ttempted
since in the same line. The example of the Assyrian tyrant was
followed, after a long interval, by the Romans, who sought to magnify
and commemorate their conquests in Egypt by spoiling the land of its
characteristic monuments. The Caesars, one after another, for more than
a hundred years, took advantage of their victories and the ruin of
the unhappy land of Egypt to convey its beautiful obelisks to their
own capital to permanently adorn one or other of the various places of
public resort. They seem to have set almost the same high value upon
these singular monuments which their inventors did. Pliny and
Suetonius describe the almost incredible magnitude of the vessels in
which these gigantic masses of stone were conveyed to Ostia, the
harbour town, and from thence up the Tiber to Rome. The huge triremes
were propelled by the force of hundreds of rowers across the waters of
the Mediterranean. From the quay at Rome they were dragged and pushed,
by the brute force of thousands in the old Egyptian manner, on low
carts supported on rollers instead of wheels, to their destination,
where they were set upright by a complicated machinery of ropes and
huge upright beams.

How many obelisks of Egyptian origin existed at one time in the world
we do not know. They were undoubtedly very numerous; but many of them
were broken up for building materials. The famous column called
Pompey's Pillar stands upon a fragment of an ancient obelisk; and
tradition asserts that there are many similar fragments of greater or
less antiquity under the ruins of the older houses of Alexandria. At
present forty-two obelisks are known to be in existence in different
parts of the world. Of these, seventeen remain in Egypt on their
original sites, of which no less than eleven are prostrate on the
ground, having been overturned by some political or religious
revolution, by the force of an earthquake, or by the slow undermining
of the infiltrated waters of the Nile. No less than twelve of the
oldest and grandest are still to be seen standing erect in Rome, where
they constitute by far the most striking and memorable monuments. The
others are distributed in various places wide apart. One is in Paris,
two are in Constantinople, a fourth, the famous Cleopatra's Needle, is
on the Thames Embankment, in the heart of London; a fifth, its old
companion in Alexandria, is now in one of the public squares of New
York. And there are several diminutive ones, fro