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



and sculptures, like those wljich Rameses II had carved upon the 

 pedestals of his fine monoliths at Luxor: that their entire disap- 

 pearance, succeeded by a roughened surface, points to the violent 

 mutilation and fire of the Persians: and that, at the time of its 

 transfer to Alexandria, the Romans were content to dress the 

 damaged faces somewhat, to an even surface, rather than to cut 

 new figures or hieroglyphs into the hard granite; of their poor work 

 in imitation hieroglyphs, they have left us samples in some of their 

 own obelisks at Rome. 



A corroborative fact is found in the pedestal of the fellow-obelisk, 

 w^hich the English left buried in the sand at Alexandria. As this 

 consists of limestone, it seems likely that the original granite 

 pedestal of that shaft at An was found by the Romans so badly 

 injured or destroyed, that they replaced it at Alexandria with a 

 block of the easily hewn and abundant material, limestone, from 

 the quarries beyond the Nile, adjacent to Heliopolis, at Masara or 

 Turra. 



(2). The extreme mutilation of the bases of the two shafts (and 

 these only, of all Egyptian obelisks), particularly at their corners. 

 These are so greatly and irregularly rounded off, that Gorringe 

 estimated that not over two-thirds of the area of the bottom of our 

 Obelisk could come into contact with its pedestal. So great is the 

 rounding on the heel of each shaft, that one old writer, in 1738 A.D., 

 describes it as hemispherical, fitting into a corresponding cavity or 

 hollowed-out socket in the pedestal, and states: "but the Basis or 

 Foot may perhaps be the most remarkable Part of these Obelisks, 

 especially if that at Alexandria is to instruct us. . . . They would 

 bear a nearer resemblance to Darts and massive Weapons, thus 

 more expressive of Rays of the Sun.'" 



As Gorringe states, " that marring of the heel, to the extent of 

 breaking off large masses at the corners, cannot be attributed to 

 the present age. The fractures are also too irregular to admit the 

 theory that they were purposel}^ broken off to facilitate the opera- 

 tion of raising the Needle."^ The mutilation must have occurred 

 before the erection of the Obelisk at Alexandria, since the Romans 

 then found it necessary to introduce their bronze crabs as supports 

 beneath the four corners. According to one author, "one effect of 

 the removal of the obelisks by the Romans was to break off the 



1 Shaw, op. cit., 411. Also Pococke, op. cit., I, 7. 



2 Gorringe, idem, 102. 



