rated them, are to be found in Egypt: he only carried them to a
degree of perfection, which they could never have reached in
their native clime.
O B E L I S K S .
A m o n g the antiquities of Egypt coeval with the use of hieroglyphics
the obelisk is remarkable. These fingers of the Sun, as
they were called by the egyptian priests, were designed both for
ornament and utility. They were gnomons of colossal sundials,
cut on the pavement on which they stood, whence they derived
their appellation. Placed before their temples as ornamental, their
faces were covered with hieroglyphics, recording probably astronomical
observations and historical events, and ' inculcatinOg moral
doctrines. Mr. Bruce indeed sees in these, as well as in other
hieroglyphics, nothing but almanacs; differing from the wooden
calendars, or clogs, which our rustics copied from their northern
ancestors, only in being more copious; as they contained much
of true astronomical science, with much of those astrological absurdities,
from which some of our own almanacs, even in the present
day, are not free. That such may have been the subject of
many hieroglyphical inscriptions, among a people by whom, astronomy
was much studied, and to whom it was of importance to
ascertain particular periods of the year, is probably true: but we
can scarcely suppose them to have been confined to this, when
we consider their multiplicity on the walls of temples, on obelisks,
on the pedestals and supports of statues, and in the repositories