Study of the Neiv York Obelisk as a Decayed Boulder. 103 



faces and bedding-planes of its quarries ; of this some evidence seems 

 to be shown in photographs of ledges in the Syene quarries. 



It may be added that there is abundant evidence in the old 

 quarries of Syene of the great care and economy with which the 

 Egyptians worked their highly prized "heart-stone," and therefore 

 of the probable good condition in which their hewn blocks were 

 delivered ready for transport. But natural flaw^s occurred in the 

 stone, and the unequal strains produced by rude methods of quarry- 

 ing may have occasionally resulted in injury to some of the larger 

 blocks, e. g., the apparent cross-fissure in the famous partly hewn 

 quarry-obelisk. Such defect may be now represented in local weak- 

 ness in parts of the New York Obelisk and others, and in fractures 

 to their pyramidia. 



The most noted example was the cracked base of the western 

 obelisk at Luxor, discovered, on the arrival of the French, by the 

 hollow sound it yielded to a gentle blow of a hammer.^ This caused 

 the engineer Lebas, at the time, great dismay and embarrassment, 

 lest he might afterwards be charged to have cracked the obelisk 

 while lowering it from its pedestal. The main fissure was twelve 

 feet in length, running along about one-sixth of the length of two 

 of the faces (as now shown in photographs of the Paris Obelisk). 

 It w^as " crossed by two dove-tailed mortises, filled with a yellowish 

 dust, the remains of wooden dogs, which must have been driven in, 

 before the erection, to prevent any possible widening of the crack." 



4. The nick in the north-northwest edge. 



About half-way up the shaft, on the IST.N.W. corner or edge, a 

 peculiar deep nick occurs, easily remarked from below, which also 

 appears in all photographs of adjacent faces of the monolith, taken 

 while it stood at Alexandria, previous to 1879. This seems hereto- 

 fore to have escaped particular attention, doubtless because it has 

 been considered a mere defect, like others of smaller size along that 

 and other edges of the shaft. I had opportunity to examine it with 

 some care, during my trips in the hanging chair up and down the 

 adjacent sides, and found it to possess quite a symmetrical form, 

 that of a quarter section of a hemisphere. The height of the little 

 curved vault of the cavity is 7 inches, and the depth of its floor, 

 measured from the angle (radius of the hemisphere), 5 inches. 



* Lebas, idem, 45. 



