The Democratic advocate., 1881-02-26
! The Egyptian obslisk,

Ihe ooellsk which adorns Central Park,
New York, was quarried at Assouau, in
Nubia [the far Syene of the Scriptures,
aud brought down the Nile on immense
RATS aud set up at the famous city of He-
liopolis, in lower Egypt. 1t is of sienite,
or, as the French call it, rose granite, an
exceedingly durable stone There is still
remaining in this same quarry monolith,
which, had the ancients succeeded in get
ting it out, would have been the largest
ever erected but, unfortunately, it broke
in the middle, and so was abandoned in
the quarry.
From Heliopolis the Cleopatra mono-
liths were removed to Alexandria, after
having stood before the temple of the Sun
at the former city over thousand years.
So the yoluptuous Queen had nothing to
do with the obelisk that bears her name.
HCleopatras Needles" are a misnomer as
much 50 as Potnpey's Pillar is to the col
ump ef DieeIesian, for we now know they
were set up at Alexandria in the eighth
year of the reign of Augustus, or twenty
three years before the birth of Christ, and
seven years after the death of Cleopatra
herself.
Heliopolis seems to have been literally
city Of obelisks, for it has furnished
nearly all that were transported to Eu-
rope. Only one is now remaining where
once stood this mighty city-a monument
of divine wrath-for Heliopolis is the
Bethshemath of the Scriptures, the destrue-
tiOn Of which Ezekiel prophesied, and to
render his words as they should be aThus
saith the Lord God, behold, I AN against
the Pharaoh, and l will send Nebuchad-
neGzar, king of Babylon, and when he
cometh he shall smite the land; he shall
break the obelisks that are in Bethshe :
maih, which is in the land of Egypt, aud
the temples of the gods Of the Egyptians
shall burn with fire. Surely as 1 live,
saith the Lord Of hosts, as Tabor is among
the mountains, and Carmel by the sea, SO
shall be come. And the land Of Egypt
shall be utterly waste and desolate, from
the tower of Syene even to the borders Of
Ethiopia This prophecy is literally full :
filed, and the obelisk still standing at
Bethshemath is a monument to the truth
thereof.
These obelisks were usually erected to
commemorate some important event in the
life of the ruling king, and were always
dedicated to the gods, SO that their sacred :
ness would prevent their overthrow. The
park obelisk is dedicated to the god Ra, or
the Sun as the hawk hieroglyphs at the
pyramidion, as the top Of the shaft is call.
ed, Indicate The hawk, as flying the
highest, aud consequently nearest to the
sun, and believed to have the faculty of
gazing on the orb, was especially dedicated
TO the San God, or Ra, as in the aneien t
Egyptian. The observer win notice, at
intervals among the hieroglyphs, long oval
figures, containing within them various
hieroglyphieal characters These are the
names Of certain kings of Egypt. These
Ovals are called by the Egyptologists ''royal
cartouches." They gave the first clew to
the deeiphering of the hierOglyphs, the
name Of PtOlemy Epiphanes being the first
kings name that was phonetically made
out. Now the names Of all the kings, or
''pharaohs, of Egypt are known a long
way back, anterior to the time Of Moses,
or before Abraham entered the land.
The key to the reading Of the sacred
characters, as the hieroglyphs are called,
was discovered in the famous Rosetta
stone, now in the British Museum, When
Napoleon was III Egypt an officer Of the
engineers found this stone at Rosetta, when
he was constructing a redoubt. It had an
engraved inscription in three different
characters, one being in Greek, As We
can read the Greek, through it the reading
of the ancient Egyptian characters was
finally discovered,