COCOA-NUT TREES.—[Page 571.]
THE PYRAMIDS OF EGYPT.—[Page 544.]
On occasion of the damage which the city of Rhodes sustained by the above-mentioned earthquake, the inhabitants sent ambassadors to all the princes and states of Greek origin, in order to solicit assistance for repairing it; and they obtained large sums, particularly from the kings of Egypt, Macedon, Syria, Pontus, and Bithynia, which amounted to a sum five times exceeding the damages which they had suffered. But instead of setting up the Colossus again, for which purpose the greatest part of it was given, they pretended that the oracle of Delphos had forbidden it, and converted the money to other uses. Accordingly, the Colossus lay neglected on the ground for the space of eight hundred and ninety-four years, at the expiration of which period, or about the year of our Lord 653 or 672, Moawyas, the sixth caliph, or emperor of the Saracens, made himself master of Rhodes, and afterwards sold the statue, reduced to fragments, to a Jewish merchant, who loaded nine hundred camels with the metal; so that, allowing eight hundred pounds weight for each load, the brass of the Colossus, after the diminution which it had sustained by rust, and probably by theft, amounted to seven hundred and twenty thousand pounds weight. The basis that supported it was of a triangular figure: its extremities were sustained by sixty pillars of marble. There was a winding staircase to go up to the top of it; where might be discovered Syria, and the ships that went to Egypt, in a great looking-glass that was hung about the neck of the statue.
This enormous statue was not the only one that attracted attention in the city of Rhodes. Pliny reckons one hundred other colossuses, not so large, which rose majestically in its different quarters.
Obelisk,—in architecture, is a truncated, quadrangular, and slender pyramid, raised for the purpose of ornament, and frequently charged either with inscriptions or hieroglyphics. Obelisks appear to be of very great antiquity, and to have been first raised to transmit to posterity precepts of philosophy, which were cut in hieroglyphical characters: afterwards they were used to immortalize the great actions of heroes, and the memory of persons beloved and venerated for having performed eminent services to their country.
The first obelisk mentioned in history was that of Rameses, king of Egypt, in the time of the Trojan war, which was forty cubits high; Phuis, another king of Egypt, raised one of fifty-five cubits; and Ptolemy Philadelphus, another of eighty eight cubits, in memory of Arsinoë. Augustus erected one at Rome, in the Campus Martius, which served to mark the hours on an horizontal dial, drawn on the pavement. They were called by the Egyptian priests, the Fingers of the Sun, because they were made in Egypt to serve also as stiles or gnomons, to mark the hours on the ground. The Arabs still call them Pharaoh’s Needles; whence the Italians call them Aguglia, and the French Aiguilles.
The famous obelisks called the Devil’s Arrows, now reduced to three, the fourth having been taken down in the seventeenth century, stand about half a mile from the town of Boroughbridge, to the south-west, in three fields, separated by a lane, nearly two hundred feet asunder, on elevated ground, sloping every way. Mr. Drake urges many arguments for their Roman antiquity, and plainly proves them to be natural, and brought from Plumpton quarries, about five miles off; or from Tekly, sixteen miles off. The cross in the town, twelve feet high, is of the same kind of stone. The easternmost, or highest, is twenty-two feet and a half high, by four broad, and four and a half in girth; the second, twenty-one and a half by fifty-five and a quarter; the third, sixteen and a half by eighty-four. Stukeley’s measures differ. The flutings are cut in the stone, but not through: the tallest stands alone, and leans to the south. Plot and Stukeley affirm them to be British monuments, originally hewn square. Dr. Gale supposed that they were Mercuries, which had lost their heads and inscriptions; but in a manuscript note in his Antoninus, he acknowledges that he was misinformed, and that there was no cavity to receive a bust.
On the north side of Penrith, in the church-yard, are two square obelisks, of a single stone each, eleven or twelve feet high, about twelve inches diameter, and twelve by eight at the sides; the highest about eighteen inches diameter, with something like a transverse piece to each, and mortised into a round base. They are fourteen feet asunder, and between them is a grave, which is inclosed between four semicircular stones, of the unequal lengths of five, six, four and a half, and two feet high, having on the outsides rude carving, and the tops notched. This is called the Giant’s Grave, and ascribed to Sir Evan Cæsarius, who is said to have been as tall as one of the columns, and capable of stretching his arms from one to the other; to have destroyed robbers and wild boars in Englewood forest; and to have had an hermitage, called Sir Hugh’s Parlour.
A little west of these is a stone called the Giant’s Thumb, six feet high, fourteen inches at the base, contracted to ten, which is only a rude cross.