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Ob′e-lisk.

1. A quadrangular, slender stone shaft, with a pyramidal apex. The width of the base is usually about one tenth of the hight, and the pyramidal apex has about one tenth of the whole length. It is Egyptian in its conception and execution. Obelisks were erected in pairs, and are yet numerous on the ancient sites, and no doubt many prostrate ones are buried in the soil of Egypt, which has risen from the deposit of the Nile 9 feet in 1,700 years at Elephantine, and 7 feet at Thebes. The deposit of mud at Thebes, therefore, since Amunoph I., would be about 17 feet.

There are about a dozen Egyptian obelisks erected in Rome. The largest is that from Heliopolis. It is of granite, and now stands before the north portico of the Church of St. John Lateran, where it was erected in 1588. Its whole hight is about 149 feet; without the base, 105 feet. It was removed to Alexandria by Constantine, and to Rome by his son Constantius, and placed in the Circus Maximus. It was overthrown, broken into three pieces, and a piece was removed from its base before re-erecting. It weighs about 985,600 pounds. Its partner yet stands at Heliopolis. It is marked with the name of Osirtasen I., about 2100 B. C. Roman obelisks were also imported by Augustus and Caligula.

Other obelisks are found at Constantinople, Paris, Arles, Florence, etc.

The Egyptian obelisks are usually of granite, but there are two small ones in the British Museum made of basalt, and one at Philae of sandstone. The date of the Flaminian obelisk, which is covered with hieroglyphics, is supposed to be about 1600 B. C.

The obelisk in Paris, erected in 1833, was brought from Luxor. It is 76 feet in hight. Of the needles of Cleopatra, so called, one is standing, 63 feet in hight, and the other is lying upon the ground.

“The mode of raising an obelisk seems to have been by tilting it from an inclined plane into a pit, at the bottom of which the pedestal was placed to receive it. A roller of wood was fastened at each side to the end of the obelisk, which enabled it to run down the wall opposite to the inclined plane to its proper position.” — Wilkinson.

For a full description of the mode of moving and re-erecting an Egyptian obelisk, see the quarto L'Obelisque de Luxor, Histoire de sa translation á Paris, Paris, 1839. See also Cresy's Cyclopedia, ed. of 1865, pp. 38, 40; also pp. 1013-17.

2. A reference-mark in printing (+); also called a dagger.

1877.

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