The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-10-25
OBELISKS AND OSTRICHES.
A Visit to Heliopolis, and Its 0belisk
Which Antedates Abraham.
A. City that Saw the Nuptials of J~oseph-All
About the Bird Called the PhGnix, and
Its Successor, the Ostrich.

NAPLES, ITALY, Oct. 4, 1ss5.-In my last /
promised to give an account of my visit TO an os-
trich farm in Egypt, but / give more about an
obelisk. I set out for that interesting place in
March of this year. in company with Hon. j. w.
Bookwalter. of Springfield, o., and one of the
Canadian Captains of the FIVE hundred half
breeds who had been brought over to row Gen.
Wolseley's soldiers up the rapids of the Nile In
Upper Egypt The day was beautiful. the com
pany cheerful, the ground was classic and the
end of our expedition was novel, not to describe
it by any other qualification. Before going TO
the ostrich farm we concluded to visit the site
of Heliopolis, and I believe it will be more profit
able to say more about it than ostrich farming.
The ancient On of the Bible, where Joseph got
his wife Asenath, the daughter of Poti-pherah,
priest of On, and Heliopolis are one and the
same. [ have never felt quite sure in regard to
Joseph in this matter, that he took a heather
priests daughter of his own accord, for the Bible
says (Gen. xii, 45C And he (Pharaoh) gave him
tJoseph) to wife Asenath, the daughter of Poti-
pherah, priest Of On" I have no
doubt that it was a marriage with state
motives at the back Of it, as far
the Pharoah was = concerned, and,
perhaps, if we had the eye of Omniscience we
should see that in the case of Asenath. she may
have been one who worshiped the true God.
At any rate, behold US at Heliopolis. the On of
the Bible. | said above, 'the site of HeliopolIs,
for nothing but a single obelisk of red granite to-
day remains of this once-famous city and the
most ancient shrine of Egypt, with. perhaps, one
exception. AS the very Greek name indicates,
it was the "Clty of the Sun" The Egyptians
gave it three names: 1.-THE Dwelling Place of Ra
(the SUM- " '"Tne Seat (see) of Tum (the evening
sun)' and 1.-THE House of Phoenix Tan or On.p
This latter name was very appropriate, for we
are on our way to the ostrich farm-a house, or
home, of the largest surviving birds that our
globe knows this day. But what a wonderful
bird that Phoenix was; the ostrich could not
'hold a candle 20 him! His home was Heliopo-
lis, and he (the Ph9nix) was especially asso-
ciated with the worship of Ra 1.-THE sum- By the
way, the very name Poti- pherah-whose daughter
became Joseph's wife meant dedicated to Ra,"
and probably was a title like the word Pharaoh,
which signified the monarch in general, as our
modern words king" 'czar" and emperor
without specifying the particular king. Of the
Pharaohs mentioned in the Bible there are no
less than eleven distinct ones, and of these we
know from sacred and profane history the names
of no less than eight, viz: From hleroglyphs
aud other p%rofane sources: Rameses, the Great,
the oppressor Of the Hebrews, the new king
over Egypt who knew not Joseph" and who
caused the children of Israel to build Pithom
and Raamses Exodus LII; Menephtah, his thir-
feenth son, whose fate We learn in Exodus
xiv, 90. From the Bible we know
Shishak lin Egyptian language, Shestrongl
] Kings xiv. %: Zerah lin Egyptian. Orzorkenl
II Chronicles xiv, o; so Egyptian, Sabaco) II
Kings xiii. 4: Tirhaka Egyptian, Taharqa) IL
Kings xix, 9; Necho Egyptian, Neqo) IL Kings
xiii. 20; and Hophra Egyptian. Uabral Jeremiah
xiv, 80. The three Pharaohs of the Bible, whose
names we do not know, are the Pharoah with
whom Abraham had to do Genesis xii, l5G the
Pharaoh of Joseph Genesis xiii. and, centuries
later, the Pharaoh of Solomon Il Kings, iii. H.
1t Is believed that the first two, though two hun
dred wears apart, were Hyksos, or shepherd
kings, (Asiatics) who belonged to a dynasty that
ruled for five centuries in Egypt; and Solomon's
Egyptian wife Il Kings iii, IL, the best chronicle
gists believe, belonged to the twenty first, or
Tanite hierarchical dynasty. which did not last
one hundred years.
Great discoveries have been made in Egypt,
which 60 to the of the Bible.
President S. G. Bartlett, in an article entitled,
1.-THE Subterranean History of Man." in the
North American Review of July last. truly says:
in Egypt, where Herodotus is found wanting.
Genesis steadily gains new confirmation. Won
Bohlen, who assaulted its historic accuracy fifty
years ago, was extineuished in the encounter.
And SO great an authority as Mr.. II. 5. Poole
has not hesitated to assert that the effort to re-
duce these narratives tof the Bible) many hun
dred years is wholly incompatible with their
minute conformity to all the circumstances of
the age of the Ramessidee. and that late Egyp-
tian discoveries emphatically call for a reconsid-
GRAFTON of that position"
But to come back to our Phoenix bird. When
ancient Greek philosophers went to the still
more ancient Heliopolis, they heard of a
bird called the Bennu, or Phoenix,
that came once in five hundred years
from the far off land of spices and perfume to
the sacred city of the Sun, where he 1.-THE Pho
~iyl acnc+r1otaI fnr MIN GOLF a fupapo1 Milo ap6
accommodatinglv placed himself thereon and
was eremated-was completely reduced to ashes
but only to rise again in renewed life and
splendor. The rejuvenated Phoenix then spread
his wings, shook the ashes from his feathers and
hied him to the place he came from, to wait an
other five centuries more before he returned to
undergo another cremating process. What 1T all
means-this most curious fable-who can tell9
Some think that it was a type of old wisdom
ITSELF" which, like truth, if crushed tc earth
would rise again.
1 SAID that all that was visible of Heliopolis is
the red granite obelisk ~sixty-six feet high, which
is, in some respects, the most interesting of
these monoliths in the world. With one eXcep-
ton it is the most ancient, but as it is on the
site Of one of the oldest cities of the Pharaohs,
as it was erected, where it now stands, centuries
before Abraham went to Egypt, and as it beheld
the ~nuptials of Joseph, it has an interest for the
civilized world far beyond any other monument
that has come down from antiquity--with, per-
haps, the exception of the pyramids of Ghizeh.
The Socalled 'Cleopatra's Needle" which
new stands in Central Park, New York,
once stood in Heliopolis, but was
taken to Alexandria in the DAYS
of Tiberius. 1t. too, is a very old obelisk. but is
young compared with the obelisk of Heliopolis,
for while, as the inscriptions tell us. the former
1.-THE one now in Central Park was
erected during the Seventeenth dynasty
by Thothmes III-according to Lep-
sius about 100 years B.. c., the latter 1.-THE He'll
opolis obelisk) was erected by Usortesen /.
who reigned more than 1000 B.. G. The only
obelisk that has been found superior to this in
age is a small one, found by Lepsius, at Mem
phis.
shall not soon forget that beautiful March
day. when IN the silent green fields, ! stood with
Mr.. Bookwalter, before the lone obelisk of He'll
opolis, and we read together the inscription in
the bold and simpNp characters of the early en-
pire OF Upper and Lower Egypt There, cut