[Illustration:  Fig. 108.—­Obelisk of Usertesen I., of Heliopolis.]

Nor was this all.  Each part of the temple had its accessory decoration and its furniture.  The outer faces of the pylons were ornamented, not only with the masts and streamers before mentioned, but with statues and obelisks.  The statues, four or six in number, were of limestone, granite, or sandstone.  They invariably represented the royal founder, and were sometimes of prodigious size.  The two Memnons seated at the entrance of the temple of Amenhotep III., at Thebes, measured about fifty feet in height.  The colossal Rameses II. of the Ramesseum measured fifty-seven feet, and that of Tanis at least seventy feet.  The greater number, however, did not exceed twenty feet.  They mounted guard before the temple, facing outwards, as if confronting an approaching enemy.  The obelisks of Karnak are mostly hidden amid the central courts; and those of Queen Hatshepsut were imbedded for seventeen feet of their height in masses of masonry which concealed their bases.  These are accidental circumstances, and easy of explanation.  Each of the pylons before which they are stationed had in its turn been the entrance to the temple, and was thrown into the rear by the works of succeeding Pharaohs.  The true place of all obelisks was in front of the colossi, on each side of the main entrance.[22] They are always in pairs, but often of unequal height.  Some have professed to see in them the emblem of Amen, the Generator; or a finger of the god; or a ray of the sun.  In sober truth, they are a more shapely form of the standing stone, or menhir, which is raised by semi-civilised peoples in commemoration of their gods or their dead.  Small obelisks, about three feet in height, are found in tombs as early as the Fourth Dynasty.  They are placed to right and left of the stela; that is to say, on either side of the door which leads to the dwelling of the dead.  Erected before the pylon-gates of temples, they are made of granite, and their dimensions are considerable.  The obelisk of Heliopolis (fig. 108) measures sixty-eight feet in the shaft, and the obelisks of Luxor stand seventy-seven and seventy-five and a half feet high, respectively.  The loftiest known is the obelisk of Queen Hatshepsut at Karnak, which rises to a height of 109 feet.  To convey such masses, and to place them in equilibrium, was a sufficiently difficult task, and one is at a loss to understand how the Egyptians succeeded in erecting them with no other appliances than ropes and sacks of sand.  Queen Hatshepsut boasts that her obelisks were quarried, shaped, transported, and erected in seven months; and we have no reason to doubt the truth of her statement.[23]

[Illustration:  Fig. 109.—­Obelisk of Usertesen I., Begig, Fayum.]