubits in height, but of prodigious thickness, the sides being no less than eleven cubits in breadth. It is said that one hundred and twenty thousand men were employed upon this work;[246] and that the king, when it was on the point of being elevated, being apprehensive that the machinery employed might not prove strong enough for the weight, with the view of increasing the peril that might be entailed by due want of precaution on the part of the workmen, had his own son fastened to the summit; in order that the safety of the prince might at the same time ensure the safety of the mass of stone. It was in his admiration of this work, that, when King Cambyses took the city by storm, and the conflagration had already reached the very foot of the obelisk, he ordered the fire to be extinguished; for he entertained a respect for this stupendous erection which he had not entertained for the city itself.

PtolemÆus Philadelphus erected at Alexandria an obelisk eighty cubits high, which had been prepared by order of King Necthebis: it was without any inscription, and cost far more trouble in its carriage and elevation, than had been originally expended in quarrying it. Some writers inform us that it was conveyed on a raft, under the inspection of the architect Satyrus. For this purpose, a canal was dug from the river Nile to the spot where the obelisk lay; and two broad vessels, laden with blocks of similar stone a foot square, the cargo of each amounting to double the size, and consequently double the weight, of the obelisk, were brought beneath it; the extremities of the obelisk remaining supported by the opposite sides of the canal. The blocks of stone were then removed, and the vessels being thus gradually lightened, received their burden. It was erected upon a basis of six square blocks, quarried from the same mountain, and the artist was rewarded with the sum of fifty talents. This obelisk was placed by the king above-mentioned in the Arsinooeum,[247] in testimony of his affection for his wife and sister ArsinoË. At a later period, as it was found to be an inconvenience to the docks, Maximus, then prÆfect of Egypt, had it transferred to the Forum there, after removing the summit for the purpose of substituting a gilded point, an intention which was ultimately abandoned.

There are two other obelisks, which were in CÆsar’s Temple at Alexandria, near the harbor, forty-two cubits in height, and originally hewn by order of King Mesphres. But the most difficult enterprise of all was the carriage of these obelisks by sea to Rome, in vessels which excited the greatest admiration. Indeed, the late Emperor Augustus consecrated the one which brought over the first obelisk, as a lasting memorial of this marvellous undertaking, in the docks at Puteoli; but it was destroyed by fire. The one in which, by order of the Emperor Caius, the other obelisk had been transported to Rome, after having been preserved for some years and looked upon as the most wonderful construction ever beheld upon the seas, was brought to Ostia, by order of the late Emperor Claudius; and towers of Puteolan earth being first erected upon it, it was sunk for the construction of the harbor which he was making there. And then, besides, there was the necessity of constructing other vessels to carry these obelisks up the Tiber; by which it became practically ascertained, that the depth of water in that river is not less than that of the river Nile.