“Of the obeliscs, still in existence, there are perhaps about thirty, larger and smaller, which may be considered as genuine. Several others are decidedly spurious, having been chiefly sculptured at Rome, in imitation of the Egyptian style, but so negligently and unskilfully, as to have exhibited a striking difference even in the character of the workmanship. Such are the Pamphilian, in explanation of which the laborious Kircher has published a folio volume, and the Barberinian or Veranian: in both of these the emblems are put together in a manner wholly arbitrary; and when an attempt is made to imitate the appearance of a name, the characters are completely different at each repetition. The Sallustian obelisc has also been broken, and joined inaccurately, and some modern restitutions have been very awkwardly introduced, as becomes evident upon comparing with each other the figures of Kircher and of Zoëga. [A similar restitution has been rather better executed at one corner of the Lateran obelisc, as I observed in the course of a few weeks that I passed at Rome in the summer of 1821: the block of granite, which has been employed, still exhibits some words of a Latin inscription, turned upside down, but not effaced, although the hieroglyphics belonging to the place have been imitated with tolerable fidelity]. Another very celebrated monument, the Isiac table, which has been the subject of much profound discussion, and has given birth to many refined mythological speculations, is equally incapable of supporting a minute examination upon solid grounds; for the inscriptions neither bear any relation to the figures near which they are placed, nor form any connected sense of their own; and the whole is undoubtedly the work of a Roman sculptor, imitating only the general style and the separate delineations of the Egyptian tablets; as indeed some of the most learned and acute of our critical antiquaries had already asserted, notwithstanding the contrary opinion of several foreigners, of the highest reputation for their intimate acquaintance with the works of Greek and Roman art. We may hope, however, that in future these unprofitable discussions and disputes will become less and less frequent, and that our knowledge of the antiquities of Egypt will gain as much in the solidity and sufficiency of its evidence, as it may probably lose in its hypothetical symmetry and its imaginary extent; and while we allow every latitude to legitimate reasoning and cautious conjecture, in the search after historical truths, we must peremptorily exclude from our investigations an attachment to fanciful systems and presupposed analogies on the one hand, and a too implicit deference to traditional authority on the other.”