principle, and in reality of Chaldaic origin." This historical question has invited a short notice, because the first use of obelisks in Egypt is connected with the theory of the pyramids given as above; a subject of no little importance in the history of sacred structures.

The obelisk being of a form anomalous to the general character of Egyptian architecture, cannot be supposed to have been of Egyptian invention, but to have been introduced from foreign countries. The expeditions of Sesostris into the Ethiopian countries south of Egypt must have offered many such objects to the wonder of the invading armies. In the age of that conqueror they were in all probability numerous. Many are still extant in these countries, notwithstanding the lapse of time, and the neglect ensuing from the nominal rather than real establishment of Christianity. The traveller Bruce makes mention of many obelisks seen by him, some standing, but the greater number thrown down. At Axum in Abyssinia the traveller Salt found one standing and entire. It is about eighty feet high, formed out of a single block of granite, and of excellent proportion. The summit is crowned with an oblong cap, supported by a narrowed neck. Its sides, covered with ornamental sculpture, are divided into nine parts by nine girdles, which may be supposed to represent symbolically the nine spheres, or spaces, into which, according to some theories, the universe is divided. Not far from this obelisk is an Abyssinian church. Whether any relation may have been intended between the obelisk and the church, or some temple superseded by the church, is uncertain.

The word obelisk signifies a spit; and, according to Herodotus, the name was given to the column because of the resemblance it had to that culinary instrument. A reference to such an ordinary object cannot be supposed to have been applied to a sacred structure, nor was it, for Pliny expressly ■ Bryant, Myth. vol. iv. p. 311. • Valentia's Travels, vol. iii. chap. 3.

declares that the word obelisk signifies a dedication to the sun. How the name might bear this signification, the naturalist does not show. The Analyst of Ancient Mythology may by an use of his radicals supply the defect.

He affirms that the word obelisk is compounded of the radical monosyllables oph, alias ob, a serpent, and el, a designation of the Deity, and that the word indicated that the structure was dedicated to the serpent divine, which, he says, was the sun. The grammarian Horapollo will guide to a better conclusion. When the Egyptians intend to signify the world, they draw the figure of a serpent taking into his mouth his own tail. Thus it appears that the serpent, ob, is the world, and consequently ob-el means the world divine, the world god. Hence it appears that the import of the word obelisk is the world sustained by the Deity. When two obelisks are placed on the two sides of the doors or entrances of temples, they are the same symbols as the Icin and Boaz of the temple of Solomon; when singly standing alone, the obelisk has the same general import, it signifies the power of the god to whom it is dedicated.

It has been shewn in the introductory chapter, that the Deity was supposed by the early patriarchs, figuratively at least, to dwell on high hills: by the idolaters, especially in later times, every high hill was believed to be the abode of gods. The Ascrean poet affirms that high mountains were created by Gaia, or earth, for the very purpose that they might be the loved abode of gods.s Virgil describes the belief of early ages concerning the Capitoline hill, which, though at the time of which he wrote, a wooded waste, had become in the time when he wrote the splendid scene of Roman magnificence. As the description given to Æneas by the Arcadian Evander is illustrative of the present subject, it is here subjoined.

'Ita significatur nomine Ægyptio.' Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvi. c. 8. ¶ Bryant, Radicals, vol. i. r Horapoll. Hiero. lib. i. c. 1. s Hesiod. Theog. v. 129.

He brings the hero to Tarpeia's point,
Where all the Capitol, now bright with gold,
Was horrid from old times with thicket growth:
For then the holy terrors of the place

Impressed with awe the simple pavid hinds;
They trembled at the scene, the wood, the rock.
This grove, said he, this hill with leafy head
A god inhabits; but what god we say not.
Our Arcades believe that they have seen
The very Jove, as held in hand he shook

His blackening ægis, and called up the clouds.t

This belief of the locality of the abode of gods influenced the actions of mankind during all the patriarchal ages, even to the time of the promulgation of the gospel. The orthodox descendants of Abraham regarded eminences as the objects towards which they ought to turn in prayer; the idolaters, although dissenting from the true faith, not only turned towards high places in prayer, but fixed their idols on their summits, and regarded them as gods in reality, and in person present. As so present they gave them worship, expressed in words and actions, exactly the same as might have been proper had the material idol been able to hear, see, and understand. These practices were the worship rendered by idolatry; by orthodox servants of the Deity they were always avoided.

The upright stone and pillar, being regarded as an idol of the divine presence, was very commonly set up atop of the high place or barrow. The following instance of such use of the pillar is given in the Argonautics of the Rhodian Apollonius, a work which may be called a geographical romance, but which recites events and customs well-known in the age of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and therefore the following statement may be admitted to be of indisputable authority as to ancient practice.

Jason and his Argonauts having arrived at the Mysian

t Æneis, viii. 347.

colonæ, or columns set up at the entrance of the Bosphorus, performed solemn rites, described by the poet in verse of the following purport:

A sturdy vine-stem grew within the wood,

Knobbed with age. This first they felled, to form
A sacred image of the mountain goddess.
This, trimmed by Argus, piously they reared
High on the rugged summit of the mole,
Beneath the sheltering shade of beeches tall
Which stood within the wood rooted most firm.
In front they heaped an altar of small shale,
And crowning this around with oaken sprays,
They duly 'gan the rites of sacrifice,

Dindymia, mother dread, of Phrygian birth,
Invoking, u

The leader Jason, having poured libations on the burning sacrifice and addressed many prayers to the goddess, gave orders for the performance of the betarmus or military dance, and the rites ended.

Dindymia, or Cybele, as the goddess was also named, was a personification of the female power adopted in the earliest ages of idolatry; and the structure above described being dedicated to her, intimates, that as it was most rude and simple, so it must be regarded as a proof that the use of the pillar set upon the taph, or barrow, was of the earliest ages also. The practice was continued through many generations, till at last it expired on the suppression of Druidism in Britain; that it long prevailed in Greece the fables recited by ancient writers clearly shew.

Niobe is a personage of much celebrity in the fables of profane antiquity. She was the daughter of Tantalus, and sister of Pelops, and therefore of an age in which the principal cities or states of Greece were founded. According to fabulous, that is, figurative history, she vied with Latona, and her numerous sons and daughters were slain by the

u Apollon. Arg. lib. i. v. 1116.

arrows of Apollo the son and Diana the daughter of the offended goddess. The fable is a figurative history of the contest of idolatrous sects, and the violence of the victors. The mother, overcome by grief, became, according to the Roman poet of the Metamorphoses, a stone, which was placed on the top of a mountain, where occasionally it shed tears.*

The Greek authorities will explain this fable. Electra, in the tragedy of Sophocles distinguished by her name, speaks in one of the choruses as follows:

Niobe, thee I honour as a goddess,
That in thy stony taphos

Ah! ah! still weepest. y

Pausanias mentions this taphos of Niobe in the following terms. "I saw this Niobe as I passed over Mount Sipylus. The rock when viewed from a near distance is very steep, but does not exhibit to the spectator the form of a woman either weeping or otherwise; but when at a distance, you may imagine you see a woman dejected and weeping."z According to the statement of the Greek tragedian, the antiquary had no reason to expect to see a rock in the form of a woman, for that her taph or rock alone was extant. This was none other than a columnar rock in which her spirit was supposed to abide. The hill or mount was the barrow, the symbol of the earth; the steep rock, the pillar, was the idol of the deified personage. The tears occasionally shed by her taph were probably those drops of dew or rain which, being collected in the shallow cisterns called rock basins cut in the surface of our Druidic monuments, were collected by the attendant ministers and reserved for special purposes. It is more than probable that the Niobe of Greece was the Ket of Britain.

It has been already stated that Saturn was worshipped in

* Ovid. Metam. lib. vi. c. 4.

Sophocl. Elect. v. 151.

z Pausan. lib. i. c. 21, s. 5.