CHAPTER 3
WHAT WERE THEY USED FOR?
It's often said that an obelisk was just an impressive monument or decoration for
an ancient temple. People in the future might find the crosses on some present
day tombstones and say they were ornaments or decorations:
But we know these crosses are symbols of the central part of the Christian
religion:
I suggest to you that the obelisk was a central part of the ancient Egyptian
religion, it was a symbol representing something.
Some say the earliest Egyptians believed their god Re lived in a stone shaped like
a pyramid. That's probably because they've seen pictures of ancient gods and
goddesses inside the upper part of an obelisk:
That's insulting ancient Egyptian intelligence. I think they saw their real gods
come and go out of whatever it was that looked like an obelisk, just as Christians
say there really was a Jesus of Nazareth.
The obelisk was even more sacred than the altar at ancient Egyptian temple sites:
To find out more about an obelisk, we'll begin with the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph
for it, as hieroglyphics were their written language.