BOWL (=neb=) _gold_. Under this crater or bowl will be noticed three small dots, probably designed to represent grains of the metal intended.
SCEPTRE (=user=) is here used as a determinative of metal; and some Egyptologists think that when it accompanies the bowl called NEB, the metal referred to is not gold but copper.
Among the hieroglyphs on the London Obelisk may be found many ideographs or pictures of outward objects, each of which stands for an attribute or abstract idea. Thus arm stands for power, interior of a hall for festivity, lizard for multitude, beetle for immortality, sceptre for power, crook for authority, Anubis staff for plenty, vulture for queenly royalty, asp for kingly royalty, ostrich feather for truth, ankh or crux ansata for life, weight for equality, adze for approval, pike for power, horn for opposition, the bird called bennu for lustre, pyramous loaf for giving, hatchet called neter for god, lion's head for victory, swallow for greatness.
In addition to the obelisk, the other iconographs or picture representations found on the London Obelisk are the sun, moon, star, heaven, pole, throne, abode, altar, tree.
From this hieroglyphic sentence we learn that the pyramidion of each obelisk was covered or capped with some metal, probably copper. This was done to protect the monument from lightning and rain. Cooper draws attention to the fact that obelisks were capped with metals, and pyramids were covered with polished stones. The pyramidia of Hatasu's obelisks at Karnak were covered with gold. The venerable obelisk still standing at Heliopolis had a cap of bronze, which remained until the Middle Ages, and was seen by an Arabian physician about A.D. 1300.
The avarice of greed and the rapacity of war have long since stripped every obelisk of its metal covering.
[Illustration: "At the first festival of the Triakonteris."]
DISK (=aten=) _time_. The solar disk is usually a symbol of Ra, but as the sun is the measurer of times and seasons, the disk sometimes stands for time, as it does here.
The hieroglyphs following are defaced. Some think one hieroglyph is a cerastes, but Dr. Birch says the group probably consisted of a harpoon and three vertical lines--a common sign of plurality. Thus the preceding sentence would be "at time the first," that is, "at the first time."