The majority of all extant obelisks was erected at Heliopolis and Thebes. Others, however, have been discovered in different places: some as far north as Saïs and Tanis, and as far south as the boundary of Egypt on the island of Philæ, called Elephantinê by the ancients. The limit in the opposite directions seems to have been the Fayoom on the west, and the Sinaitic Peninsula on the east. Outside of Egypt and Africa other Egyptian and some pseudo-Egyptian obelisks are to be found. They {5}are the work of Roman emperors. These, jealous of the great achievements of the Pharaohs and desirous of adding to the many Pharaonic obelisks in Rome some of their own making and inscribed with their own name, had the stone quarried in Syene and transported to Rome. Domitian and Hadrian erected such to their honor in the "Eternal City". §2. The obelisk is certainly a very early invention of the Egyptians. As a matter of fact, it was at first of small size and could hardly have been used as an ornament of temples, which purpose it served in later times. We find very little of the commonplace laudatory titles on the earliest specimens of obelisks, and, as mentioned above, some of them were even found in the necropolis or cemetery, apparently to serve as mementos or head-stones. A passage on the monuments, mentioning that a certain Merab ([glyphs] "_love-heart_") was priest of Khufu's obelisk, points to the fact, that as early as the fourth dynasty (about 3100 B. C.) the form of the obelisk was known. In the inscriptions of the fifth dynasty we meet with the hieroglyphic sign of the obelisk [glyphs]. The XIth dynasty has bequeathed to us three obelisks. It was not, however, until the XIIth dynasty that the true beauty of the obelisk was fully appreciated. Usertesen I. (2371 B. C., according to Lepsius) may be considered to have been the first to erect obelisks of large dimensions, as is well illustrated by the obelisk at present standing in Matarîyeh near Cairo, though another of his obelisks at Bejij, or the ancient Crocodilopolis, in the Fayoom has more of the appearance of a stelé with a rounded top.