Obelisks in Ancient Egypt

Among the characteristic monumental forms employed by the Egyptians – pyramids, sphinxes, etc. – the obelisk seems to have enjoyed the richest and most distinctive “afterlife.” Over the two millennia of their original production, Egyptian obelisks varied in size from relatively small funerary stones to the slender, towering monoliths of red Aswan granite that were erected before and within the precincts of the greatest Egyptian temples. Obelisks were dedicated in most cases to the solar gods of Egypt, and their soaring height and tapering shape – capped by a pyramidal (and originally gilded) pinnacle called a pyramidion, seemed to reach from the earth into the heavens and touch the rays of the life-giving sun. For centuries to come, these great stones have challenged the imaginations of spectators: Greek and Roman, Christian and Muslim, Renaissance and Modern –who were awed by their soaring height, titanic weight, and paradoxically slender and tapering shape. They were endowed with an aura of sanctity and power through their association with the gods and rulers of a civilization that was already viewed as almost unimaginably ancient by the Greeks and Romans. This aura was embodied for many by the hieroglyphic carvings that covered their four faces, which were believed from Classical times to the age of Napoleon To encode, in veils of allegory and enigma, the most secret doctrines of Egyptian religion and science (Iversen 1961; Curran 1998/1999, 2003). In the classic formula of the New Kingdom, best represented until the 1830s at the Temple of Amun-Ra in Luxor, a pair of obelisks was erected before the sanctuary’s main entrance pylon. These pylons were conceived as sacred “horizons” that marked the passage from the realm of mortals to the kingdom of the gods. In this context, the obelisks literally rose to “pierce” the sky and commune with the deities of the rising and setting sun, just as the ceiling of the temples’ colonnaded halls supported ceilings carved with the stars and constellations of the heavens (see Bell 1997: 133–134). But the biggest obelisk ever erected – the 32.15 m (105.5 foot), 455–510 ton obelisk of Thutmose III (1479–1424 BCE) was set up as a single monument at the Great Temple of Amun-Ra in Karnak. This towering monolith of red granite was quarried – like all the major Egyptian obelisks – at Aswan in Upper Egypt. Still incomplete at Thutmose III’s death, the obelisk was completed (with additional inscriptions) and erected some 35 years later by the King’s grandson, Thutmose IV (1400–1390 BCE). For nearly two millennia the great obelisk stood alone as an object of special veneration at Karnak, until it was torn from its base by order of the emperor Constantine (306–337 BCE) and, after a series of delays, transported to Rome by his successor, Constantius II (337–361 BCE), in 357 BCE. Upon arrival, it was raised on the spina or median strip of the Circus Maximus; next to a very large (but smaller) obelisk erected more than three centuries earlier by Augustus (see below). In 1587–1588, the obelisk was located and excavated from the ruins of the Circus by order of Pope Sixtus V, who initiated the second great phase of obelisk installations in Rome. The obelisk was moved to the Piazza of San Giovanni in Laterano and its broken pieces were set in place by a great “obelisk machine” devised by Domenico Fontana (for its present location, see Fig. 1). In 2006, the obelisk was again surrounded by scaffolding, erected to preserve and restore the monument from the ravages of traffic, pollution, and a terrorist bomb (for the full history of the Lateran obelisk; see Iversen 1968–1972, 1:55–64; Habachi 1984: 112–117; D'Onofrio 1992: 243–259).