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In the midst of the public gardens, on the Pincian Hill, there is another Roman obelisk about thirty feet high, excavated from the quarries of Syene, and set up by Hadrian originally at Antinopolis in Egypt in front of a temple dedicated to the deified Antinous, the lamented favourite of the emperor.
It is forty feet high, of red granite, broken into five pieces, and covered with hieroglyphics, the whole style and execution of which are so inferior that Winkelman long ago, although he knew nothing of their import, detected the fact of the obelisk being a mere imitation. It was cut and engraved at Syene by order of the emperor Domitian, who designed it to adorn his villa on the Lake of Albano.
And often I wondered if this talk and prophecy of the things that were to be was but a dream born of the brains of men whose wish ran before their thought. I was, indeed, of the Royal blood, that I knew: for my uncle, Sepa the Priest, showed me a secret record of the descent, traced without break from father to son, and graven in mystic symbols on a tablet of the stone of Syene.
Egyptians with their spotless garments and tranquil mien; merchants absorbed in business; officers and soldiers in large numbers, for Syene was an important military station; officials belonging to the great quarries near, and gangs of slaves of many nationalities working under their orders.
From Pelusium to Syene, a waste, full of famine, mourners and dead men, and among these last thy Rameses! Meneptah did not permit him to finish. Purple with an engorgement of grief and fury, the monarch broke in, flailing the air with his arms. "Har-hat!" he cried. "Not I! Har-hat, who cozened me!" The voice rang through the royal inclosure, and the ministers came running. Foremost was Har-hat.
They had reached a spot on the shore where a ship was being unloaded of its cargo of granite blocks from Syene. Black and brown slaves were dragging them to land.
He ended his tour with watching the sunshine at the bottom of the astronomical well at Syênê, which, on the longest day, is exactly under the sun's northern edge, and with admiring the skill of the boatmen who shot down the cataracts in their wicker boats, for the amusement of the Roman generals.
Numerous caves or grottos, with contents of the same kind, are found in the two mountainous ridges which run nearly parallel with the Nile, from Cairo to Syene. Many of these tombs and mummies are two or three thousand years old, and some of them perhaps older. Among all the wonderful subterranean monuments of Egypt, the Catacombs of Thebes are the most extraordinary and magnificent.
Antonius proved by figures that the profit on the delivery of material for the Caesareum only would cover more than three quarters of the outlay. Then Polykarp began to speak and declared that the granite of the Holy Mountain was finer in color and in larger blocks than that from Syene. "We work cheaper here than at the Cataract," interrupted Antonius.
I am old enough to have learned by this time not to trust my success to any man but myself. Now where am I to look for him Ephesus, Syene, Gaul, Medea? Jerusalem first! By Hecate, the fellow is handsome! And these Jewesses are impressionable!"
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