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



To the westward, for reasons before explained, the present W.S.W, 

 angle of our monolith must have been directed, so that, to one who 

 approached the Temple, the inscriptions on the present S.S.W. and 

 W.N.W. sides first became visible. This conspicuous position might 

 have been sufficient in itself to invoke the special fury of the destroyer. 

 But to this must have been added the intense hatred of the Persian 

 toward the two warlike and ambitious monarchs of Egypt, Thoth- 

 meses III and Rameses II, who had both in succession, at an inter- 

 val of two centuries, not only extended the sway of Egypt over 

 Persia, but had subjected the native land of the present invader, 

 Cambyses, to special cruelty and humiliation. We may then fairly 

 infer that the fires must have been the hottest and longest continued, 

 and the utmost eff"orts at mutilation most persistent, toward this 

 Obelisk and its mate, on which the cartouches of these Pharaohs, 

 constantly repeated and glittering with gold, caught the Persian 

 eye. Such fires would be specially kindled and fed on the two 

 prominent faces of our Obelisk, above designated. The lesser in- 

 jury to the Obelisk of Usertesen, before the pylon, is thus explained, 

 reaching merely for a few yards above its base. 



What evidences of such violence, then, still remain upon our 

 own Obelisk? 



(1). The strange condition of the pedestal. It has probably re- 

 sulted from the envelopment of the bases of nearly all the obelisks, 

 in Upper Egypt, by sand, as at Luxor and Karnak at Thebes, and, 

 in Lower Egypt, b}^ mud from the overflow of the Nile, that but 

 little is known in regard to their pedestals. 



At Luxor, the excavation of the bases of both the obelisks of 

 Rameses II, which preceded the removal, by the French engineer,^ 

 of the western obelisk to Paris, revealed, beneath each shaft, an 

 elaborately sculptured granite pedestal, resting upon a platform of 

 three blocks of sandstone. The monolithic pedestal (see figure in 

 my paper. Misfortunes of an Obelisk, loc. cit., page 90), which 

 originallv stood under the western obelisk and was left beliind bv 

 the French, was decorated with figures of pairs of cynocephali or 

 apes (representing the god of wisdom, Thoth) on two opposite 

 sides, and, on its face, with figures of the Nile god, Hap, present- 

 ing off'erings to Thoth, and with rows of hieroglyphics, once proba- 

 bly filled with gold; this block was 2 fi meters (10 feet) in height. 



1 Lebas, idem, 71. 



