OBELISK

(Gr. e^airxof, dim. from effao;, Lat. obelus, a needle, or dart.) A lofty quadrangular monolithic column, " diminishing upwards, with the sides gently inclined, but not so as to terminate in an apex at the top; neither is it truncated or cut off at the summit, but the sides are sloped off so as to form a flattish pyramidal figure, by which the whole is suitably finished off and brought to a point, without the upper part being so contracted as to appear insignificant." Egypt w^s, properly speaking, the land of obelisks; and they are unquestionably to be reckoned among the most ancient monuments of that extraordinary people. Much learning and ingenuity has been expended in endeavouring to ascertain their origin, and the purposes for which they were erected; but it does not appear that any satisfactory solution of the problem has hitherto been given. It has been frequently a erted that obelisks were originally erected in honour of the sun, of which they were said to be symbolical, and that they served the purposes of a gnome or sun-dial; but this opinion is now almost totally rejected, and it is generally believed that obelisks were nothing more than monumental structures, serving as ornaments to the open squares in which they were generally built, or intended to celebrate some important event and to perpetuate its remembrance. They were usually adorned with hieroglyphics; and we learn from the testimony of Diodorus and Strabo that the inscriptions with wliich they were charged. declared the amount of gold and silver, the number of troops, and the quantity of ivory, perfumes, and corn which all the countries subject to Egypt were required to furnish. The two largest obelisks were erected by Sesostris in Helio polis. They were formed of a single block of granite, and measured 180 feet in height. When Egypt became a Roman province, August us removed these obelisks to his own capital; and this practice found numerous imitators both m some of his succe ors to the imperial throne, and, at a much later period, in many of the Roman pontiffs from the 16th century down to the present times. Of these obelisks that of the Later an, which is the largest now known, being 105 feet in height exclusive of the pedestal, and weighing 440 tons, was brought by Const an tine from Helio polis to Alexandria, and thence by Constant i us his son to Rome, where it was.erected in the Circus Maxim us. The obelisk next in size to that of the Later an was placed originally in the Vatican circus by Caligula, but it now standfr in the piazza of St. Peter's; its entire height is 132 feet, including the pedestal, . The obelisks most generally known, at least in name, are the Luxor, which was removed to Paris in 1833; and the two 837 OBJECT-GLASS. monoliths called Cleopatra's Needles, of which one it I standing, and the other on the ground; but these are smaller than those we have adverted to, the Luxor being 76 feet in height, and the Needle of Cleopatra which still stands being about 63 feet in height, exclusive of the pedestal, . A full consideration of the Egyptian obelisks would involve us in the discu ion of several most important questions, on which our limits preclude us from entering. Of these perhaps the most extraordinary is the wonderful knowledge of mechanical power which the Egyptians evinced in erecting and removing such gigantic Btructures,_a feat which it would require the greatest skill and ingenuity of modern engineers, even in the present comparatively perfect state of mechanical science, to accomplish. ( See the learned treatise of Zoega on Obelisks; see also SirG. Wilkinson's Egyptians, vol. iii., pa im, which contains some excellent illustrations of the different methods adopted by that people for removing their huge structures from place to place.) [s. 850]