DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0189
ASSUAN AND ELEPBANTINE. 171
rocks of black and red granite profusely inscribed with
hieroglyphed records crop up here and there and serve as
landmarks just where landmarks are needed. For nothing'
would be easier than to miss one's way among these tawny
slopes and to go wandering off, like lost Israelites, into the
desert.
Winding in and out among undulating hillocks and
tracts of rolled bowlders, we come at last to a little group
of cliffs, at the foot of which our camels halt unbidden.
Here we dismount, climb a short slope and find the huge
monolith at our feet.
Being cut horizontally, it lies half-buried in drifted sand,
with nothing to show that it is not wholly disengaged
and ready for transrjort. Our books tell us, however, that
the under-cutting has never been done and that it is
yet one with the granite bottom on which it seems to lie.
Both ends are hidden; but one can pace some sixty feet
of its yet visible surface. That surface bears the tool-
marks of the workmen. A slanting groove pitted with
wedge-holes indicates where it was intended to taper to-
ward the top. Another shows where it was to be reduced
at the sides. Had it been finished, this would have been
the largest obelisk in the world. The great obelisk of
Queen JIatshepsu at Karnak, which, as its inscriptions
record, came also from Assuan, stands ninety-two feet high
and measures eight feet square at the base;* but this which
lies sleeping in the desert would have stood ninety-five feet
in the shaft, and have measured over eleven feet square at
the base. We can never know now why it wasleft here, nor
guess with what royal name it should have been inscribed.
J lad the king said in his heart that he would set up a
mightier obelisk than was ever yet seen by eyes of men,
and did he die before the block could be extracted from
the quarry? Or were the quarrymeu driven from the
desert, and the Pharaoh from his throne, by the hungry
hordes of Ethiopia, or Syria, or the islands beyond the
sea ? The great stone may be older than Barneses the
Great, or as modern as the last of the Romans; but to give
it a date, or to divine its history, is impossible. Egypt-
* These are the measurements given in Murray's hand-hook. The
new English translation of Marietta's "Itineraire dela Haute Egypte"
gives the obelisk of Hatshepsu one hundred and eight feet ten inches
in height. See "The Monuments of Upper Egypt," translated by
Alphonso Mariette, London, 1877.
rocks of black and red granite profusely inscribed with
hieroglyphed records crop up here and there and serve as
landmarks just where landmarks are needed. For nothing'
would be easier than to miss one's way among these tawny
slopes and to go wandering off, like lost Israelites, into the
desert.
Winding in and out among undulating hillocks and
tracts of rolled bowlders, we come at last to a little group
of cliffs, at the foot of which our camels halt unbidden.
Here we dismount, climb a short slope and find the huge
monolith at our feet.
Being cut horizontally, it lies half-buried in drifted sand,
with nothing to show that it is not wholly disengaged
and ready for transrjort. Our books tell us, however, that
the under-cutting has never been done and that it is
yet one with the granite bottom on which it seems to lie.
Both ends are hidden; but one can pace some sixty feet
of its yet visible surface. That surface bears the tool-
marks of the workmen. A slanting groove pitted with
wedge-holes indicates where it was intended to taper to-
ward the top. Another shows where it was to be reduced
at the sides. Had it been finished, this would have been
the largest obelisk in the world. The great obelisk of
Queen JIatshepsu at Karnak, which, as its inscriptions
record, came also from Assuan, stands ninety-two feet high
and measures eight feet square at the base;* but this which
lies sleeping in the desert would have stood ninety-five feet
in the shaft, and have measured over eleven feet square at
the base. We can never know now why it wasleft here, nor
guess with what royal name it should have been inscribed.
J lad the king said in his heart that he would set up a
mightier obelisk than was ever yet seen by eyes of men,
and did he die before the block could be extracted from
the quarry? Or were the quarrymeu driven from the
desert, and the Pharaoh from his throne, by the hungry
hordes of Ethiopia, or Syria, or the islands beyond the
sea ? The great stone may be older than Barneses the
Great, or as modern as the last of the Romans; but to give
it a date, or to divine its history, is impossible. Egypt-
* These are the measurements given in Murray's hand-hook. The
new English translation of Marietta's "Itineraire dela Haute Egypte"
gives the obelisk of Hatshepsu one hundred and eight feet ten inches
in height. See "The Monuments of Upper Egypt," translated by
Alphonso Mariette, London, 1877.