The Romans immediately recognized the artistic merits of the obelisks, though they were perhaps more struck by their grandeur and elegance than anything else, and carried off many of them as trophies to sunny Italy. They adorned Rome with them, where, with all their rents and fractures, and after all the injury by the hand of man and havoc of the elements, the obelisks still baffle the ravages of time in the "City of the Seven Hills". As a "smart" people, however, the Romans tried to utilize them in some way: so they hit upon the idea to make them serve as sun-dials. Augustus experimented to this end with the obelisk now on the Monte Citorio in Rome, but, as he was not successful, this project was entirely abandoned. {26}[Illustration] CHAPTER IV THE SIGNIFICATION OF THE OBELISK AND THE WORSHIP OF THE SUN. The most interesting point to be touched upon in our further investigation concerning obelisks is undoubtedly that with regard to their meaning and signification, or, in other words, what the mind of the Egyptian priest saw expressed under the figure of an obelisk. This leads us into the religion and mythology of a nation that had some very lofty conceptions of life, death, and eternity. The objects which called forth such thoughts were pre-eminently the obelisk and the pyramid, the former representing life in the sunshine of glory, the latter death in the darkness of passing night. In the cosmogony of the Egyptians the Sun plays the most important part. Its birth is thus aptly described from the monuments by Prof. Dr. H. Brugsch: "_In the beginning there was no heaven or earth. A boundless water, shrouded in dense darkness, made up the universe. This held in its bosom the male and female germs or beginnings of the future world. The divine primeval spirit, inseparable from the matter of the primitive water, felt a longing after creative power, and his word called into being the world, whose figure and variegated form had already manifested themselves to him. Its corporeal outlines and colors corresponded, in consequence of their derivation, to Truth, that is, to the exact intention of the divine spirit with reference to his future work. The {27}first act of creation consisted in the formation out of the primitive water of an egg, from which the light of day (Ra 'the sun') proceeded, which animated everything in the world. In this rising sun is embodied the almighty divinity in its grandest manifestation_".