[22] Apappus was a Pharaoh of gigantic build, and a successful general; he carried his wars into Ethiopia and Asia. He is said to have been nine feet high, and he lived to the age of 100 years.—The story of Queen Nitocris, the “belle with the rosy cheeks,” as Manetho calls her, is, that her brother having been assassinated, she assembled together at a banquet all whom she thought to be accomplices in the crime; and when the hilarity of the evening was at its zenith, she let in upon them the waters of the Nile, so that they were all drowned. The pyramid and the obelisk have something analogous in their form—the four sides and the pointed summit—indeed, the apex of an obelisk, in nearly every case, is a diminutive pyramid, or pyramidion. Both had mystical attributes assigned to them in relation to the worship of the Sun, the “organiser of the world.” The pyramid, with its four sides looking north, south, east, and west, was selected as the tomb of the mummified body which was destined to rise from the dead, and be restored to life at the appointed time. When the pyramid was too costly, a pair of small obelisks stood sentry at the entrance of the tomb, and were in common use during the early dynasties. A considerable number of these relics have been found, and preserved in the Egyptian museum at Boulak. The obelisk of Syenite granite, however, belongs to a later period; it may have come into use before the twelfth dynasty, before the reign of Usertesen; but the Heliopolis obelisk is generally admitted to be the pioneer of the colossal obelisks of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, of the reigns of the Thothmeses and of the Ramseses. These latter were not funereal, but, on the contrary, were triumphal, and took the place of triumphal arches of modern times. On the facets of the pyramidion, and at the top of the shaft immediately below it, were usually engraved figures denoting supplication and gifts, by the Pharaoh who dedicates the monument, to the gods whom he intends to propitiate; it might be wine, or it might be milk; and occasionally, as at Heliopolis and at Karnak, the pyramidion was capped with metal, sometimes gold, from the countries which had been conquered in battle; sometimes burnished copper or bronze, which might represent the spoils of war, or by the reflection of its rays, an artificial sun; while certain of the obelisks are said to have been more extensively ornamented with metal.