ned lines and narrow proportions, combined with its immense
height, suggested the brilliancy and hue and form of a pencil of
light. Its tall red column flashing in the strong morning radiance,
like a tongue of flame mounting up to its source in the solar fire, or
like a ray of the halo that rises up on the low horizon of the Libyan
desert, when the dawn has crimsoned all the eastern heavens, might
thus well be selected as the most suitable object to bring the
invisible sun-god within the ken of human vision and the range of
human worship. The poetical imagination may detect a significance even
in the difference between the material used in the construction of
the obelisk, and that used in the construction of the pyramid, though
this may not have been designed by the makers. The obelisks are all
formed of granite, the foundation-stone of the globe, belonging to the
oldest azoic formation, which laid down the first basis for the
appearing of life. The pyramids were nearly all made of nummulitic
limestone composed of the remains of organic life; a material which
belonged to the latest geologic ages, when whole generations and
different platforms of life had come and gone. Thus significantly does
the obelisk of granite suggest by its material as by its form the
origin of life, as the pyramid suggests by its material and form the
extinction of life.

But not only was the obelisk raised in connection with the worship of
the sun,--it was also intended to honour the reigning monarch who
erected it, and whose name and titles were engraved upon it along with
the name of the sun. For it was a fundamental idea of the Egyptian
religion that the king was not only the son of the solar god, but also
the visible human representative of his glory. This was a favourite
conception of the ancients. The Incas of Peru regarded themselves as
direct descendants of the sun; and the monarchs of the burning Asiatic
lands, where the sun rules and dominates everything, assume the name
and title of his sons, and clothe themselves with his splendour. The
obelisks were thus the symbols of the two great correlative
conceptions of the sun in the heavens, and his satellite and
representative on the earth--god and the king. This Egyptian faith, as
attested by the obelisks, the oldest of all the creeds, antecedent to
the theologies of India, Greece, and Rome, ceased not to be venerated
till the advent of Christianity swept all material worship away. It
awe