It was only in Syria that the historian[42] had himself seen them. However, the fact that he ascribes them all to Sesostris is merely based on the tradition he adopts. Moreover, his explanation is wholly Greek in its colour; he converts the natural significance into one of ethical import and in this sense informs us: "In cases where Sesostris during his expedition crossed nations which were brave in battle, he set up pillars in their land together with inscriptions, which gave his own name and nation, and indicated that he had subdued these peoples. Where, on the contrary, he overcame without opposition, he indicated on such pillars the female organ of sex without attaching an inscription in order to declare the fact that these nations had been cowards in battle." (_b_) We find further constructions of a similar nature, intermediate, that is, between sculpture and architecture, principally in Egypt. With these we may include, for example, the _obelisks_, which do not, it is true, borrow their form from the living organisms of Nature, such as plants, animals, or the human form, but are of a form wholly subject to geometrical rule, yet at the same time no longer constructed expressly as subservient to the human dwelling or temple, but are erected in free and independent self-subsistency, and possess the symbolical significance of the solar rays. "Mithras," maintains Creuzer, "the Mede or Persian, rules in the solar city of Egypt[43], and is there prompted by a dream to build obelisks, that is to say solar rays in stone, and to inscribe on them letters which are known as Egyptian." Pliny had already attached this import to obelisks[44]. They were dedicated to the sun's divinity, whose rays they were intended to catch and at the same time to reflect. Also we find that in the images set up in Persia we have rays of fire which ascend from columns[45].