Ruins of Thebes, at present Karnak, in Upper Egypt.
Obelisk of Ramses II. in Luxor (Thebes).
The majority of all extant obelisks was erected at Heliopolis and Thebes. Others, however, have been discovered in different places: some as far north as Saïs and Tanis, and as far south as the boundary of Egypt on the island of Philæ, called Elephantinê by the ancients. The limit in the opposite directions seems to have been the Fayoom on the west, and the Sinaitic Peninsula on the east. Outside of Egypt and Africa other Egyptian and some pseudo-Egyptian obelisks are to be found. They 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. As a matter of fact, it was at first of small size and could hardly have been used as an ornament of temples, which purpose it served in later times. We find very little of the commonplace laudatory titles on the earliest specimens of obelisks, and, as mentioned above, some of them were even found in the necropolis or cemetery, apparently to serve as mementos or head-stones. A passage on the monuments, mentioning that a certain Merab (
From this time until the beginning of the XVIIIth dynasty we possess no obelisks. A new era then began for Egypt. It ushered in its golden age. Thothmes I. was the first to claim for himself equal honor with Usertesen. He erected two magnificent obelisks in Karnak, where they are still conspicuous. Here his daughter, queen Hatasu, co-regent with her brothers Thothmes II. and III., also erected two obelisks. It is true her name does not appear on them, but it is a well established fact, that her great brother Thothmes III., mighty as he was, showed an ignoble jealousy of his valiant sister and, on coming to power, erased her name from the monuments and substituted his own instead. As he had, however, left the feminine pronouns and endings in the inscriptions, his knavery was readily discovered. Notwithstanding this serious defect in his character, he celebrated his many victories by the erection of obelisks of his own. To him belongs the palm in this line of monumental structures. Besides him, one other Pharaoh of this dynasty, Amenophis II., seems to have erected one small obelisk.
Queen Hatasu or Makara.