of the dead. Surely it could never be intended, that the silence
of these should be disturbed, to know when the moon would be
at full, or even when the Dog-star would emerge from the rays
of the Sun. One supposition made by Mr. Bruce himself is sufficient,
to controvert this hypothesis. Moses, he observes, was
directed to write the law in alphabetical characters, and not in
hieroglyphics: but if these were appropriate to astronomical observations
alone, and used for no other purpose, it was absurd to
prohibit his employing them to record the law.
However general or particular their purport, it is obvious, that
many of them were intended to endure to remotest posterity.
They were deeply cut on the hardest stone, as if to brave the
hand of Time. But though they still remain conspicuous, and
many perhaps will not be effaced as long as the world shall last,
their meaning has already been forgotten ages ago; while the
classical writings of Greece and Rome, consigned to the frailest m aterials,
bid fair for an immortality, to which they in vain aspired.
The obelisk near Alexandria, called Cleopatra’s needle, is a
block of granite, not quite six feet in diameter at it’s base, and
near seventy feet high originally, but it’s pedestal, and part of
it’s base, are buried in the sand. See the plate. The sides facing
the north-west and south-west are best preserved, the hieroglyphics
on the other two sides being greatly defaced, especially toward
the lower part, large scales falling from the stone, notwithstanding
it’s hardness.
There is another beautiful obelisk standing amid the ruins
of what was once the city of Heliopolis. This, of which like