The Obelisk at Heliopolis
Where once the immense and magnificent Temple of the Sun stood there are found now a few mounds, the remains of walls and this solitary obelisk, erected from one thousand seven hundred to two thousand four hundred years before Christ in the reign of Usertsen I. It is sixty-two feet four inches high above the level of the ground, sixty-six feet six inches in height above the pavement. These obelisks are expressions of old religious faiths as well as memorials of distinguished men under whose direction they were erected. The obelisks of the Pharaohs are of red granite, called syenite. An unfinished obelisk is even now to be seen in the quarries at syene “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 and finish their work.”
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