Monarchs, too, have entered into a sort of rivalry with one another in forming elongated blocks of this stone, known as “obelisks,”[2535] and consecrated to the divinity of the Sun. The blocks had this form given to them in resemblance to the rays of that luminary, which are so called[2536] in the Egyptian language.
Mesphres,[2537] who reigned in the City of the Sun,[2538] was the first who erected one of these obelisks, being warned to do so in a dream; indeed, there is an inscription upon the obelisk to this effect; for the sculptures and figures which we still see engraved thereon are no other than Egyptian letters.[2539]
At a later period other kings had these obelisks hewn. Sesosthes[2540] erected four of them in the above-named city, forty-eight cubits in height. Rhamsesis,[2541] too, who was reigning at the time of the capture of Troy, erected one, a hundred and forty cubits high. Having quitted the spot where the palace of Mnevis[2542] stood, this monarch erected another obelisk,[2543] one hundred and twenty cubits in height, but of prodigious thickness, the sides being no less than eleven cubits in breadth. (9.) It is said that one hundred and twenty thousand men were employed upon this work;[2543] and that the king, when it was on the point of being elevated, being apprehensive that the machinery employed might not prove strong enough for the weight, with the view of increasing the peril that might be entailed by due want of precaution on the part of the workmen, had his own son fastened to the summit; in order that the safety of the prince might at the same time ensure the safety of the mass of stone. It was in his admiration of this work, that, when King Cambyses took the city by storm, and the conflagration had already reached the very foot of the obelisk, he ordered the fire to be extinguished; he entertaining a respect for this stupendous erection which he had not entertained for the city itself.
There are also two other obelisks, one of them erected by Zmarres,[2544] and the other by Phius;[2545] both of them without inscriptions, and forty-eight cubits in height. Ptolemæus Philadelphus had one erected at Alexandria, eighty cubits high, which had been prepared by order of King Necthebis:[2546] it was without any inscription, and cost far more trouble in its carriage and elevation, than had been originally expended in quarrying it. Some writers inform us that it was conveyed on a raft, under the inspection of the architect Satyrus; but Callixenus[2547] gives the name of Phœnix. For this purpose, a canal was dug from the river Nilus to the spot where the obelisk lay; and two broad vessels, laden with blocks of similar stone a foot square, the cargo of each amounting to double the size, and consequently double the weight, of the obelisk, were brought beneath it; the extremities, of the obelisk remaining supported by the opposite sides of the canal. The blocks of stone were then removed, and the vessels, being thus gradually lightened, received their burden. It was erected upon a basis of six square blocks, quarried from the same mountain, and the artist was rewarded with the sum of fifty talents.[2548] This obelisk was placed by the king above-mentioned in the Arsinoœum,[2549] in testimony of his affection for his wife and sister Arsinoë. At a later period, as it was found to be an inconvenience to the docks, Maximus, the then præfect of Egypt, had it transferred to the Forum there, after removing the summit for the purpose of substituting a gilded point; an intention which was ultimately abandoned.