It is a curious fact in connexion with the history of obelisks, that two of the most stately—indeed, the next in height to that of St. John Lateran—should have been the work of a woman, Queen Hatasou, daughter of Thothmes I., and guardian for a while of Thothmes III. But when the reins of power fell into the hands of the latter, he seems to have treated his sister as an usurper, and to have obliterated her name from the monuments, while he substituted in its place the cartouche of his own; so that the work of Hatasou is usually ascribed to Thothmes III. We find a similar illustration in the relation between Rameses II. and his father, Seti I. Seti was distinguished in his early life as a warrior, but, unfortunately, was stricken with blindness; he thereupon resigned the throne to his son, and retired into solitude. By degrees he recovered his sight, and devoted the rest of his life to architecture and building. His cartouche is to be found amongst the magnificent ruins at Thebes; and he was the author of several obelisks: in the latter instance his name is associated with, and occasionally replaced by, that of his son. The son of the blind man, the great Sesostris, Rameses II., must be supposed to have encouraged this substitution, for he has obtained credit for much that was not really his own; and to such an extent has misconception been carried, that Rameses and Seti have been identified as one and the same person; while a younger son of Rameses, Menephtah, has been described as the son of the king who went blind. Another element of confusion is the Greek name—Sesostris, given to Rameses II. Rameses was celebrated as a victorious soldier; as also was his distinguished predecessor, Thothmes III. Sesostris is described by Herodotus as a great conqueror; and as this character applies equally to Thothmes and Rameses, these two kings, although 200 years apart in point of time, become awkwardly confounded with each other. It would be ungenerous to suppose that such a state of confusion was acceptable to Rameses and favoured his designs; or that it could have led him to adopt that association with the memory of Thothmes which is implied by the sculptures on the Thothmic obelisks: although it must be admitted that there certainly exist grounds for the suspicion. In this respect Rameses would almost seem to have been the victim of an idiosyncrasy. In fact, Rameses II. is accused of monopolising the reputation of all the great deeds enacted during more than 600 years, from the time of Thothmes II. to that of Shishonk, or, as he is named in the Bible, Shishak, the conqueror of Jerusalem. [Illustration: