110 Study of the New York Obelisk as a Decayed Boulder. 



to the situation of the great Sun Temple, and of the great gate or 

 propylon standing before it, archasologists agree in assigning it to 

 the western part of the city, toward the Nile and the setting sun. 

 The English traveller, Pococke, in 1743, traced out the boundaries of 

 the mounds, as indicating the outlines of the ancient city. Brugsch, 

 however, maintains that these mounds show only the limits of the 

 walls of the temple, and are themselves but the remains of the walls 

 of a Coptic town which occupied the site of the temple, a few cen- 

 turies before our era. 



The temple was specially devoted to Atum-Ra or Tum, the God 

 of the Setting Sun. Before the great propylon, in approaching it 

 from the west, rose a pair of Obelisks of Usertesen I of the Xllth 

 dynasty, probably erected about 2300 B. C , fully 700 years before 

 our own monolith. Pococke located these almost opposite to the 

 passage through the mounds which he considered to be the west 

 city gate, but a little more to the south. One of the pair fell in 

 1160 A.D , having been undermined by treasure-hunters, and has 

 long disappeared. It was perhaps last seen prostrate in 1753 A.D., 

 by Robert Clayton •/ of the present erect shaft, Savary stated in 

 1787, "this and one sphynx of j^ellowish marble, thrown in the 

 dust, are the only remains of Heliopolis."^ 



Passing next through the propylon and between two rows of 

 marble sphynxes, the temple itself was reached, with two pairs of 

 obelisks before it. The pair next the portal of the temple was the 

 more ancient, consisting of the monolith which now stands at Con- 

 stantinople (the Atmeidan Obelisk, with its lower end broken off, 

 but still 55^ feet in height), and of a missing companion, of whose 

 fate nothing is now known. The outer pair consisted of the obelisk 

 now at London, on the right (S.W.), and of our own Obelisk on 

 the left (N.E.). 



7. Orientation of sides of our Obelisk at An. 



In regard to the position in which the sides of the Obelisk were 

 then placed, a consideration of the inscriptions within the pictured 

 squares on the four faces of the pyramidion throw^s some light. In 

 those of the present N.X.E. and E.S.E. faces,^ the King Thoth- 

 meses is represented in the form of an androsphynx, worshipping 

 the God of the Rising and Noon-day Sun, Hor-Khuti-Ra. In the 



1 A Journal from Grand Cairo, 7. ^ Savary, op. cit., I, 123. 



3 Moldenke, op. cit., 54 and 47. 



