OB 



OBELISK 



565 



is of fine quality for fodder. All these are varieties 

 of the Common Oat. The White and Black Tar- 

 tarian are much cultivated in some districts. They 

 are very productive, and well suited for feeding 

 horses, cattle, and sheep. On the continent oi 

 Europe this grain is seldom seen of quality equal 

 to what is produced in Scotland ; even in most 

 parts of England the climate is less suitable to it, 

 and it is less plump and rich. 



Ob, or OBI, the great river of Western Siberia, 

 rises in two branches, the Biya and the Katun, 

 both of which have their origin" in the Altai Moun- 

 tains, within the frontier of the Chinese dominions ; 

 and Hows north-west and north for 2120 miles to 

 the great Gulf of Ob in the Arctic Ocean. Its chief 

 tributaries are the Irtish, Tcharysh, Tom, and 

 Tchulym, all navigable. On the banks of the Ob 

 are Barnaul, Tomsk, and Narym. At present 

 only a few steamers ply on the great water-system 

 of the Ob, which nevertheless seems destined to 

 become a great commercial thoroughfare. The 

 explorations of Professor Nordenskiold, but more 

 especially the tentative voyages of Captain Wiggins 

 in 1874 and 1876, from Dundee through the Kara 

 Sea to the Gulf of Ob, repeated in later years, have 

 proved the feasibility of this direct route, and the 

 accessibility of the great navigation system of the 

 Silierian river to west European commerce. 



Ohildiall. the shortest book in the Old Testa- 

 ment canon, the work of one of the twelve ' minor 

 prophets,' of whose personality altsolutely nothing 

 is known. The name is not uncommon, meaning 

 ' servant of Jehovah,' and was borne by the devout 

 rhaiiibcrliiin of Ahab (1 Kings, xviii. 3-16), who 

 protected the prophets of the Lord from the fury 

 of Jezebel. Delitzsch thinks the author of the 

 prophecy may have been identical with the Obadiah 

 mentioned in 2 Chron. xvii. 7, as one of the Levites 

 sent by Jehosophat to teach the law in the cities 

 of Jiidah. From internal evidence the elate of 

 composition of the book may, with much proba- 

 bility, Ite put shortly after the capture of Jerusalem 

 by Nebuchadnezzar, about 587 B.C. The book was 

 placed next to A inns merely liecause the prophecy 

 of doom upon Edom is an amplification of that 

 pronounced earlier by Amos ( Amos, ix. 12). This 

 passage in Ohadiah (verses 1-9) is closely parallel 

 to Jeremiah, xlix. 7-22, from which indeed Knobel, 

 Bleek, and Reuss think it directly borrowed. 

 Kwald maintained that the first seven verses of 

 Obadiah were written bv a prophet of that name 

 during the inroads of Rezin and Pekah, that the 

 eleventh refers to the capture of Jerusalem by the 

 Aral* and Philistines in the reign of Jehoramj and 

 that the remaining verse* were compiled by a later 

 writer, partly from the older prophet (who was also 

 used by Jeremiah), and partlv from other sources. 



, . 



ri offers strong reasons for his statement that 

 the words of Obadiah were modified and expanded 

 by Jeremiah. Some scholars again, as Keil, have 

 supposed unnecessarily that Joel, ii. 32, is a distinct 

 reference to Obadiah 17. The book of Obadiah 

 possesses high individuality of style, and contains 

 some peculiar words. It has ever l>een favourite 

 reading among the Jews, and it was from it that 

 they derived the name of ' Edom ' as applied to 

 Home, to Christians, and all their enemies. The 

 liook falls naturally into two well-marked divisions, 

 of which the first (1-16) denounces destruction to 

 Edom, and the second (17-21) prophecies the 

 restoration of Israel. 



8e the commentaries on the prophet by Ewald, 

 Orelli, Hitzig, Kcil and Delitzscli, and Pnsey; the hooki 

 on Hebrew prophecy by Kuenen ( Eng. trans. 1877), 

 Robertson Smith (188i), Duhm (1875): also the special 

 commentaries by Hendeverk (1836) and Caspar! ( Leip. 

 1842) ; Archdeacon Pt-rowne in the 'Cambridge Bilile for 

 Schools' (1883), and Farrar's Minor Prophtti (181)0). 



O'ban, a fashionable watering-place of Argyll- 

 shire, 84 miles WNW. of Stirling, and 136 of 

 Edinburgh, by a railway opened in 1880. It curves 

 round a lieautiful and almost land-locked bay, 

 which, sheltered from every wind by the island 

 of Kerrera on the west and by the high shores of 

 the mainland, forms a spacious haven, crowded in 

 Slimmer by yachts and steamers. A mere ' clachan ' 

 when Dr Johnson visited it in 1772, Oban began to 

 be feued in 1803-20, and in 1832 was constituted 

 one of the Ayr parliamentary burghs. It is now 

 the great tourist headquarters of the West High- 

 lands, possessing some thirty hotels and splendid 

 steamboat facilities. Objects of interest are the 

 picturesque ruins of Dunolly and Dunstarlnage 

 Castles (see ETIVE), and a prehistoric cave-dwell- 

 ing, discovered in 1890. Pop. (1821) 1359 ; (1871) 

 2413; (1881)3991; (1891)4956. 



Ob, or OBI, the name given to the magical arts 

 or witchcraft practised by Obeah-men and Obeah- 

 women among the negroes of the West Indies and 

 the United States. It is substantially similar to 

 the corresponding superstitions all the world over. 

 See HAYTI, XIK.UUKS, MAGIC, WITCHCRAFT; and 

 H. J. Bell, Obeuh: Witchcraft in the Wist Indies 

 (1890). 



Obeld, EL, capital of Kordofan, in the eastern 

 Soudan, 220 miles SW. of Khartoum, consists of a 

 number of villages, originally separate and in- 

 habited by distinct races, but now joined together 

 into one town. Gum-arabic, ivorv, gold, and 

 ostrich-feathers are the chief articles of trade. 

 Pop. estimated at 35,000. Near this place, in 

 1883, a force of Egyptians under Hicks Pasha, 

 with an English staff, was exterminated by a large 

 army of the Mahdi. 



Obelisk (Gr. obelos, obeliskos, 'a spit'), * 

 word applied to four-sided monuments of stone and 

 other materials, terminating with a pyramidal OB 

 pointed top. These monuments were placed upon 

 bases before gateways of the principal temples in 

 Egypt, one on each side of the door. They served 

 in Egyptian art for the same purposes as the stelw 

 of the Greeks and columns of the Romans, anJ 

 appear to have been erected to record the honours- 

 or triumphs of the monarch. They have four faces, 

 are cut out of one piece, and are broader at the 

 base than at the top, at a short distance from 

 which the sides form the base of a pyramidion in 

 which the obelisk terminates. They were placed 

 tH>on a cubical base of the same material, which 

 slightly surpassed the breadth of their base. Each 

 side of the obelisk at the base measures ^th of the 

 height of the shaft,' from the base line to that 

 where the cap or pvramidion commences. The 

 cap is also ^th of the same height. Their sides 

 ire slightly concave, to increase their apparent 

 height. Tlieir height varies from upwards of 100 

 Feet to a few inches. The sides are generally 

 sculptured with hieroglyphs and representations, 

 recording the names and titles of kings, generally 

 in one line of deeply-cut hieroglyphs down eacli 

 side. Hewn in the rough out of a solid piece in 

 the quarries, they were transported down the Nile 

 luring the inundation, on rafts, to the spot where 

 they were intended to be placed, and raised from 

 ;heir horizontal position by inclined planes, aided 

 ly machinery. Some obelisks, before their erec- 

 ion, had their pyramid capped with bronze gilded, 

 or gold, the marks of such covering still being 

 evident on their surfaces. The use of obelisks is 

 as old as the appearance of art itself in Egypt ; 

 these grand, simple, and geometric forms being 

 ised in the 4th dynasty, and continued till the 

 time of the Romans. Their object is enveloped in 

 ;reat obscurity. At the time of the 18th dynasty 

 t appears that religious ceremonies and oblations 



