Sir Erasmus Wilson

“ The mounds of Memphis have not as yet been explored; but if an obelisk should be met with there at some future time, our dream of the privileges of the living and of the dead (already disturbed by Mariette’s discovery of the pedestals of two obelisks, in front of the temple of Queen Hatasou, in Western Thebes) , must share the fate of other pretty but illusory dreams. It seems hardly fair that the eastern bank should enjoy a monopoly of the sun’s beaming rays, considering that tombs are also abundant along its rocky bounds. ”

“ But another and a graver trial is in waiting for our obelisk:—How will it accommodate itself to the climate of the British metropolis? It will endure: of that we can have no doubt; neither will it fail in our respect and admiration even when it has lost some of its pristine loveliness, and has submitted to harmonise its tone with the dulness of its surroundings.
The hewing, the carving, and the burnishing of one of these huge monoliths, under any circumstances, must have been a laborious undertaking, and have required a considerable period for its completion. ”

“ When Lady Duff Gordon returned to Egypt, the little negress held a prominent place in her thoughts: she took it again into her guardianship; but the child was no longer the same; she was self-willed, she was disobedient; the slave had learnt—alas! too readily—to despise her mistress! holding her to be an accursed Christian, a giaour. Verily the father of all evil is ignorance, which for ever stands sentry over the tree of knowledge. Need we not all—charity? ”

“ In recent photographs little is seen of these massive and extensive ruins; the Needle is sunk in a hole, the pedestal being lost to the sight, in a stonemason’s yard; and the fallen obelisk is buried in the sand. ”

“ The pylon is surmounted with an over-hanging cornice, on which is carved the winged orb, emblem of the Eternal and of the sun; while two crowned asps, one on each side of the disk, imply dominion over the north and the south, as well as the east and the west; consequently over the whole world.
In the neighbourhood of the great temple of Karnak are the ruins of a smaller temple appertaining to Amenophis III. “It was once adorned with elegant sculptures and two granite obelisks; but is now a confused heap of ruins, whose plan is with difficulty traced beneath its fallen walls.” ”

“ At the landing-place in front of the chief temple at Philæ, a broad flight of steps, leading upwards from the river’s edge, is crowned at the summit by a solitary obelisk, one alone remaining; next follows an avenue of Isis-headed columns, and then the majestic propylon of the temple. The obelisk is of fine sandstone, without sculpture, broken at the summit, and about thirty feet in height. At no great distance is the pedestal, cupped at the top, which formerly supported its companion. ”

“ We can hardly be surprised that the Greeks and the Romans should have been fascinated with the delicate beauty of the obelisks, and should have desired to possess them. Two hundred and eighty-four years before the birth of Christ, Ptolemy Philadelphus built a tomb for his wife Arsinoë at Alexandria, which he enriched with an obelisk fifty-six feet high. The obelisk had been cut, as usual, in the quarry of Syené during the reign of the last of the Egyptian Pharaohs, Nectanebo II.; it had not been engraved, but its date may be stated as about six hundred years before the Christian era. ”

“ We can no longer wonder that two superb obelisks, chiselled in the best period of Egyptian art, sculptured in the rose-coloured granite of the renowned quarries of Syené at the extremest limit of the kingdom, and set up in the midst of the regal city, made doubly lustrous by the presence of its beautiful Queen, and probably within the precincts of her favourite palace, should have received the name of Cleopatra’s Needles ”

“ But if we turn our back upon the Delta, the land of prolific produce, [Pg 42] the battle-field of many centuries, and the grave of innumerable ancient cities, and gaze towards the south, we see before us that wonderful river, which, rising in the bosom of Africa, and bursting through the granite rocks of Syené—the As-souan, or gate of Egypt—precipitates itself, a foaming cataract, [14] into the valley of Egypt, and pursues its meandering course, without tributary and without bridge, for more than 600 miles in a straight line from Syené to Cairo. ”

“ The earliest dynasties were too much occupied with cities, and pyramids, and tombs, to care much for temples and decorative architecture; but Usertesen, whilst he erected temples and obelisks to the sun, likewise excavated tombs on the eastern shore of the Nile; and, as if to exhibit his ignorance of hypothetical sun-worship, planted an obeliskoid monument on the western shore, in the delicious oasis of Fyoom. ”

“ Nevertheless, the ancient prejudices of our affections are ever ready to spring forth, like buried seeds in a garden; and a deep-felt regard for the old consul, Pompey, who had been [Pg 40] so treacherously assassinated on the shores of Egypt, now competes with the better claims of Diocletian for the honour of this magnificent memorial; just as the obelisks of Alexandria will, to the end of time, ever be remembered in association with the memory of Cleopatra. ”

“ With one exception, all the known obelisks are Egyptian; hewn by the Egyptians, and from the rocks of Egypt itself, granite, basalt, and sandstone; the exception being that of Arles. Putting, however, the Arles obelisk out of consideration, obelisks admit of being grouped into Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, and Roman; while a sub-group may be formed in each class, consisting of the inscribed and uninscribed. The inscribed obelisks narrate their own history as if endowed with life ”

“ At that early period, when other nations had not yet awakened into the dawn of civilisation, Egypt had made substantial progress in architecture and sculpture; and the British Obelisk may be taken as an [Pg vi] admirable example of their excellence. The hieroglyphs which adorn its surface, inform us that it was erected by a powerful Pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty, Thothmes III.; and that, 200 years later, it was carved with the name of another illustrious Egyptian potentate, Rameses the Great. ”

“ It is a river of poetry and of fertility; for nine months of the year the northern breeze (the Etesian wind) blows against its stream from early morning until night, to waft the travellers, in the sylph-like Nile-boat, called Dahabeeyah, through their journey of health and recreation. At night the boat is moored for its rest; the wind is lost in sleep, but wakens to its duties in the early morn; while rain is a thing almost unknown. In the month of June the Nile rises at Syené ”

“ We cannot pretend, at this distance of time, to have traced every obelisk issued from the quarries of Syené, to its present resting-place. [Pg 175] We know that there were many important cities with their temples in the Delta, now in ruins, their place alone indicated by tumulus-like mounds, where, doubtless, obelisks once stood; nor have we forgotten the fragment which forms part of the pavement of Cairo; nor the hieroglyphed stump on which Pompey’s Pillar rests for its chief support at Alexandria. ”

“ The Egyptian obelisks have two other important features:—first, they are monoliths, and secondly, they are hewn out of the quarries of rose-coloured granite of Syené. By monolith is meant “a single stone,” from the Greek words “monos,” one or single, and “lithos,” a stone, and is intended to signify that the object is formed of a single piece; therefore we have good reason for our wonder when we see before us a stately shaft of granite consisting of a single piece, very little short of a hundred feet in height, and weighing nearly two hundred tons. ”

“ We have already had occasion to mention the existence, in these quarries, of an unfinished obelisk not yet reft from the parent rock, but bearing the traces of the artificers’ hands, as though they had unexpectedly been summoned from their work. ”

“ I.—Usertesen I., a Pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty, corresponding with the year 3064 b.c., supplies us with the earliest example of an obelisk, in the venerable monolith still standing at Heliopolis. Its consort is lost, but the pedestal has been recently cleared of rubbish to prove its former existence. The Heliopolis or Matareeah obelisk was originally capped with metal, which has left its mark on the pyramidion; and its shaft is engraven with a solitary column of boldly carved hieroglyphs. ”

“ A small lake in the cooler time of the year, before the thirsty sun comes and drinks up every scrap of moisture except the river, spreads in the centre of the grove, dotted with little islands, that multiply as the season advances. A close greensward, from which thousands of palms spring at regular intervals, creeps down on all sides after the receding water * * * immense numbers of aquatic birds make it their resort. ”

“ It will tell us, so often as we look at its strange form and venerable characters, that ‘The light which lighteneth every man’ shone also on those who raised it as an emblem of the beneficial rays of the sunlight of the world. It will tell us that as true goodness was possible in the outcast Samaritan, so true wisdom was possible even in the hard and superstitious Egyptians, even in that dim twilight of the human race, before the first dawn of the Hebrew law or of the Christian gospel. ”

“ On our right hand, as we look forward into the south, is the site of ancient Memphis, founded by Menes, first of the kings of Egypt. Here stood once a magnificent temple, dedicated to the god Ptah, the [Pg 46] representative of “Creation;” but at present, a collection of ruinous tombs, together with some broken colossal statues, partly engulphed in sand, are all that remains of its original greatness. One of these relics, a colossal statue of Rameses the Great, is believed to belong to England, and only awaits removal to a fitting resting-place. ”

“ The desirability of removing the obelisk resolves itself into two questions—the cost, and the value and interest of the monument as compared with the necessary expenditure. There can be no doubt as to the feasibility of removal. An opinion has certainly prevailed in England that the obelisk is so much defaced and broken as to have lost all interest. But I will venture to say that this opinion has not been formed by any one who has seen the whole of three sides which have been exposed by the excavations recently made by Sir James Alexander. ”

“ When the pyramid was too costly, a pair of small obelisks stood sentry at the entrance of the tomb, and were in common use during the early dynasties. A considerable number of these relics have been found, and preserved in the Egyptian museum at Boulak. The obelisk of Syenite granite, however, belongs to a later period; it may have come into use before the twelfth dynasty, before the reign of Usertesen; but the Heliopolis obelisk is generally admitted to be the pioneer of the colossal obelisks of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, of the reigns of the Thothmeses and of the Ramseses. ”

“ The chronology of ancient Egypt is a subject not without its difficulties, open to a variety of opinion, and involved in perplexing uncertainty. Nevertheless, the mind naturally yearns for information as to the time of an occurrence, and the opportunity of comparing it with coincident events. Ptolemy Philadelphus made a first step towards a better state of knowledge, when in the year 250 b.c. he commissioned Manetho, an Egyptian priest, experienced in the learning of Heliopolis, to draw up a list of the kings of Egypt from the earliest times. ”

“ As we move onwards we seem to be reviewing a section of the earth—the alluvium of the Delta behind us; the sandstone, the gritstone, the limestone of the secondary rocks, rising into a wall on either side, with the porphyry, the syenite, and the granite of the primary rock awaiting us at the first cataract, the gates of Egypt. The rocks approach nearer to the river as we advance, and keep us company to the end of our journey ”

“ The British obelisk shows similar marks of wear from causes of the same kind, but has further to complain of the rapacity of travellers, who have damaged it considerably in their endeavours to carry away fragments of so brilliant a memorial of ancient times. The angles of the shaft have been chipped in many places; and as a refinement of mischief, even the perpendicular sides of some of the hieroglyphs have likewise been chiselled away. ”

“ It is with my accord that thy war-cries pierce the very midst of thy barbarian foes, and the kings of every nation fall in under thy hand; I myself stretch forth my arms; I draw together and congregate for thee the Nubians in tens of thousands and thousands, and the northern peoples in millions. ”

“ An Egyptian Bournemouth or Torquay, in the meantime, has established itself on the line of the canal, and invalids are already migrating for health to Ismailia, to luxuriate in the balmy and exhilarating climate of Egypt.
Cairo is comparatively a modern city, being 1,200 years the junior of Alexandria, and possesses few traces of antiquity. A fragment of an obelisk helps to pave one of its entrance-gates—alas! to what base uses fallen!—probably a work of Usertesen, of Thothmes, or of Rameses. ”

“ It is with my accord that thou hurlest thine enemies beneath thy sandals, that thou smitest the chiefs of the unclean as I have ordered thee; the world, in all its length and breadth, from west to east, is at thy command. Thou spreadest gladness into the heart of all the peoples ”

“ Early Egyptologists had had their interest and curiosity awakened by observing the enclosure of certain hieroglyphs within an oval outline; and further research discovered that the ovals included hieroglyphs representing royal names and titles. The oval, or cartouche, is to be regarded therefore as the seal, or signet, or heraldic cypher of a king or potentate, and its presence on an obelisk or monument confers a right of authorship or proprietorship, and informs us to whom the monument belongs. ”

“ We must confess to considerable hesitation in accepting the sun-theory as an explanation of the site of the obelisks. Nor do we perceive any more reason to assume that a superstitious speculation governed the establishment of the abodes of the living, and of the tombs of the dead, than that the selection was one of simple convenience. The Egyptians are an Asiatic people, and therefore we may presume that they were deeply imbued with theological mysticism from their earliest origin ”

“ It is furthermore worthy of note, that about two hundred years must have intervened between the [Pg 15] action of Thothmes and that of Rameses in relation to this obelisk. And consequently that the central and side columns of hieroglyphs represent periods of art of, at least, two centuries apart. It is also not a little singular that a king of vast renown, like Rameses the Great, should have preferred to publish the record of his own brilliant titles by the side of those of his distinguished predecessor, rather than raise a separate obelisk as an independent memorial of himself. ”

“ Rameses II. was likewise styled “Rameses the Great;” and by the Greek historian Herodotus, Sesostris: he was a Pharaoh of the nineteenth dynasty; in his early days a victorious soldier; and during the remainder of his long reign, a devoted cultivator of the arts of civilisation and peace. So that those who are discontent with the euphonious title of “Cleopatra’s Needle,” and prefer to be rigorously precise in their language, must contrive to familiarise their voice and their ear with the less euphonious title of “Thothmes-Rameses obelisk.” ”

“ Denon alludes to Cleopatra’s Needles, and says they might be moved without difficulty, and form interesting trophies. To remove works of art from countries where they form ornaments, and are conspicuous objects of interest, is quite unworthy of a great people; but the obelisk in question lies in dishonour among low huts in the outskirts of Alexandria, and might well be spared to ornament one of our capital cities. In a conversation with Mr. David Laing, the well-known antiquary, about it, he suggested the open space in front of the British Museum as the most appropriate for it. ”