In common with the belief of all the ancient nations, the king was considered by the Egyptians not only as a mortal but also, by reason of his exalted rank, as a god on earth. He was the essence of the divinity and styled himself "the offspring of the gods" ([glyphs] _mes nuter·u_) or more in particular "Râ's son" or "son of the sun" ([glyphs] _sa Ra_). Being or pretending to be the sun's son, he demanded and received the homage of his subjects as a {32}god. His person was inviolable, his command was absolute, his power was unlimited. His first act each day was to offer up sacrifice and prayer to his father, the sun, and impress this worship on his subjects. [Illustration: The king offering up libation to himself in the form of a sphinx.] The obelisk which was erected in honor of the sun could therefore also be used by the sun's offspring, the king, to promulgate his own worship. Inscriptions commemorating both the deity in heaven and his deputy on earth continually blend the two, the god and the king, together into one person, that we can easily find in the obelisk traces of a decided king-worship. If the enlightened age of an Alexander the Great or a Divus ("divine") Cæsar Augustus could tolerate such a thing, why should we feign surprise when we find the same thing to have happened some thousand years before their time in Egypt? It is just this one fact, the barefaced king-worship represented by the obelisk, that gives its translation such a repulsive sound to modern ears. No wonder that otherwise well-read and intelligent men turn about in amazement and ask: Can this really be the correct translation of the obelisk, why, this would turn those ancient kings of glorious renown into mere "vainglorious fools"? This conclusion is perfectly true, and consequently it is to be regretted that just such monuments as obelisks, which are a great source of attraction for the multitude, should display the poorest inscriptions that we meet with in the entire Egyptian literature. Under no circumstances must we base our estimate of the Egyptian literature on the inscriptions of the obelisks; for, on looking over the writings of this wonderful people, we would not only find ourselves most agreeably surprised, but would be constrained to admit that there is no ancient people which can boast of an equally grand and sublime literature as the Egyptian. {33}[Illustration: A portion of the "Book of the Dead" (Chap. I.). Two obelisks represented on a mummy-cloth. From the author's collection.] {34}Summing up, we find the obelisks erected in honor of the sun-god by his son, the king, and used by him to further his own ambitious designs, glorify his own name, and turn the worship of his subjects both to himself and his sire above.