in Architecture, a truncated, quadrangular, and slender pyramid, raised as an ornament, and frequently charged either with inscriptions or hieroglyphics.
Obelisks appear to be of very great antiquity, and to have been first raised to transmit to posterity precepts of philosophy, which were cut in hieroglyphical characters: afterwards they were used to immortalize the great actions of heroes, and the memory of persons beloved. The first obelisk mentioned in history was that of Rameses kind of Egypt, in the time of the Trojan war, which was 40 cubits high. Phius, another king of Egypt, raised one of 55 cubits; and Ptolemy Philadelphus, another of 88 cubits, in memory of Arsinoë. Augustus erected one at Rome in the Campus Martius, which served to mark the hours on a horizontal dial, drawn on the pavement. They were called by the Egyptian priests the fingers of the sun, because they were made in Egypt also to serve as styles or gnomons to mark the hours on the ground. The Arabs still call them Pharaoth's needles; whence the Italians call them aguglia, and the French aiguilles.
The famous obelisks called the devil's arrows, now reduced to three, the fourth having been taken down in the last century, stand about half a mile from the town of Borough-Bridge to the south-west, in three fields, separated by a lane, 200 feet aunder nearly, on high ground sloping every way. Mr Drake urges many arguments for their Roman antiquity, and plainly proves them to be natural and brought from Plumpton quarries about five miles off, or from Ickly 16 miles off. The crofs in the town, 12 feet high, is of the same kind of stone. The tallest or highest is 22 feet and a half high by 4 broad, and 14½ in girth; the second 21½ by 55½; the third 16½ by 84. Stukeley's measures differ. The flutings are cut in the stone but not through: the tallet stands alone, and leans to the south. Plot and Stukeley affirm them to be British monuments, originally hewn square. Dr Gale supposed that they were Mercuries, which have lost their heads and inscriptions; but in a MS. note in his Antoninus, he acknowledges that he was misinformed, and that there was no cavity to receive a bust.
On the north side of Penrith, in the churchyard, are two square obelisks, of a single stone each, 11 or 12 feet high, Obelisk high, about 12 inches diameter, and 12 by 8 at the sides, the highest about 18 inches diameter, with something like a transverse piece to each, and mortised into round base. They are 14 feet aunder, and between them is a grave enclosed between four semicircular stones of the unequal lengths of five, fix, and four and a half, and two feet high, having on the outsides rude carving, and the tops notched. This is called the Giant's grave, and ascribed to Sir Ewan Caesarius, who is said to have been as tall as one of the columns, and capable of stretching his arms from one to the other; to have destroyed robbers and wild boars in Englewood forest; and to have had a hermitage hereabouts called Sir Hugh's parlour; but the conjectures respecting them are extremely various and contradictory. A little to the west of these is a stone called the Giant's Thumb, fix feet high, 14 inches at the base contracted to 10, which is no more than a rude cross, such as is at Longtown in Cumberland, and elsewhere; the circle of the cross 18 inches diameter.
Near the town of Forres in the north of Scotland there is a very fine obelisk, 22 feet in height, known by the name of the Forres pillar, or Sweno's stone. See FORRES.
M. Pouchard, in the memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, gives a curious account of some celebrated Egyptian obelisks. See Gentleman's Magazine for June 1748.