The usual situation of the obelisks was in front of the first pylon of the temples. There they stood in couples, one upon each side of the entrance. Those instances where they are found, as at Karnak, surrounded by the buildings of the temple, are easily explained. The two obelisks in the caryatid court were erected during the eighteenth dynasty, at a time when those parts of the temple which lie between the obelisks and the outer wall were not yet in existence. The obelisks of Hatasu, when first erected, were in front of the Temple of Amen as it was left by the early sovereigns of the eighteenth dynasty. But the obelisk was not the exclusive property of the temples. Some little ones of limestone have been found in the mastabas,[148] and Mariette has described those which formerly stood in front of the royal tombs belonging to the eleventh dynasty, in the Theban necropolis. He has published the inscription which covers the four faces of one of these obelisks, a monolith some ten feet nine inches high.[149] Obelisks seem also to have been employed for the decoration of palaces, as we may conclude from a Theban painting in which one appears before the principal entrance to a villa surrounded with beautiful gardens.[150] Judging by the sizes of people in the same painting, this obelisk must have been about thirteen feet high. [148] A small funerary obelisk, about two feet high, is now in the museum of Berlin. It is figured in the _Denkmæler_, part ii. pl. 88. It was found in a Gizeh tomb dating from the fifth dynasty. [149] MARIETTE, _Monuments Divers_, pl. 50. The obelisks illustrated in this chapter are all drawn to the same scale in order to facilitate comparison. [150] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., p. 396. Diodorus speaks of obelisks erected by Sesostris which were 120 cubits, nearly 180 feet, high;[151] and different texts allude to monoliths which were 130, 117, and 114 feet high. We have some difficulty in accepting the first of these figures. The obelisk of Hatasu, at Karnak, which is the tallest known, is 108 feet 10 inches in height.[152] That which is still standing at Matarieh, on the site of the ancient Heliopolis, is only 67 feet 4 inches high. But the fact that it is the oldest of the colossal obelisks of Egypt makes it more interesting than some which surpass it in size (Fig. 167). It bears the name of Ousourtesen I., of the twelfth dynasty. As a rule, the inscriptions cut upon the four sides of those obelisks which are complete are very insignificant. They consist of little but pompous enumerations of the royal titles.[153] [151] DIODORUS, i. 57. [152] Recent measurement has shown that the height given on page 105, Vol. I., is incorrect.--ED.