The New York Obelisk: Cleopatra's Needle / With a Preliminary Sketch of the History, Erection, Uses, and Signification of Obelisks

Cleopatra's Needle
WITH A PRELIMINARY SKETCH OF THE HISTORY ERECTION, USES, AND SIGNIFICATION OF OBELISKS
CHARLES E. MOLDENKE, A.M., Ph.D.
NEW YORK
ANSON D. F. RANDOLPH AND CO.
38 West Twenty-Third Street
1891
Copyright , 1891, By Charles E. Moldenke.
University Press: PRESSWORK BY John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.
EXPLANATION OF THE VIGNETTES AT THE HEAD OF THE CHAPTERS.
The oldest nation on the globe sends her greeting to her youngest sister. The Setting Sun has shed its last rays on the Old World from Egypt's sunny land and now appears on this western shore as a brilliant Rising Sun . In the metropolis of the Western Hemisphere one of Egypt's grandest treasures meets our eyes and, though silent, reminds us of her former greatness. Here stands a monument of two of her greatest Pharaohs, lords and conquerors, scourges of their people, and a terror to their foes. It tells the story of serfs and teems with cringing words and the praise of despots. Yet it was a glorious time when this monument was erected and inscribed, a time of power, pride, learning, greatness, conquest for the lords, but for the people a time of abject subjection, misery, and hardships. Pharaoh was master of all. But the sun of his grandeur has set and vanished, and our obelisk, that proud monument of Pharaonic times, now sees a spectacle which the greatest flight of fancy could not have pictured to any man of those by-gone days.
Here in the western land the obsequious adoration of one man is no more. Here the people are not under the lash and miserable; they are, with all their cares and labors, a happy and contented people. The realm is not, as in those former days, the result of a despot's triumphant march, but a grand, harmonious union of friends.