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

by Charles E. Moldenke

CHAPTER III

The form, name, dimensions, invention, material, and use of obelisks.

§1. Obelisks are monoliths, that is, they are made of one piece of rock only. Pieces set up in the form of an obelisk are never considered one. The lofty shaft at Washington, D. C., cannot, therefore, be styled an obelisk. In addition to being composed of one piece only, all obelisks are quadrangular, the sides sloping gradually and perceptibly but right-angled all the way to the top, where they are surmounted by a miniature pyramid or trapezium. They were, as far as we know, commonly erected in pairs at the entrance of the temples, evidently serving there in the capacity of guardians. The stone was polished to a high state of perfection, and the inscriptions added in intaglio-relievo by skilled stone-cutters under the direction of scribes. Whether the figures of these inscriptions were filled out with copper or gold, as some maintain, is extremely doubtful.

With the pyramidion it was different. While its usual dedicatory inscriptions remained undoubtedly as they were chiseled, the point or apex seems to have been surmounted by gold or gilded bronze. The sun would naturally in the early morning first touch with its rays this point and bathe it in splendor. It would appear from extant obelisks that, in order to have the gold added, the stone apex was not brought out to a fine point, but left rugged and incomplete. Yet this unevenness may also have been the result of time and the abrasion caused by the sand of the desert. We know of the Obelisk of Karnak, erected by queen Hatasu, that the apex of its pyramidion was covered with "pure gold", as the inscription on the obelisk itself states. Others, again, were covered with copper; for instance, the two obelisks of Heliopolis, of which but one remains now, which were seen in this condition by St. Ephraim Syrus (308 A. D.), Denys of Telmahre (840 A. D.), and a number of Arabic writers.

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. This figure, in the first place, closely resembles a pyramid or a combination of the pyramid and the obelisk, almost forcing on us the assumption that the obelisk grew out of the pyramid, and, in the second place, the disk of the sun plainly refers to the mystic sun-worship for which the obelisk primarily served as an index finger.

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. We find filial piety displayed only by Thothmes IV., who would not allow the monument of his great predecessor, Thothmes III., to lie half-finished in the quarry, but erected it, not, however, without succumbing to the sore temptation of adding his own name and using two thirds of the space of the whole obelisk. This is at present the Lateran Obelisk in Rome. Whether the obelisks were inscribed before being erected, or vice versa, cannot now be determined. From some uninscribed specimens we should infer that they were inscribed when in their proper position, while from the Lateran Obelisk we could draw the conclusion that they were first completed in all details before they were erected.

A pair of obelisks, on pedestals, in front of the pylon, or entrance-gateway, of a temple.

The obelisks, as soon as they had been finished to the satisfaction of Pharaoh, were placed in pairs on pedestals in front of the pylons or lofty entrances of the temples. The pedestals were either, as in the case of the New York Obelisk, composed of one solid block of stone, or else of a foundation of closely fitting blocks or a layer of stones.

One effect of the removal of the obelisks by the Romans was to break off the edges at the bottom, so that there was reason to fear that re-erection would not make them safe. To obviate this danger, they placed bronze crabs at each corner to fill out the gaps. Why they should have hit upon the form of the crab or scorpion is not very evident. Perhaps they chose the crab from a religious point of view, in order to conform to the curious religious doctrines and superstitious notions entertained by the Egyptians under the Ptolemies, and elucidated by the inscriptions and papyri of that time.