judgment are frequently depicted. Horus is seen conducting the departed spirits to the regions of Amenti; a monstrous dog, resembling Cerberus of classic fable, is guardian of the judgment hall. Near to the gates stand the dreadful scales of justice. On one side of the scales stands Thoth, the recorder of human actions, with a tablet in his hand, ready to make a record of the sentence passed on each soul. Anubis is the director of the weights; in one scale he places the heart of the deceased, and in the other a figure of the goddess of truth. If on being weighed the heart is found wanting, then Osiris, the judge of the dead, lowers his sceptre in token of condemnation, and pronounces judgment against the soul, condemned to return to earth under the form of a pig. Whereupon the soul is placed in a boat and conveyed through Amenti under charge of two monkeys. If the deeds done in the flesh entitle the soul to enter the mansions of the blest, then Horus, taking the tablet from Thoth, introduces the good spirit into the presence of Osiris, who, with crook and flagellum in his hands, and attended by his sister Isis, with overspreading wings, sits on a throne rising from the midst of the waters. The approved soul is then admitted to the mansions of the blest.

To this belief in a future life, the custom among the Egyptians of embalming the dead was due. Each man as he died hoped to be among those who, after living for three thousand years with Osiris, would return to earth and re-enter their old bodies. So they took steps to ensure the preservation of the body against the ravages of time, and entombed them in massive sarcophagi and in splendid sepulchres. So well did they ensure this end that when, a few months ago, human eyes looked upon the face of Thothmes III., more than three thousand years after his body had been embalmed, it was only the sudden crumbling away of the form on exposure to the air, that recalled to the remembrance of the onlookers the many ages that had passed since men last saw that face.

It is with the worship of the sun that the obelisk now on the Embankment is associated, as it stood for many ages before one of the great temples at Heliopolis, the Biblical On.

Impressive as this ancient Egyptian religious life was, it cannot be compared for a moment, judged even on the earthly standard of its moral power, to the monotheism and the religious life afterwards revealed to the Hebrews, when emancipated from Egyptian bondage. The religion first made known through God’s intercourse with the Patriarchs, continued by Moses and the Prophets, and culminating in the incarnation and death of Christ the Lord, lacks much of the outward splendour and magnificence of the Egyptian religion, but satisfies infinitely better the hearts of weary sinful men. The Egyptian worship and religious life testify to a constant degradation in the popular idea of the gods and in the moral life of their worshippers. The worship and religious life of which the God of the Hebrews is the centre, tends ever more and more to lead men in that “path of the just, which is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”[1] Now in Christ Jesus those that once “were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.”[2] “The times of ignorance” are now past, and God “commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent: inasmuch as He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained.”[3]

CHAPTER II.

Obelisks, and the Obelisk Family.

An obelisk is a single upright stone with four sides slightly inclined towards each other. It generally stands upon a square base or pedestal, also a single stone. The pedestal itself is often supported upon two broad, deep steps. The top of the obelisk resembles a small pyramid, called a pyramidion, the sides of which are generally inclined at an angle of sixty degrees. The obelisks of the Pharaohs are made of red granite called Syenite.

In the quarries at Syene may yet be seen an unfinished obelisk, still adhering to the native rock, with traces of the workmen’s tools so clearly seen on its surface, that one might suppose they had been suddenly called away, and intended soon to return to finish their work. This unfinished obelisk shows the mode in which the ancients separated these immense monoliths from the native rock. In a sharply cut groove marking the boundary of the stone are holes, evidently designed for wooden wedges. After these had been firmly driven into the holes, the groove was filled with water. The wedges gradually absorbing the water, swelled, and cracked the granite throughout the length of the groove.

The block once detached from the rock, was pushed forwards upon rollers made of the stems of palm-trees, from the quarries to the edge of the Nile, where it was surrounded by a large timber raft. It lay by the riverside until the next inundation of the Nile, when the rising waters floated the raft and conveyed the obelisk down the stream to the city where it was to be set up. Thousands of willing hands pushed it on rollers up an inclined plane to the front of the temple where it was designed to stand. The pedestal had previously been placed in position, and a firm causeway of sand covered with planks led to the top of it. Then, by means of rollers, levers, and ropes made of the date-palm, the obelisk was gradually hoisted into an upright position. It speaks much for the mechanical accuracy of the Egyptian masons, that so true was the level of the top of the base and the bottom of the long shaft, that in no single instance has the obelisk been found to be out of the true perpendicular.

There has not yet been found on the bas-reliefs or paintings any representation of the transport of an obelisk, although there is sufficient external evidence to prove that the foregoing mode was the usual one. In a grotto at El Bersheh, however, is a well-known representation of the transportation of a colossal figure from the quarries. The colossus is mounted on a huge sledge, and as a man is represented pouring oil in front of the sledge, it would appear that on the road prepared for its transport there was a sliding groove along which the colossus was propelled. Four long rows of men, urged on in their work by taskmasters, are dragging the figure by means of ropes.

Obelisk of Usertesen I., still standing at Heliopolis.

The Syenite granite was very hard, and capable of taking a high polish. The carving is very beautifully executed, and the hieroglyphs rise from a sunken surface, in a style known as “incavo