events the transportation by human hands of obelisks and other monoliths of enormous size and weight without the most powerful appliances of modern times is such a wonderful feat, that we cannot at present fully comprehend it. All we know {17}for certain is the fact that those men of old have succeeded, and therefore accomplished what we would regard as almost impossible. §3. The method employed by the Egyptians in the erection of obelisks has to this day remained a profound mystery. Of course, just as with regard to the quarrying and transporting them, many conjectures have been advanced which, however plausible they may seem, give us no definite solution of this problem. That the Egyptians must have possessed some mechanical means, with which to lift these colossi into their exact place, cannot be disputed: otherwise the time consumed in setting them up would have been equal to that of quarrying them. They had undoubtedly some unknown facilities for doing work of this kind, and being great mathematicians, they may have constructed agents more powerful than those of the present day. {18}[Illustration] CHAPTER III THE FORM, NAME, DIMENSIONS, INVENTION, MATERIAL, AND USE OF OBELISKS. §1. Obelisks are monoliths, that is, they are made of _one_ piece of rock only. Pieces set up in the form of an obelisk are never considered one. The lofty shaft at Washington, D. C., cannot, therefore, be styled an obelisk. In addition to being composed of one piece only, all obelisks are quadrangular, the sides sloping gradually and perceptibly but right-angled all the way to the top, where they are surmounted by a miniature pyramid or trapezium. They were, as far as we know, commonly erected in pairs at the entrance of the temples, evidently serving there in the capacity of guardians. The stone was polished to a high state of perfection, and the inscriptions added in intaglio-relievo by skilled stone-cutters under the direction of scribes. Whether the figures of these inscriptions were filled out with copper or gold, as some maintain, is extremely doubtful.