1964 Awake! - Theocratic Collector.com

there. The two pillars before the temple
remained on their site from the days of
the ancient Pharaohs until the Roman Augustus
Caesar had them moved to adorn
the Palace of the Caesars at Alexandria,
on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt,
about 12 B.C. From there they were'transported
by sea to their present locationsone
to London in 1878 and the other to
Central Park, New York, in 1880.
Hieroglyphics
An outstanding feature of these obelisks
is the example they preserve of ancient
hieroglyphic writing. These fascinating
symbols, combining pictures and letters,
remained meaningless and dead for many
centuries, until the discovery of the famed
Rosetta Stone, which bore identical inscriptions
in both hieroglyphic and Greek
characters. With the code cracked, the
message could be read, and Cleopatra's
Needle speaks today of the religious observances
of those ancient days.
There are two separate sets of
hieroglyphics on the London "Needle."
Right after its erection at
Heliopolis, its builder, Pharaoh
Thothmes III, had his workmen
chisel out a single column of characters
vertically down the center
of each face. These inscriptions
proclaim the fact that the monuments
were set up to praise
and honor Horus, the god of
the rising sun, the sun being
the central object of their worship.
Thothmes names himself
as the one responsible for
these great columns,
which he says were
originally capped
with gold' (possibly
copper), to catch and
reflect the first rays
of the rising sun. Cleoplltra's Needle in london
their god Horus. It is a "monument of
praise" indeed, for it consists of a stream
of high-sounding, flowery praises to Horus,
son of the god Osiris and goddess Isis, and
his associates, and of Thothmes himself.
Here is a translation of one of these ver·
tical columns: "Horus, beloved of Osiris,
King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ra-men­
Kheper [i.e., the particular threefold godhead
from which Thothmes claimed descent],
making offerings, beloved of the
gods, supplying the altar of the three Spirits
of Heliopolis, with a sound life hundreds
of thousands of festivals of thirty
years, very many; Son of the Sun, Thothmes,
divine Ruler, beloved of Haremakhu
[Le., another sun-god], everliving." In
honoring his gods, Thothmes thus honored
himself, getting his own name on each face
of the monument, with various flattering
descriptions.
A second set of hieroglyphics was added
a century or two later by another sunworshiping
Pharaoh, Rameses II. He· had
inscribed two extra columns of praise to
Horus on each face of the pillar, one down
each side of Thothmes' prose, totaling an
additional eight columns of praise to this
god, and, of course, making liberal mention
of the arrogant, haughty
ruler Rameses. Concerning this
despot, thought to be the
Pharaoh that oppressed
the Israelites until his hold
on them was broken by
the ten plagues and the
Red Sea destruction, one
historian records: "Amid
a great show of regard for
the deities of his country,
and for the ordinances of
the established worship,
he contrived that the chief
result of all that he did
for religion should be the
glorification of himself."
FEBRUARY 22, 1964 17