Charles E. Moldenke

“ When Greece first began to issue from its times of heroes and demi-gods and advance on a path of civilization, Egypt had already for at least twenty centuries possessed everything that enlightened Greece could boast of. The first objects among the many wonders that still remain in Egypt to catch the eye of a traveler, are the grand monuments set up in honor of various divinities or as proud guide-posts for future generations. ”

“ We marvel at the enormous stones which our modern steam-engines would lift with difficulty, yet which the ancient Egyptians quarried, transported, and erected in their proper places, not only setting them on the ground, but even lifting them some hundred feet, as in the case of the Pyramids. We look upon the greater number of obelisks, each made of one unbroken piece of stone, and are forced to admire the workmanship and engineering skill which they exhibit. ”

“ The path of the sun was frequently compared to the life of a man from infancy to old age. Hence the sun was called a boy in the morning, a youth in the midday, and an old man in the evening ( khrud "boy", ḥunnu "youth", ȧau "old man") . The most common names of the sun, however, which constantly recur on the innumerable Egyptian monuments are Rā and Tum, the former representing the sun in all its glory in the morning and at noon, the latter the sun when it has completed [tum] its course and leaves the earth in darkness. ”

“ As all nature receives its life from the light of the sun, so all human beings obtain their life and their subsistence from the same source. Therefore Pharaoh and his people would {30}turn to the heavenly orb each day with prayer and adoration, asking of it the blessing and gift of life here on earth, and the life to come in Amenti or Hades. The sun is to them the giver of life, strength, health, existence, and all happiness. It is for this reason, that the finest productions of the Egyptian scribes are the grand hymns addressed to the sun, the tutelary god of Egypt. ”

“ We find the wars of former days fought over again, and always successfully, and we see his exploits recorded not only on impassive monuments of stone but also in the writings on fragile papyrus. A second Iliad by the poet Pentaûr recalls some wonderful hymns addressed amid the din of battle to his guardian deities, in particular to Amen-Râ, and gives us such a vivid picture of war as to surpass in many respects even old Homer. Ramses' most stubborn opponents were the Kheta (Hittites) with whom he negotiated a most favorable treaty after many years of war. ”

“ Having called attention to the belief of the ancient Egyptians in the sun as their guiding and illuminating deity, it will now be necessary to consider the place the obelisk occupies with regard to it. The first thing that greets our eyes on most obelisks is the figure of a bird on the top of each column of hieroglyphs. ”

“ Under no circumstances must we base our estimate of the Egyptian literature on the inscriptions of the obelisks; for, on looking over the writings of this wonderful people, we would not only find ourselves most agreeably surprised, but would be constrained to admit that there is no ancient people which can boast of an equally grand and sublime literature as the Egyptian. ”

“ Obelisks have been found in various localities of the ancient Egyptian empire. Possibly almost every city of some prominence will have boasted of some, no matter how small, especially such cities as became for a time the residence of the Pharaoh. They would also be placed in cities in which grand temples had been erected for the worship of some prominent deity, and if we can rely upon the reports of travelers, they are even found in the adjacent Sinaitic Peninsula to serve as monuments to the praise of some king's achievements. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The objects which called forth such thoughts were pre-eminently the obelisk and the pyramid, the former representing life in the sunshine of glory, the latter death in the darkness of passing night.
In the cosmogony of the Egyptians the Sun plays the most important part. Its birth is thus aptly described from the monuments by Prof. Dr. H. Brugsch: "In the beginning there was no heaven or earth. A boundless water, shrouded in dense darkness, made up the universe. ”

“ The various phases of the sun in its passage over the heavens are even represented by pictures on the monuments. The sun of morning is pictured as a hawk-faced deity (Horus) crowned with the snake-encircled disk of the sun, called Rā-Hor-Khuti; {29}the sun of noon as the same deity wearing the double crown of Egypt, called Hor or Hor-Khuti; the sun of evening as a human-faced deity with the double crown of Egypt, called Tum or Atum; and the invisible sun of night as a human-faced deity with the sacred scarab above it, called Kheper or Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. ”

“ When the Egyptian steamer Dessoug had been purchased and, after many delays, brought into the dry-dock, an aperture was made in its side, large enough to admit of the incased obelisk being pushed into the hold of the vessel. The side was then closed, the steamer was ready for its voyage, and the tedious work of the brave and indefatigable Commander was at an end as far as Egypt was concerned. On June 1, 1880 the vessel steamed out of the harbor with the Stars and Stripes floating in the breeze, carrying the obelisk, the pedestal, and the stones for the foundation. ”

“ His art was one that had been brought to the highest state of perfection in Egypt; and no wonder, for in a country where timber was scarce and hardly one tree was suitable for wood-work, men had to fall back on their natural supply which the mountains rising on both sides of the valley yielded. Stone was there in abundance. Hence from the earliest times of Egyptian history the stone-cutter receives a prominent place. The implements he employed must have had a wonderful degree of hardness to chip and polish the tenacious rock of Syene. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Of the obelisks, which formerly must have been counted by hundreds, we can scarcely find fifty, and of these only a few are perfect or of purely Egyptian origin.
As far as can be ascertained from the obelisks of the present day, most of them point as the original place of their erection to that city preëminently called the "City of Obelisks" in Lower Egypt, the Heliopolis of the ancients, at present مطريه Matarīyeh, near Cairo. They were here placed around and in front of the temple of the sun, {2}which was the principal sanctuary of the city. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was not until the reign of king Psametik II. that we come across another large obelisk of superior workmanship. This is at present in Rome. Ptolemy Euergetes II. and Cleopatra II. have left us a fine obelisk on the island of Philæ, and this represents the last of a long line of truly Egyptian monoliths. The Roman emperors who erected obelisks of their own were Hadrian and Domitian. Since their time obelisks with hieroglyphic inscriptions have neither been quarried nor erected. ”

“ By the Egyptians the obelisk was called tekhen. This word occurs quite frequently in inscriptions, especially on the obelisks themselves, where the "determinative" 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 (ha-t benben-t) , "the temple of the pyramidion" in Heliopolis. ”

“ Râ-Ḥor-khuti "the sun, the hawk of the horizon" is the name of the sun-god when in his full power at noon (see page 30) .—The names of all kings are always written in oval rings called cartouches, to distinguish them more readily from other words and names in the inscriptions. The usual "divine" title of Thothmes III. is Men-kheper-Râ (the first sign being read last) , which means "the stable and creative sun". His family name, in its simplest form, is Deḥuti-meses "child of Thoth". ”

“ They were not allowed to remain intact for a very long time, for a century is an insignificant matter when we deal with Egyptian history. Almost three centuries had passed, when a new conqueror arose, who was emulous of his great predecessor's deeds, and who envied him his renown. This was Ramses II., surnamed "the Great", {37}the "Pharaoh of the Oppression", who reigned from 1388 to 1322 B. C. (according to Lepsius) . Not only in his monuments but also in his deeds he carries off equal honors with Thothmes the Great. ”

“ An Egyptian deity symbolizing the creative energy of the sun, which is the source of all life. The deity is frequently represented as a man with the scarab or beetle on his shoulders, instead of a head. His name in Egyptian is , which is derived from the verb kheper, "to create". ”

“ The divine primeval spirit, inseparable from the matter of the primitive water, felt a longing after creative power, and his word called into being the world, whose figure and variegated form had already manifested themselves to him. ”

“ One of the oldest of the Egyptian gods and the judge of the dead in the Lower World. His worship was universal throughout Egypt at all times. His Egyptian name is Usȧr. The great Osiris-myth is this. Osiris was, at one time, a king, and reigned over Egypt. Going on travels he left Isis, his sister and wife, to conduct the government. The devil, Set, then revolted against him, killed him, cut his body into fourteen pieces, and scattered them over the country. Isis collected them, erecting a temple where a piece of his body was found, and called on her son Horus to avenge his father. ”

“ The Nile, ever ready to extend his welcome help to the children of his soil, aided them again in their efforts. Large barges or rather floats were built where the water of the inundation would reach the blocks, and where they, when once on the floats, would be carried on that great Egyptian highway to any part of the vast empire. Many monuments, however, were transported overland, in which case the aid of the Nile must have been dispensed with. ”

“ Nowhere on the face of the earth are so many ancient monuments gathered together as here. Suffice it to mention the wonderful temples of Karnak and Luxor in the city proper, which was called Ȧpiu·t "the city of thrones" (from which with the prefixed feminine article ta the word "Thebes" is derived) and a number of obelisks, and the Tombs of the Kings with their mausolea, especially the Memnonium of Ramses II., the monster statues of Amenophis III., and many other monuments in western Thebes. ”

“ On looking over the translation of our obelisk, as set forth in the preceding pages, the reader will perhaps feel disappointed in the substance of its inscriptions. These contain, as has already been stated, only laudatory phrases and vainglorious titles, and furnish us with no historical data nor anything that would be of value to scholars. People have for many centuries suspected them of an utterly different meaning, and have given them the most fanciful and ludicrous explanations. ”

“ A modern village marking the site of a part of the necropolis of ancient Thebes, situated on the west shore of the Nile. Here are the ruins of the grand temple begun by Seti I., and completed by Ramses II. 88
Râ. The Sun, the Supreme Being, and the organizer of the world according to Egyptian mythology. He was worshipped in the entire country, but especially in Heliopolis. He is always represented with the face of a hawk. ”

“ Outside of Egypt and Africa other Egyptian and some pseudo-Egyptian obelisks are to be found. They {5}are the work of Roman emperors. These, jealous of the great achievements of the Pharaohs and desirous of adding to the many Pharaonic obelisks in Rome some of their own making and inscribed with their own name, had the stone quarried in Syene and transported to Rome. Domitian and Hadrian erected such to their honor in the "Eternal City".
§2. The obelisk is certainly a very early invention of the Egyptians. ”

“ The obelisk with the thickest base is that which is still in the quarry at Assuan, the base measuring 11 ft. 11⁄2 in. by 11 ft. 11⁄2 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. ”