THE EGYPTIAN OBELISKS
Among the first objects that arrest the attention and powerfully
excite the curiosity of the visitor in Rome are the Egyptian obelisks.
They remind him impressively that the oldest things in this city of
ages are but as of yesterday in comparison with these imperishable
relics of the earliest civilisation. At one time it is said that there
were no less than forty-eight obelisks erected in Rome,--six of the
largest size and forty-two of the smaller,--all conveyed at enormous
cost and with almost incredible labour from the banks of the Nile to
the banks of the Tiber. Upwards of thirty of them have perished
without leaving any trace behind. They are doubtless buried deep under
the ruins of ancient Rome, but the chance of their disinterment is
very problematical. One obelisk, indeed, was exposed a hundred and
forty years ago in the square of the principal church of the Jesuits,
near the Pantheon; but being found to be broken, and also to underlie
a corner of the church and the greater part of an adjoining palace, so
that it could not be extracted without seriously injuring these
buildings, it was covered up again, and was thus lost to the world. As
it is, we find in Rome the largest collection of obelisks that exists
at the present day in the world, and the best field for studying them.
Obelisks were dedicated to the sun, which was the central object of
worship, and occupied the most conspicuous position in the religious
system of the oldest nations. Sun-worship, that which waited upon some
hill-top to catch the first beams of the morning that created a new
day, is the oldest and the most natural of all kinds of worship. He
was adored as the source of all the life and motion and force in the
world by the most primitive people; and we find numerous traces of
this ancient sun-worship in the rude stone monuments, with their
cup-shaped symbols, that have survived on our moors, in many of the
old customs which still linger in our Christianity, and in the name by
which the most sacred day of the week is commonly known among us. All
the benefits conferred upon our world by the sun must have been
strikingly apparent to the ancient Egyptians, dwelling in a land
exposed to the sun's vertical rays, and clothed with almost tropical
beauty and luxuriance. When they watched the ebbing of the overflowing
waters of the Nile, and saw the moist earth on which the sun's rays
fell, quickened at once into a marvellous profusion of plant and
animal life, they naturally regarded the sun as the Creator, and so
deified him in that capacity. The origin of all life, vegetable and
animal, to those who stood, as it were, by its cradle, when the world
was young and haunted by heaven, seemed a greater mystery and wonder
than it is to us in these later faithless ages. Long familiarity with
it in its full-grown proportions has made it commonplace to us.
Both the obelisk and the pyramid were solar symbols, the obelisk being
the symbol of the rising sun, and the pyramid of the setting. The
fundamental idea of the obelisk was that of creation by light; that of
the pyramid, death through the extinction of light. And this
symbolical difference between the two objects was practically
expressed by the different situations in which they were placed; the
obelisks being all located on the eastern side of the Nile, that being
the region of the rising sun, and of the dawn of life; while the
pyramids are all found on the western bank of the river, the region
of the sunset, with its awfully sterile hills and silent untravelled
desert of sand from which no tidings had ever come to living man,
where the dead were buried under the shades of night, in their
rock-cut cemeteries. It might thus seem, that by placing obelisks in
our churchyards in association with the dead, we were violating their
original significance, and guilty of adding another to the many
incongruities which have arisen from adopting pagan symbols in
Christian burying-places. But in reality we find a deeper reason for
the association. In some of the oldest sculptures in Egypt, an obelisk
is represented as standing on the top of a pyramid; and by this
combination it was meant to signify the power of life triumphing over
death. And hence the obelisk is the most suitable of all forms to
indicate in our cemeteries the glorious truth of the resurrection,
life rising victorious out of the transitory condition of death.
And how admirably did the obelisk lend itself to its symbolical
purposes! There was a most wonderful harmony between the idea and the
object which expressed it. Being composed of the most durable of all
materials, the hard indestructible granite, the eternal sun was thus
fittingly represented by an object that lifts its stern finger in
unchangeable defiance of the vicissitudes of the seasons and the ages.
Its highly polished surface and rich rosy red colour, its sharply
defined lines and narrow proportions, combined with its immense
height, suggested the brilliancy and hue and form of a pencil of
light. Its tall red column flashing in the strong morning radiance,
like a tongue of flame mounting up to its source in the solar fire, or
like a ray of the halo that rises up on the low horizon of the Libyan
desert, when the dawn has crimsoned all the eastern heavens, might
thus well be selected as the most suitable object to bring the
invisible sun-god within the ken of human vision and the range of
human worship. The poetical imagination may detect a significance even
in the difference between the material used in the construction of
the obelisk, and that used in the construction of the pyramid, though
this may not have been designed by the makers. The obelisks are all
formed of granite, the foundation-stone of the globe, belonging to the
oldest azoic formation, which laid down the first basis for the
appearing of life. The pyramids were nearly all made of nummulitic
limestone composed of the remains of organic life; a material which
belonged to the latest geologic ages, when whole generations and
different platforms of life had come and gone. Thus significantly does
the obelisk of granite suggest by its material as by its form the
origin of life, as the pyramid suggests by its material and form the
extinction of life.
But not only was the obelisk raised in connection with the worship of
the sun,--it was also intended to honour the reigning monarch who
erected it, and whose name and titles were engraved upon it along with
the name of the sun. For it was a fundamental idea of the Egyptian
religion that the king was not only the son of the solar god, but also
the visible human representative of his glory. This was a favourite
conception of the ancients. The Incas of Peru regarded themselves as
direct descendants of the sun; and the monarchs of the burning Asiatic
lands, where the sun rules and dominates everything, assume the name
and title of his sons, and clothe themselves with his splendour. The
obelisks were thus the symbols of the two great correlative
conceptions of the sun in the heavens, and his satellite and
representative on the earth--god and the king. This Egyptian faith, as
attested by the obelisks, the oldest of all the creeds, antecedent to
the theologies of India, Greece, and Rome, ceased not to be venerated
till the advent of Christianity swept all material worship away. It
awed, as Mr. Cooper has well observed, the mixed multitude in
Alexandria under the Cæsars, as it had done the primitive Egyptians
under the oldest Pharaohs. It extended over a space of more than three
thousand years. During all that long period the obelisk was "the
emblem at once of the vivifying power of the sun and of the divine
nature of the king, a witness for the divine claim of the sun to be
worshipped, and of the right divine of the king to rule." Where is
there in all the world, in its most ancient cities, in its loneliest
deserts, any class of objects which has been held continuously sacred
for so long a time? The description of the sun itself by Ossian
applies almost equally well to his worship as thus represented.
Obelisks as symbols of the sun and of the creative power of nature,
were not confined to Egypt. They belonged to the mythology of all
ancient nations. There are modifications of them in India, in
prehistoric America, and among the archæological remains of our own
country. They were common objects in connection with the Assyrian,
Persian and Phoenician religions. And it has been conjectured with
much plausibility that the image of gold, whose height was threescore
cubits, and the breadth six, the usual proportions of an obelisk,
which Nebuchadnezzar set up in the plain of Dura, in the province of
Babylon, and commanded Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego to adore, was
in reality an obelisk after the Egyptian pattern. Such an obelisk was
often gilded, and was associated with the worship of the king as its
material purpose, and with the creation and origin of life as its
symbolic meaning. And if this was the case, there was an unusual
aggravation in this idolatry; for the Egyptian obelisks themselves
were never worshipped, but were always regarded as the signs of the
higher powers whose glory they expressed.
The question is naturally asked, Where were the obelisks originally
placed? At the present day we find those of them that remain in Egypt,
solitary objects without anything near them, and those that have been
carried to other lands have been set up in great open squares, or on
river embankments in the heart of the largest cities. Fortunately,
there is no doubt at all on this point. They stood in pairs at the
doors of the great temples, one on each side, where they served the
same purpose which the campanile of the Italian church or the spire of
a cathedral serves at the present day. Indeed, architects are of
opinion that church towers and steeples are mere survivals of the old
Egyptian obelisks, which furnished the original conception. The tower
corresponded to the shaft of the obelisk, and the steeple to the sharp
pyramidal part in which the summit of the obelisk terminated. And
though there is usually only one spire or tower now in connection with
our churches, there used to be two, as many old examples still extant
testify, one standing on each side of the principal entrance after the
manner of the Egyptian obelisks. The slender round towers of Brechin
and Abernethy, and of Devenish and other places in Ireland, capped by
a conical stone roof terminating in a single stone, which were for a
long time a puzzle to the antiquary, are now ascertained to be simply
steeples connected with Christian churches of the tenth and eleventh
centuries. And just as these towers are now left isolated and solitary
without a trace of the buildings with which they were associated, so
the Egyptian temples have passed away, and the obelisks are left alone
in the desert. But we can reconstruct in imagination the massive and
lofty buildings in front of which they stood, and where they showed to
the greatest advantage. Instead of being dwarfed by the enormous
masses of the propylons, their height gained by the near comparison.
The obelisks in our squares and vast open spaces have their effect
destroyed by the buildings being at a distance from them. There is no
scale near at hand to assist the eye in estimating the height;
consequently they seem much smaller than they really are. But when
seen in the narrow precincts of a temple court, from whose floor they
shot up into the blue sky overhead, surrounded by great columns and
lofty gates, breaking the monotony of the heavy masses of masonry of
which the Egyptian temples were composed, and acting the part which
campanili and spires perform in modern churches, a standard of
comparison was thus furnished which greatly enhanced their magnitude.
Nothing could be grander than the objects associated with the obelisks
where they stood. The temple was approached by an avenue of huge
sphinxes, in some cases a mile and a half long. Drawing nearer, the
worshipper saw two lofty obelisks towering up a hundred feet in
height, on the right and left. Behind these he would observe with awe
four or six gigantic statues seated with their hands on their knees.
And at the back of the statues he would gaze with astonishment upon
two massive towers or pylons, broader at the base than at the summit,
two hundred feet wide and a hundred and twenty feet high, crowned by a
gigantic cornice, with their whole surface covered with coloured
sculptures, representing one of the great dramas in the reign of a
victorious monarch. Above them would rise the tall masts of coloured
cedar-wood, inserted in sinkings chased into the wall, surmounted by
the expanded banners of the king, or the heraldic bearings of the
temple floating in the breeze. Between the huge propylons opened up
the great gateway of the temple, sixty feet high, which led into a
vast court, surrounded by columns and open to the sky. Beyond were
walls whose roofs were supported by a forest of enormous pillars,
which seemed to have been raised by giants. Each hall diminished in
size, but increased in sacredness, until the inmost sanctuary was
reached; small, dark, and awful in its obscurity. Here was the holy
shrine in the shape of a boat or ark, having in it a kind of chest
partially veiled, in which was hid the mystic symbol of the god. Like
the tabernacle of Israel, the common people were not allowed to go
farther than the outer court beyond the obelisks; only kings and
priests being permitted to penetrate into the interior recesses, there
to observe the ritual ceremonies of the mysterious Egyptian worship.
On the plan of the Egyptian temple were modelled the sacred buildings
of the Jews; and the famous pillars of burnished brass, wonderful for
their workmanship and their costly material, which Solomon erected in
the court of his temple, called Jachin and Boaz, had their prototypes
in the obelisks of the Nile.
The obelisk belongs essentially to a level country; and there is no
habitable region in the world so uniformly flat and unbroken by any
elevations or depressions of surface as the valley of the Nile. There
it produces its greatest effect; its size is not dwarfed by
surrounding heights, and comes out by contrast with the small objects
that diversify the plain. It forms a conspicuous landmark, a salient
point on which the eye may rest with relief as it takes in the wide
featureless horizon. In an artificial landscape, where there is no
wild unmixed nature, where every inch of ground is cultivated, it is
the appropriate culmination of that triumph of human art which is
visible everywhere. It was a sense of this harmony of relation that
induced the builders of the great cathedrals and temples of the world
to place them, not amid varied and rugged scenery, where they might be
brought into comparison with nature's work, but uniformly on level
expanses of land. There they form the crowning symbol of man's loving
care and painstaking endeavour, and give to the artificial landscape,
which man has entirely subdued for his own uses, the finishing touch
of power.
Obelisks are the most enduring monuments of antiquity, and yet no
class of objects has undergone such extraordinary vicissitudes. The
history of the changes to which they have been subjected reads like a
romance. At a remote age, not long after they were erected, most of
them were cast down during some political catastrophe, which shook the
whole country to its foundations. Under a subsequent dynasty the
obelisks seem to have been lifted up to their former places, and
regarded with the old veneration. After the lapse of nearly a thousand
years, the land was again convulsed by a terrible revolution, the
nature of which is still wrapped up in almost impenetrable mystery. A
warlike migratory race came from the north-east, and subdued the
whole country. This is known as the Hyksos invasion, or the invasion
of the Shepherd Kings, and produced the same effects in Egypt as the
Norman invasion produced in England. Previous to this period the horse
seemed to have been altogether unknown; but after this date it
uniformly appears in Egyptian paintings and sculptures. The Hyksos
must therefore have been a pastoral race, in all likelihood belonging
to the plains of Tartary; and, mounted on horses, they would find
little difficulty in overcoming the foot soldiery of Egypt. When they
had obtained possession of the country, they burnt down the cities,
demolished the temples, and overthrew the obelisks. This disaster, the
most dreadful which Egypt had ever known, followed suddenly upon a
period of extraordinary prosperity, when new cities were built, and
old cities enlarged; works of great public utility were constructed, a
mercantile intercourse established with the surrounding nations, and
the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture, favoured by the
long peace and the abundant resources of the country, reached their
highest excellence. The reversal of all these signs of prosperity was
so overwhelming, that the Egyptians of subsequent ages looked back
upon this period of subjection under a foreign yoke which lay upon
them for five hundred years, with bitter resentment. When the hated
dynasty was at an end, the Egyptians obliterated, as far as they
could, every sign of its supremacy, chiselled out the names of its
kings on their monuments, and destroyed their records, so that few
traces of this revolution remain to dispel the strange mystery in
which it is involved. They could never bear to hear the detested names
of the Shepherd Kings; and this circumstance throws light upon the
passage in Genesis which says that the occupation of a shepherd was an
abomination to the Egyptians. Under the patronage of the new dynasty
the arts which had been destroyed were again restored, the monuments
of the suppressed religion were freed from their indignities, and
once more reinstated with the old honours, and the whole country was
reconstructed. But, while the temples were re-erected, and the old
worship established with even greater splendour, there can be no doubt
that many of the earlier obelisks, owing to their smaller size, as
compared with the other gigantic monuments of Egypt, had been
destroyed past all reconstruction; and some of them remain in the land
at the present day on the sites where, and in the exact manner in
which, they were overturned by the Shepherd Kings.
But greater changes still happened to the Egyptian obelisks after
this. Previously they had been devastated and overturned on their own
soil. But now they excited the cupidity of the foreign invaders of
Egypt, and were carried away to distant lands as trophies of their
victories. The first obelisks that were removed in this way were two
of the principal ones that adorned one of the temples of Thebes. After
the capture of Thebes by Assurbanipal, the Assyrian king, the famous
Sardanapalus of the Greeks, they were transported to the conqueror's
palace at Nineveh, and were afterwards lost for ever in the
destruction of that city, about sixty years later, or about six
hundred years before Christ. The transportation of these enormous
masses of stone across the country to the seashore, down the Red Sea,
over the Indian Ocean, up the Persian Gulf, and the river Tigris, to
their destination in the palace of Nineveh, nearly two thousand miles,
must have been a feat of engineering skill at that early period of the
world's history, far more wonderful in regard to the difficulties
overcome, without any precedent to guide, and considering the rudeness
of the means of transport, than anything that has ever been attempted
since in the same line. The example of the Assyrian tyrant was
followed, after a long interval, by the Romans, who sought to magnify
and commemorate their conquests in Egypt by spoiling the land of its
characteristic monuments. The Cæsars, one after another, for more than
a hundred years, took advantage of their victories and the ruin of
the unhappy land of Egypt to convey its beautiful obelisks to their
own capital to permanently adorn one or other of the various places of
public resort. They seem to have set almost the same high value upon
these singular monuments which their inventors did. Pliny and
Suetonius describe the almost incredible magnitude of the vessels in
which these gigantic masses of stone were conveyed to Ostia, the
harbour town, and from thence up the Tiber to Rome. The huge triremes
were propelled by the force of hundreds of rowers across the waters of
the Mediterranean. From the quay at Rome they were dragged and pushed,
by the brute force of thousands in the old Egyptian manner, on low
carts supported on rollers instead of wheels, to their destination,
where they were set upright by a complicated machinery of ropes and
huge upright beams.
How many obelisks of Egyptian origin existed at one time in the world
we do not know. They were undoubtedly very numerous; but many of them
were broken up for building materials. The famous column called
Pompey's Pillar stands upon a fragment of an ancient obelisk; and
tradition asserts that there are many similar fragments of greater or
less antiquity under the ruins of the older houses of Alexandria. At
present forty-two obelisks are known to be in existence in different
parts of the world. Of these, seventeen remain in Egypt on their
original sites, of which no less than eleven are prostrate on the
ground, having been overturned by some political or religious
revolution, by the force of an earthquake, or by the slow undermining
of the infiltrated waters of the Nile. No less than twelve of the
oldest and grandest are still to be seen standing erect in Rome, where
they constitute by far the most striking and memorable monuments. The
others are distributed in various places wide apart. One is in Paris,
two are in Constantinople, a fourth, the famous Cleopatra's Needle, is
on the Thames Embankment, in the heart of London; a fifth, its old
companion in Alexandria, is now in one of the public squares of New
York. And there are several diminutive ones, from eight feet in height
downwards, in the British Museum, in the Florentine Museum in
Florence, in Benevento in Italy, and in the town of Alnwick in
Northumberland.
The oldest of all the obelisks is the beautiful one of rosy granite
which stands alone among the green fields on the banks of the Nile not
far from Cairo. It is the gravestone of a great ancient city which has
vanished and left only this relic behind. That city was the
Bethshemesh of Scripture, the famous On, which is memorable to all
Bible readers as the residence of the priest Potipherah whose daughter
Asenath Joseph married. The Greeks called it Heliopolis, the city of
the sun, because there the worship of the sun had its chief centre and
its most sacred shrines. It was the seat of the most ancient
university in the world, to which youthful students came from all
parts of the world, to learn the occult wisdom which the priests of On
alone could teach. Thales, Solon, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and Plato, all
studied there, perhaps Moses too. It was also the birthplace of the
sacred literature of Egypt, where were written on papyrus leaves the
original chapters of the oldest book in the world, generally known as
the "Book of the Dead," giving a most striking account of the
conflicts and triumphs of the life after death; a whole copy or
fragment of which every Egyptian, rich or poor, wished to have buried
with him in his coffin, and portions of which are found inscribed on
every mummy case and on the walls of every tomb. In front of one of
the principal temples of the sun, in this magnificent city, stood
along with a companion, long since destroyed, the solitary obelisk
which we now behold on the spot. It alone, as I have said, has
survived the wreck of all the glory of the place, as if to assure us
that what is given to God, however ignorantly and superstitiously,
endures, while all the other works of man perish. It was constructed
by Usirtesen I., who is supposed to have reigned two thousand eight
hundred years before Christ, and has outlasted all the dynastic
changes of the land, and still stands where it originally stood nearly
forty-seven centuries ago. What appears of its shaft above ground is
sixty-eight feet in height, but its base is buried in the mud of the
Nile; and year after year the inundation of the river deposits its
film of soil around its foot, and buries it still deeper in its sacred
grave. Down the centre of each of its four faces runs a line of
deeply-cut hieroglyphics, in whose cavities the wild mason-bees
construct their mud-cells and store their honey. Nothing can exceed
the beauty and distinctness of these carvings. The pictures of birds
and beasts, chiselled in the hard polished granite, have a purity of
form and line, a directness of expression and intention, which is most
impressive. Its top is somewhat damaged, having been originally
protected, as was the case with many of the obelisks which were not
finely finished to a point, with a capping of gilded bronze that
remained intact till the thirteen century. The inscription on its
sides contains nothing of historic value. It is simply a dedication to
Usirtesen, who constructed it, under the title of Horus, or the rising
sun, which was borne, as I have said, by the kings of Egypt on account
of their supposed origin as an incarnation of the sun.
At Luxor, a single obelisk, the property of the English, still
maintains its ancient position. It is very beautiful, formed of red
granite, and covered with elegantly carved inscriptions, running up
each of the four faces. The hieroglyphics are cut to an unusual depth,
and are remarkably clear and well-formed, indicating that the monument
was raised in honour of Rameses the Great, the most illustrious of all
the Egyptian monarchs, and the most magnificent and prolific architect
the world has ever seen. The top of the obelisk was originally left in
a rough unfinished state, the roughness having been concealed by a
capping of bronze; but this having been removed long ago, the surface
has become very much eroded by exposure, which somewhat detracts from
the elegance of the shaft. It has also the peculiarity that its two
inner faces are sensibly curved--a peculiarity which it is supposed
was designed to make the sunlight fall with softer effect, so as to
make the shadows less crude, and the angles less sharp. The shaft,
which is eighty-two feet high by eight feet in diameter at the base,
is elevated upon a pedestal, which is adorned by statues in high
relief of dog-headed monkeys standing in an attitude of adoration at
the corners worshipping the sun, and also by standing figures of the
god of the Nile presenting offerings, incised in the stone like the
hieroglyphics of the shaft. The surroundings of this obelisk are far
grander than those of any other obelisk in the world. At present the
extent and dimensions of the ruins of Thebes produce an overwhelming
effect upon the visitor. But it is almost impossible for us to imagine
its magnificence when its temples and obelisks were in their full
perfection, and the great Rameses was carried on the shoulders of his
officers through the ranks of adoring slaves to behold the completion
of the works which had been designed to perpetuate his glory. The
ancient city, divided in the middle by the Nile, as London is by the
Thames or Glasgow by the Clyde, covered the vast plain, with great
houses in the outskirts standing in richly cultivated gardens, each
temple surrounded by its own little sacred lake, over which the bodies
of the dead were carried by the priests before burial, and the
beautiful Mokattam Hills bounding the view, wearing the soft lilac hue
of distance. Only two or three places on earth can rival the
overwhelming interest which the city possesses. But the colossal
associated temples of Karnac and Luxor are absolutely unique. There is
nothing on earth to equal them. They are man's greatest achievements
in religious architecture. Long rows of stupendous pillars, covered
from base to top with coloured pictures and hieroglyphics, containing
a whole library of actually written and pictured history and
religion, look "like a Brobdingnagian forest turned into stone," in
the midst of which the visitor feels himself an insignificant insect.
A sense of superhuman awfulness, of personal nothingness and
irresistible power, is what these stupendous structures inspire in
even the most callous spectator. A confused mass of broken columns and
heaps of huge sculptured stones present an appearance as if the old
giants had been at war on the spot, hurling rocks at each other.
Between Luxor and Karnac extended an avenue of sphinxes, two miles
long, numbering more than four thousand pieces of sculpture, now
represented by mutilated formless blocks of stone. We see in these
vast temples, which were raised by a people inspired with the
sentiment that they were the greatest of all nations, to be the chief
shrines of the religion of the country, the fruits of the plunder and
the tribute of Asia and Africa. The funds necessary to build them had
been procured by robbing other nations; and most of the work was done
by captives taken in war. Many a fair province had been desolated of
its inhabitants, many a splendid city spoiled of its riches, in order
to construct these awful halls. Unfortunately, the annual overflow of
the inundation of the Nile covers the ground to the depth of a foot or
two, staining and eating away the bases of the columns, and
overthrowing their enormous drums and architraves. The destruction
cannot be prevented, for the water infiltrates through the soil; and
some day, ere long, the remaining columns will be hurled down, and the
pride of Karnac will lie prone in the dust.
Passing westward to Rome, the largest obelisk not only in the Eternal
City but in the whole world is that which now adorns the square of St.
John Lateran. It is, as usual, of red granite much darkened and
corroded by time, and stands with its pedestal and cross one hundred
and forty-one feet high; the shaft alone being one hundred and eight
feet seven inches in height, with faces about nine feet and a half
wide at the base; the whole mass weighing upwards of four hundred and
sixty tons. It was found among the ruins of the Circus Maximus broken
into three pieces, and was dug up by order of Pope Sixtus V., conveyed
to its present site, and re-erected by the celebrated architect
Fontana in 1588. The lower end had been so much injured by its fall,
that in order to enable it to stand, it was found necessary to cut off
about two feet and a half to obtain a level base. On the top of it
Fontana added by way of ornament four bronze lions, surmounted by
three mountain peaks, out of which sprung the cross, as the armorial
bearings of the Popes. Thus crowned with the cross, and consecrated to
the honour of Christianity, this noble relic of antiquity acquires an
additional interest from its nearness to the great Basilica of the
Lateran, which is the representative cathedral of the Papacy and the
mother church of Christendom, and to the Lateran Palace, for a
thousand years the residence of the Popes of Rome.
The history of the Lateran obelisk is unusually varied. It was
originally constructed by Thothmes III., and set up by him before the
great temple of Amen at Heliopolis. But being an old man at the time,
he left his successor to complete it by adding most of the
hieroglyphics. It took thirty-six years to carve these sculptures; the
four sides from top to bottom being covered with inscriptions in the
purest style of Egyptian art. From one of these inscriptions we learn
that the obelisk was thrown down in Egypt probably during the invasion
of the Shepherd Kings, and was re-erected by the great Rameses, who
did not, contrary to the usual custom, arrogate to himself the honours
of his predecessor. These sculptures tell us of monarchs who had
reigned, and conquered, and died long before the mythic times, when
the "pious Æneas," as Virgil tells us, landed on the Italian shore,
and Romulus ploughed his significant furrow round the Palatine Hill. A
thousand years before the foundation of Rome, and two thousand years
before the Christian era, it had been excavated from the quarries of
Syene and worshipped at Heliopolis. It was as old to the Cæsars as the
days of the Cæsars are to us. Pliny tells us that the work of
quarrying, conveying, and setting it up employed twenty thousand men;
and there is a dim tradition that so anxious was the king for its
safety, when it was erected, that in order to ensure this he bound his
own son to the top of it. A close examination of the hieroglyphics
reveals the curious fact that the name of the god Amen wherever it
occurs, is more deeply carved than the other figures, in order to
obliterate the name of some other deity which had previously occupied
its place. It is supposed that this circumstance indicates a
theological revolution which happened in the history of Egypt when
Amenhotep III., the Memnon of the Greek historian, married an Arabian
wife of the name of Taia, who introduced her own religion into her
adopted country, as Jezebel, the wife of Ahab, introduced the worship
of Baal into Israel. When this dynasty was overthrown, in the course
of about fifty years, the old faith was restored, and the names of the
old gods substituted for those which had usurped their place on the
religious monuments. It is supposed that the Lateran obelisk was the
one before which Cambyses, the great Persian conqueror, stood lost in
admiration, arrested in his semi-religious course of destroying the
popular monuments of Egypt. Augustus intended to have removed it to
Rome, but was deterred by the difficulty of the undertaking, and also
by superstitious scruples, because it had been specially dedicated to
the sun, and fixed immovably in his temple. Constantine the Great had
no such scruples, believing, as he said, that "he did no injury to
religion if he removed a wonder from one temple, and again consecrated
it in Rome, the temple of the whole world." He died, however, before
he had completed his design, having succeeded only in transporting the
obelisk to Alexandria, from whence his son and successor Constantius
transferred it to Rome, and placed it on the Spina of the Great
Circus. So clumsily, however, was it erected in this place, that
several deep holes had to be drilled in the upper part of it, in order
that ropes for hauling it up might be put through them; a defect in
engineering skill which has disfigured the obelisk, and contrasts
strikingly with the resources of the ancient Egyptians, who were able
to raise the stone to its position without such a device. The obelisk
is thus an enduring monument of three great rulers--Thothmes, who
first constructed it in Heliopolis; Constantine, who removed it to
Rome; and Pope Sixtus V., who conveyed it from the Circus Maximus, and
re-erected it where it now stands.
Next in point of height to the Lateran obelisk is the one that stands
in the great square of St. Peter's, between two beautiful fountains
that are continually showering high in the air their radiant sunlit
spray. It is meant to serve as the gnomon of a gigantic dial, traced
in lines of white marble in the pavement of the square. Its rosy
surface glistening in the rays of the sun, and its long shadow cast
before it on the ground, make it a very impressive object. Its origin
is involved in mystery, for there is no inscription on it to tell who
erected it, or where it came from. This absence of hieroglyphics
points to its having been an unfinished work--something having
prevented its constructor from recording on it the purpose of its
erection, as was usually the case. But as the vacant shadow of the
dial and the blank empty lines of the spectrum are more suggestive
than any sunlit spaces, so the blank unwritten sides of this obelisk
give rise to more speculations than if they had been carved from head
to foot with hieroglyphics. On account of this peculiarity, some
authors have not hesitated to consider it a mere imitation obelisk,
constructed by the Romans at a comparatively late period. This idea,
however, is refuted by the evidence of Pliny, who regarded it as a
genuine Egyptian relic, and tells us that it was cut from the quarry
of Syene, and dedicated to the sun by the son of Sesores, in
obedience to an oracle, after his recovery from blindness. It is
generally believed that it first stood before one of the temples of
Heliopolis, was then removed to Alexandria, and finally transported to
Rome by Caligula. This emperor constructed a special vessel for the
purpose, of greater dimensions than had ever been seen before; and
after it had brought the obelisk to the banks of the Tiber, he
commanded it to be filled with stones, and sunk as a caisson in the
harbour of Ostia, which he was constructing at the time. On arriving
at Rome the obelisk was set up on the Spina of the Circus of Nero,
which is now occupied by the sacristy of St. Peter's Church. For
fifteen centuries the obelisk remained undisturbed on its site, the
only one in the city that escaped being overthrown. At last its
foundation giving way, so that it leaned dangerously towards the old
Basilica of St. Peter's, Sixtus V. formed the design of removing it to
where it now stands, a very short distance from the original spot. The
record of its re-erection, the first in papal Rome, by Fontana--a work
of extreme difficulty and imposing ceremonial magnificence, which was
richly rewarded by the grateful Pope--is exceedingly interesting. A
curious legend is usually related in connection with it. A papal edict
was proclaimed threatening death to any one who should utter a loud
word while the operation of lifting and settling the obelisk was going
on. As the "huge crystallisation of Egyptian sweat" rose on its basis
there was a sudden stoppage, the hempen cables refused to do their
work, and the hanging mass of stone threatened to fall and destroy
itself. Suddenly from out the breathless crowd rose a loud, clear
voice, "Wet the ropes." There was inspiration in the suggestion; the
architect acted upon it, and the obelisk at once took its stand on its
base, where it has firmly remained ever since. Not only was the sailor
Bresca pardoned for transgressing the papal command, but he was
rewarded, and the district of Bordighera, from which he came, received
the privilege of supplying the palm leaves for the use of Rome on
Palm Sunday--a privilege which it still possesses, and which forms the
principal trade of the place.
To me the most familiar and interesting of all the Roman obelisks is
that which stands in the centre of the Piazza del Popolo, the finest
and largest square in Rome. It is about eighty feet high, carved with
hieroglyphics, with four marble Egyptian lions, one at each corner of
the platform on which it stands, pouring from their mouths copious
streams of water into large basins, with a refreshing sound. Lions in
Egypt were regarded as symbols of the sun when passing through the
zodiacal sign of Leo, the time when the annual inundation of the Nile
occurred. They had thus a deep significance in connection with water.
The obelisk was originally erected in front of the Temple of the Sun
at Heliopolis, by the great Rameses, the Sesostris of the Greeks,
whose personal character and wide conquests fill a larger space in the
history of ancient Egypt than those of any other monarch. From
Heliopolis it was removed to Rome, after the battle of Actium, by
Augustus, and placed on the Spina of the Circus Maximus, the sports of
which were under the special protection of Apollo, the sun-god, by
whose favour it was supposed that the Egyptian victory had been
achieved. For four hundred years it acted as a gnomon, regulating by
the length and direction of its shadow the hours of the public games
of the circus; and then it was overturned during those troublous days
in which the empire was rent asunder. Twelve centuries of decay and
wreck had buried it from the eyes of men, until it was dug up and
placed where it now stands, in 1587, by Pope Sixtus V., to whom modern
Rome is indebted for the restoration of many of her ancient monuments,
and the construction of many of her public buildings and streets. With
the cross planted on its summit, this noble monument was long the
first object which met the traveller's eye as he entered Rome from the
north by the old Flaminian way. Brought to commemorate the overthrow
of the land from whence it came, it has witnessed the overthrow of the
conquerors in turn; and now re-erected in the modern capital, it will
endure when its glory too has passed away. And out of the ruins of the
city of the Popes, as out of the ruins of the city of the Cæsars, some
future architect will dig it up to grace the triumph of a brighter and
freer resuscitation of the Eternal City than the world has yet seen.
The association of fountains at its base with this obelisk seems at
first sight as incongruous as the crowning of its apex with a metal
cross, for the Christian emblem can never alter the nature of the
pagan monument. There is no natural harmony in the association, for
there are no fountains or streams of running water in the desert. The
obelisk belongs essentially to the dry and parched east; the fountain
is the birth of the happier west, bright with the sparkle and musical
with the sound of many waters. The obelisk relieves the monotony of
immeasurable plains over which a sky of serene unstained blue arches
itself in infinite altitude, the image of eternal purity, and the sun
rises day after day with the same unsullied brilliance, and sets with
the same unmitigable glory. The fountain, on the other hand, is the
child of lands whose mountains kiss the clouds and gleam with the
purity of everlasting snows, and where each day brings out new
beauties, and each season reveals a fresh and ever-varying charm. But
although there is no geographical reason why these two objects should
be associated, there is a poetical fitness. The obelisk is the symbol
of the perpetual past, holding in its changeless unity, as on its
carved sides, the memories of former ages; the fountain is the symbol
of the perpetual present, ever changing, ever new. The one speaks to
us of a petrified old age; the other of an immortal youth. And thus it
is in life, each passing moment flowing on with all its changes beside
the stern, hard, enduring monument of the irrevocable past on which
what is written is changelessly written. How different too are the
bright sparkling fountains that leap with ever-varying beauty at the
foot of the Flaminian obelisk now, from the dull, sleepy monotonous
river that, like a Lethe flood, flowed past it in the old days at
Heliopolis! Are they not both symbolical of the new and the old world,
of the Christian faith, with its progressive thought and varied
expanding life, and the stagnant pagan creed, which impressed the soul
with the sense of human helplessness in the face of an unchangeable
iron order alike of nature and of society?
Another of the great obelisks of Rome is that which stands on Monte
Citorio, in front of the present Parliament House. It was brought to
Rome by Augustus, who dedicated it anew to the sun, and placed it as
the gnomon of a meridian in the midst of the Campus Martius.
Originally it had been erected at Heliopolis in honour of Psammeticus
I., who reigned about seven hundred years before Christ. This monarch
lived during a time when the national religion had become corrupted,
and the whole land had come under the influence of Greek thought and
Greek customs. But the obelisk which he erected is worthy of the best
period of Egyptian art. It is universally admired for the remarkable
beauty of its hieroglyphics. The anonymous pilgrim of Einsiedlen
mentions that this obelisk was still erect when he visited Rome about
the beginning of the ninth century. It seems, however, to have fallen
and to have been broken in pieces, nearly three hundred years later,
during the terrible conflagration caused by the Norman troops of
Robert Guiscard. Several fragments of it were dug up, one after
another, during the sixteenth century. The principal part of the shaft
was discovered in 1748, among the ruins beneath the choir of the
Church of San Lorenzo in Lucina. These portions were damaged in such a
way as to show clearly the action of fire, proving that the obelisk
had been destroyed in the great fire of 1084. Pope Pius VI. gathered
together the fragments, and with the aid of granite pieces taken from
the ruined column of Antoninus Pius, which stood in the neighbourhood,
he formed of these a whole shaft, which represents, as nearly as
possible, the original obelisk. It is seventy-two feet high, and is
surmounted by a globe and a small pyramid of bronze, which, along with
its pedestal, increases its height to one hundred and thirty-four
feet. A portion of the lines of the celebrated sun-dial, whose gnomon
it formed, was brought to light under the sacristy of San Lorenzo in
Lucina in 1463.
All the other obelisks in Rome belong to comparatively recent periods,
to the decadence of Egypt. None of them are of any great significance
to the student of archæology. Several of them were executed in Egypt
by order of the Roman emperors, and are therefore not genuine but
imitation obelisks. Of this kind may be mentioned the Esquiline and
Quirinal obelisks, which were brought to Rome by the emperor Claudius,
and placed in the old Egyptian manner, one on each side of the
entrance to the great mausoleum of Augustus in the Campus Martius.
They are both destitute of hieroglyphics and are broken into several
pieces. One now stands on Monte Cavallo, in front of the great
Quirinal Palace, betwixt the two well-known gigantic groups of men and
horses, statues of Greek origin, supposed to be those of Castor and
Pollux, executed by Pheidias and Praxiteles; and the other in the
large open space in front of the great Basilica of Santa Maria
Maggiore. Another of these bastard obelisks occupies a commanding
position at the top of the Spanish Stairs, in front of the Church of
Trinita dei Monti. It stood originally on the spina of the circus of
Sallust, in his gardens, and is covered with hieroglyphics of the
rudest workmanship, which sufficiently proclaim their origin, as a
Roman forgery probably of the period of the Antonine emperors. In the
midst of the public gardens, on the Pincian Hill, there is another
Roman obelisk about thirty feet high, excavated from the quarries of
Syene, and set up by Hadrian originally at Antinopolis in Egypt in
front of a temple dedicated to the deified Antinous, the lamented
favourite of the emperor. It was afterwards transferred to the
imperial villa at Tivoli, near Rome, and subsequently to the grounds
of the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, from whence it was
finally taken to its present site. This obelisk has a special interest
because it commemorates one of the most beautiful and touching
examples of self-sacrifice which the annals of paganism afford. We are
apt to judge of Antinous from the languid beauty of the statue of him
in the Roman galleries, as simply the pampered sycophant of a court.
But behind his sensual beauty and softness there was an unselfish
devotion which the caresses of royalty and the favours of fortune
could not spoil. When the oracle declared that the happiness of
Hadrian, who was afflicted with a profound melancholy, could only be
secured by the sacrifice of what was most dear to him, Antinous went
at once and drowned himself in the Nile, and thus gave his life for
his imperial friend, who, instead of being made better by the
sacrifice, was left altogether inconsolable. The magnificent city
founded to perpetuate his memory is now a heap of ruined mounds, and
the obelisk that bore his name in Egypt now stands far away in Rome;
but time cannot quench the glow of sympathy that kindles in the heart
of every one who remembers his story of noble self-sacrificing love.
There are three or four obelisks that mark the introduction of the
Egyptian worship of Isis into the imperial city of the later emperors.
At one time everything Egyptian was fashionable in Rome, and the
goddess of Egypt was domesticated in the Roman Pantheon, and temples
in her honour were erected in several parts of the city and throughout
the empire. Obelisks, fashioned in Egypt by command of the Romans,
were often placed in front of the temples. But these spurious obelisks
have little dignity or significance, and suffer wofully when brought
into comparison with specimens of the genuine work of old Egypt. The
largest and most imposing of these monuments of the new faith of the
city is the one that now stands in the Piazza Navona, formerly called
the Pamphilian Obelisk, in honour of the family name of Pope Innocent
X., who placed it there. It is forty feet high, of red granite, broken
into five pieces, and covered with hieroglyphics, the whole style and
execution of which are so inferior that Winkelman long ago, although
he knew nothing of their import, detected the fact of the obelisk
being a mere imitation. It was cut and engraved at Syene by order of
the emperor Domitian, who designed it to adorn his villa on the Lake
of Albano. From thence it was removed by the usurper Maxentius to the
circus on the Appian Way, founded by him, and named after his son
Romulus. It is now on the site of the old Circus Agonalis, whose form
and boundaries are marked out by the houses of the Piazza Navona.
Surmounted by the Pope's device of a dove with an olive branch, a vain
substitute of heraldry for sacred symbolism, and standing on an
artificial rock-work about forty feet high, composed of figures of
Tritons and nymphs, disporting themselves amid plashing fountains and
marble foliage, the whole subject is incongruous and utterly opposed
to the simplicity and majesty of the ancient monuments.
Near the Pantheon there is a pair of obelisks which were brought from
the East, and stood together before the temple of Isis and Serapis,
which is supposed to have been situated on the site of the Dominican
Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. They were found when digging the
foundations of the church in 1667, along with an altar of Isis, now in
the Capitoline Museum. One of these obelisks was erected by Clement
XI. in 1711, in front of the Pantheon, in the midst of the fountain of
the Piazza. Its height is only about seventeen feet, and the
hieroglyphics on it indicate that it was constructed by Psammeticus
II., the supposed Hophra of Hebrew history. This same monarch also
constructed its twin-fellow which now stands in the Piazza Minerva in
the near neighbourhood. The celebrated sculptor Bernini, when
re-erecting it at the command of Pope Alexander VII. in 1660, had the
exceedingly bad taste to balance it on the back of a marble elephant,
the work of his pupil Ferrata; on account of which absurd incongruity
Bernini received from the satirical Roman populace the nickname of
"The Elephant." Only one obelisk in Rome was not restored or
re-erected by any Pope, viz. that which stands in the beautiful
grounds of the Villa Mattei in the Coelian Hill. It was found near the
Capitol on the site of an ancient temple of Isis, and was presented by
the magistrates to the owner of the villa, a great collector of
antiquities. It is said that when it was raised in 1563, on its red
granite pedestal, the mason who superintended the work incautiously
rested his hand on the block, when the shaft suddenly slid down and
crushed it, the bones of the imprisoned member being still held
between the two stones.
The foregoing were the last obelisks erected in Rome by the emperors.
After them no more were constructed either in the imperial city or in
their native land of Egypt. The language inscribed upon them had come
to be superseded by the universal use of the Greek tongue; there was
no use therefore in making monuments for the reception of hieroglyphic
records which nobody could understand or interpret. The sudden craze
for the Egyptian idolatry passed away as suddenly as it sprang up, and
Christianity established itself as the religion of the civilised
world. The temples in Egypt and Rome were closed, the altars
overthrown, and the objects connected with the material symbolism of
paganism were destroyed, and objects connected with the spiritual
symbolism of Christianity set up in their place. And thus the obelisk,
the oldest of all religious symbols, which was constructed at the very
dawn of human existence, to mark the worship of the material luminary,
fell into disuse and oblivion, when "the Sun of Righteousness" rose
above the horizon of the world, with healing in His wings, dispelling
all the mists and delusions of error. The art of constructing obelisks
followed the usual stages in the history of all human art. Its best
period was that which indicated the greatest faith; its worst that
which marked the decay of faith. The oldest specimens are invariably
the most perfect and beautiful; the most recent exhibit too marked
signs of the decrepitude of skill that had come over their makers.
Between the oldest specimens and their surroundings there was a
harmony and an appropriateness which solemnised the scene and excited
feelings of adoration and awe. Between the latest specimens and their
surroundings there was an incongruity which proved them to be aliens
and strangers on the scene, and was fatal to all reverence; an
incongruity which the modern Romans have only intensified by raising
them on pedestals of most uncongenial forms, and crowning them with
hideous masses of metal, representing the insignia of popes or other
objects equally unsuitable. We see in the oldest obelisks a wonderful
ease and an exquisite finish of execution, a maturity of thought and
skill which none of the later obelisks reached, and which indicate the
high-water mark of man's achievement in that line. There is also "a
bloom of youth and of the earth's morning" about them which is quite
indescribable, and which doubtless came to them because of the power
and reality of faith. They were the fresh natural originals in which a
deep primitive spontaneous adoration that dominated the whole nature
of man expressed itself; while the specimens that were executed
afterwards were slavish imitations, expressing a worship and a creed
which had become fixed and formal.
One of the most valuable results of the expedition of the great
Napoleon to Egypt, ostensibly for scientific and antiquarian purposes,
but really for military glory, was the acquisition of the Rosetta
stone now in the British Museum--which afforded the key to the
decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics--and of the obelisk of
Luxor which now adorns the noble Place de la Concord in Paris. The
history of the engineering difficulties overcome in bringing this
obelisk to France is extremely interesting. Indeed, the story of the
transportation of the obelisks from their native home, from time to
time, to other lands, is no less romantic and worthy of study than the
artistic, religious, or antiquarian phases of the subject. It forms a
special literature of its own to which Commander Gorringe of the
United States Navy, in his elaborate and magnificent work on Egyptian
obelisks, has done the amplest justice. It cost upwards of £100,000 to
bring the Luxor Obelisk to Paris, owing to the inexperience of the
engineers and the imperfection of their method. But it was worthy of
this vast expenditure of toil and money; for standing in an open
circus unimpeded by narrow streets, and unspoiled by the tawdry
ornaments which disfigure the Roman obelisks, it adds to the
magnificent modern city the charm of antique majesty. It stands
seventy-six feet and a half in height, with its apex left rough and
unfinished, destitute of the gilded cap which formerly completed and
protected it. Each of its four sides contains three vertical lines of
well-executed hieroglyphics, which show that it was raised in honour
of Rameses II., to adorn the stupendous temple of Luxor at Thebes
which he constructed. When it lay on its original site, previous to
its being transported, it was found to have been cracked at the time
of its first erection, and repaired by means of two dove-tailed wedges
of wood which had perished long ago. But this defect is not now
noticeable. The companion of this obelisk is still standing at Luxor,
and has already been described. Both of them show a peculiarity in
their lines, which could only be noticed effectually when the pair
stood together. This peculiarity is a convexity, or _entasis_, as it
is called, on the inner faces. Even to the untrained eye its sides
seem not of equal dimensions; and actual measurement shows the
irregularity more clearly. This is said, however, to be exceptional to
the general rule, and to be foreign to the design of an obelisk in the
best period of the Pharaonic art. Still, several magnificent
specimens, such as the Luxor and Flaminian obelisks, exhibit it. And
they are an illustration of what was a marked characteristic of all
classic architecture, which shows a slight curvature or entasis in its
long lines.
It was early found out that mathematical exactness and beauty were not
the same. By making its two sides geometrically equal, the living
expression of the most beautiful marble statue is destroyed, and it
becomes simply a piece of architecture. It is well known that the two
sides of the human face are not precisely the same; the irregularity
of the one modifies the irregularity of the other, and thus a higher
symmetry and harmony is the result. The two sides of the leaf of the
begonia are unequal, and if folded together will not correspond. The
same is true of the leaf of the elm and the lime. But when the mass of
the foliage is seen together, this irregularity gives an added charm
to the whole. Every object in nature has some imperfection, which
indicates that it has a relation to some other object, and is but a
part of a greater whole. The intentional irregularity of the windows
in the Doge's Palace at Venice enhances the effect of the marvellous
façade. By comparing the Parthenon at Athens, with its curves and
inclinations, with the Madeleine at Paris, we see how far short the
copy comes of the original in beauty and expressiveness, because of
the exact formality of its right angles. The ancient Egyptians
understood this well; and in their architecture they sought to rise to
a higher symmetry through irregularity; and we can see in their
frequent departure from upright and parallel lines in the construction
of their temples, an effort to escape from formal exactness, and a
longing for the nobler unity which is realised to the full in the rich
variety of the Gothic. We may be sure that "every attempt in art that
seeks a theoretical completeness, in so doing sinks from the natural
into the artificial, from the living and the divine into the
mechanical and commonplace." The Egyptian obelisk is thus but a type
of a great law of nature. In this simplest and most primitive specimen
of architecture we have an illustration of the principle which gives
its expressiveness to the human face, beauty to the flowers of the
field, and grandeur to the highest triumphs of human art.
The obelisks that remain to be described are the two which to us are
the most interesting; the pair of "Cleopatra's Needles" which so long
stood side by side at Alexandria, and are now separated by the
Atlantic Ocean; one standing on the Thames Embankment in London, and
the other in Central Park, New York. They were both set up in front of
the great temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, about fifteen centuries
before Christ, by Thothmes III., and engraved by Rameses II., the two
mightiest of the kings of Egypt. After standing on their original site
for fourteen centuries, witnessing the rise and fall of many native
dynasties, and the establishment of the Greek dominion under the
Ptolemies, they were, when Egypt became a province of Imperial Rome,
transferred by Cæsar Augustus to Alexandria. There they adorned the
Cæsareum or palace of the Cæsars, which stood by the side of the
harbour, was surrounded with a sacred grove, and was the greatest
building in the city. What Thebes and Heliopolis were in the time of
the Pharaohs, Alexandria became in the time of the Ptolemies. And
though, being a parasitical growth, it could not originate works of
genius, like its ancient prototypes, it could appropriate those which
Heliopolis and Thebes had created. The tragic death of Cleopatra, the
last of the dynasty of the Ptolemies, had taken place seven years
before the setting up of these obelisks at Alexandria; so that she had
in reality nothing to do with them personally. For about fifteen
centuries the two obelisks stood in their new position before the
Cæsareum. They saw the gradual overthrow, by time's resistless hand,
of the magnificent palace which they adorned; and they themselves felt
the slow undermining of the sea as it encroached upon the land, until
at last one of them fell to the ground about three hundred years ago,
and got partially covered over with sand, leaving the other to stand
alone. Then came the French invasion of Egypt, and the victories of
Nelson and Abercromby, when Mahomet Ali, the ruler of the land,
offered the prostrate obelisk to the British nation as a token of
gratitude. The offer, however, was not taken advantage of, for various
reasons. At last the patriotism and enterprise of a private
individual, the late Sir Erasmus Wilson, came to the rescue, when the
stone was about to be broken up into building material by the
proprietor of the ground on which it lay. An iron water-tight cylinder
was constructed for its transport, in which, with much toil, the
obelisk was encased and floated. It was taken in tow by a steam-tug,
which encountered a fearful storm in the Bay of Biscay. This led to
the abandonment of the pontoon cylinder, which floated about for three
days, and was at last picked up by a passing steamer, and towed to the
coast of Spain; from whence it was brought to England, and set up
where it now stands on the Thames Embankment. Its transport cost
altogether about £13,000, and was a work of great anxiety and
difficulty. Standing seventy feet high on its present site, it forms
one of the noblest and most appropriate monuments of the greatest city
in the world; awakening the curiosity of every passer-by regarding the
mysteries revealed in its enigmatical sculptures.
The companion obelisk which had been left standing at Alexandria,
after having suffered much from neglect, in the midst of its mean and
filthy surroundings, was presented to the American Government by the
Khedive of Egypt. But that Government acted in the same supine spirit
in which our own had acted; and it was left to the ability of Captain
Corringe as engineer, and to the liberality of the millionaire
Vanderbilt, who paid the expenses incurred, amounting to £20,000, to
bring the obelisk in the hold of a chartered steamer across the
Atlantic, and set it up in the midst of New York city. And if the one
obelisk is a remarkable sight in London, the other is a still more
remarkable sight in New York. There, amid the latest inventions of the
West, surrounded by the most recent civilisation of the world, rises
up serenely, unchanged to heaven, the earliest monument of the East,
surrounded by the most ancient civilisation of the world. "Westward
the course of empire takes its way;" and as the old obelisk of
Heliopolis witnessed the ending of the four first dramas of human
history, so shall it close the fifth and last. The sun in the East
rose over its birth; the sun in the West shall set over its death.
It is possible that when all the stores of coal and other fuel which
form the source of the mechanical power and commercial greatness of
northern and western nations shall have been exhausted, a method of
directly utilising solar radiation may be discovered. And if so, then
the seat of empire will be transferred to parts of the earth that are
now burnt up by the intense heat of the sun, but which then will be
the most valuable of all possessions. The vast solar radiance now
wasted on the furnace-like shores of the Red Sea will be stored up as
a source of mechanical power. The commerce of the West will once more
return to the East where it began; and the whole region will be
repeopled with the life that swarmed there in the best days of old
Egypt. But under that new civilisation there will be no return of the
old religion of the obelisks; for men will no longer worship the sun
as a god, but will use him for the common purposes of life, as a
slave.
After having thus passed in review so many noble obelisks, a mere
tithe of what once existed, the conviction is deepened in our minds
that no nation had ever devoted so much time, treasure, and skill to
the service of religion as the Egyptian. While the Jews had only one
tabernacle and one temple, every city in Egypt--and no country had so
many great cities--had its magnificent temple and its hosts of
obelisks. The spoils of the whole world were devoted to their
construction; a third of the produce of the whole land of Egypt was
spent in their maintenance. The daily life of the people was moulded
entirely upon the religion of these temples and obelisks; their art
and their literature were inspired by it. It organised their society;
it built up their empire; and it was the salt which for more than
three thousand years conserved a civilisation which has been the
marvel and the mystery of every succeeding age. Surely the Light which
lighteth every man that cometh into the world, shone on those who were
thus fervently stretching the tendrils of their souls to its dawning
in the East, who raised these obelisks as symbols of the glorious and
beneficent sunlight of the world.