An obelisk is a quadrangular, taper, high spire or pyramid, raised perpendicularly, and terminating in a point, to serve as an ornament to some open square; and is very often covered with inscriptions or hieroglyphics, that is, with mystical characters or symbols used by the Egyptians to conceal and disguise their sacred things, and the mysteries of their theology.
Sesostris erected in the city of Heliopolis two obelisks of extreme hard stone, brought from the quarries of Syene, at the extremity of Egypt.[267] They were each one hundred-and-twenty cubits high, that is, thirty fathoms, or one hundred and eighty feet.[268] The emperor Augustus, having made Egypt a province of the empire, caused these two obelisks to be transported to Rome, one whereof was afterwards broken to pieces. He dared not venture to make the same attempt upon a third, which was of a monstrous size.[269] It was made in the reign of Rameses: it is said that twenty thousand men were employed in the cutting of it. Constantius, more daring than Augustus, caused it to be removed to Rome. Two of these obelisks are still to be seen there, as well as another a hundred cubits, or twenty-five fathoms high, and eight cubits, or two fathoms, in diameter. Caius Cæsar had it brought from Egypt in a ship of so odd a form, that, according to Pliny, the like had never been seen.[270]
Every part of Egypt abounded with this kind of obelisks; they were for the most part cut in the quarries of Upper Egypt, where some are now to be seen half finished. But the most wonderful circumstance is, that the ancient Egyptians should have had the art and contrivance to dig even in the very quarry a canal, through which the water of the Nile ran in the time of its inundation; from whence they afterwards raised up the columns, obelisks, and statues on rafts,[271] proportioned to their weight, in order to convey them into Lower Egypt. And as the country was intersected every where with canals, there were few places to which those huge bodies might not be carried with ease; although their weight would have broken every other kind of engine.
Sect. II. The Pyramids.—A Pyramid is a solid or hollow body, having a large, and generally a square base, and terminating in a point.[272]
There were three pyramids in Egypt more famous than the rest, one whereof was justly ranked among the seven wonders of the world; they stood not very far from the city of Memphis. I shall take notice here only of the largest of the three. This pyramid, like the rest, was built on a rock, having a square base, cut on the outside as so many steps, and decreasing gradually quite to the summit. It was built with stones of a prodigious size, the least of which were thirty feet, wrought with wonderful art, and covered with hieroglyphics. According to several ancient authors, each side was eight hundred feet broad, and as many high. The summit of the pyramid, which to those who viewed it from below seemed a point, was a fine platform, composed of ten or twelve massy stones, and each side of that platform sixteen or eighteen feet long.
M. de Chazelles, of the Academy of Sciences, who went purposely to the spot in 1693, gives us the following dimensions:
The side of the square base 110 fathoms; the fronts are equilateral triangles, and therefore the superficies of the base is 12100 square fathoms; the perpendicular height, 77-3/4 fathoms; the solid contents, 313590 cubical fathoms. A hundred thousand men were constantly employed about this work, and were relieved every three months by the same number. Ten complete years were spent in hewing out the stones, either in Arabia or Ethiopia, and in conveying them to Egypt; and twenty years more in building this immense edifice, the inside of which contained numberless rooms and apartments. There were expressed on the pyramid, in Egyptian characters, the sums it cost only for garlic, leeks, onions, and other vegetables of this description, for the workmen; and the whole amounted to sixteen hundred talents of silver,[273] that is, four millions five hundred thousand French livres; from whence it was easy to conjecture what a vast sum the whole expense must have amounted to.
Such were the famous Egyptian pyramids, which by their figure, as well as size, have triumphed over the injuries of time [pg 007] and the Barbarians. But what efforts soever men may make, their nothingness will always appear. These pyramids were tombs; and there is still to be seen, in the middle of the largest, an empty sepulchre, cut out of one entire stone, about three feet deep and broad, and a little above six feet long.[274] Thus all this bustle, all this expense, and all the labours of so many thousand men for so many years, ended in procuring for a prince, in this vast and almost boundless pile of building, a little vault six feet in length. Besides, the kings who built these pyramids, had it not in their power to be buried in them; and so did not enjoy the sepulchre they had built. The public hatred which they incurred, by reason of their unheard-of cruelties to their subjects, in laying such heavy tasks upon them, occasioned their being interred in some obscure place, to prevent their bodies from being exposed to the fury and vengeance of the populace.
This last circumstance, which historians have taken particular notice of, teaches us what judgment we ought to pass on these edifices, so much boasted of by the ancients.[275] It is but just to remark and esteem the noble genius which the Egyptians had for architecture; a genius that prompted them from the earliest times, and before they could have any models to imitate, to aim in all things at the grand and magnificent; and to be intent on real beauties, without deviating in the least from a noble simplicity, in which the highest perfection of the art consists. But what idea ought we to form of those princes, who considered as something grand, the raising by a multitude of hands, and by the help of money, immense structures, with the sole view of rendering their names immortal; and who did not scruple to destroy thousands of their subjects to satisfy their vain glory! They differed very much from the Romans, who sought to immortalize themselves by works of a magnificent kind, but, at the same time, of public utility.
Pliny gives us, in few words,[276] a just idea of these pyramids, when he calls them a foolish and useless ostentation of the wealth of the Egyptian kings; Regum pecuniæ otiosa ac stulta ostentatio. And adds, that by a just punishment their memory [pg 008] is buried in oblivion; the historians not agreeing among themselves about the names of those who first raised those vain monuments: Inter eos non constat à quibus factæ sint, justissimo casu obliteratis tantæ vanitatis auctoribus. In a word, according to the judicious remark of Diodorus, the industry of the architects of those pyramids is no less valuable and praiseworthy, than the design of the Egyptian kings is contemptible and ridiculous.