Obelisks
An obelisk is a tall, thin, four-sided, tapering monument which ends in a pyramidal top. Ancient obelisks were made of a single piece of stone (a monolith). The term stela (plural stelae) is generally used for other monumental standing inscribed sculpted stones not of classic obelisk form.
The obelisk form is known from early Assyrian civilization, represented by the Black Obelisk of King Shalmaneser III from the 9th century BC, now in the British Museum.
New York City - Central Park
Location: Central Park, New York, USA
Pharaoh: Tuthmosis III (reigned 1504-1450 B.C.)
Height: 70 feet
Weight: 193 tons
After the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the ruler of Egypt, the Khedive Ismail, promised the United States an obelisk. Henry Gorridge, a lieutenant commander of the U.S. Navy, was appointed the task of transporting it to New York from its pedestal in Alexandria. (It had been moved to Alexandria from Heliopolis, where Tuthmosis III had erected it alongside its companion, which is now in London.)
The obelisk and its 50-ton pedestal arrived at the Quarantine Station in New York in July 1880. It took 32 horses hitched in 16 pairs to drag the pedestal alone through the streets of the city. Once the pedestal was in place on the summit of the Graywacke Knoll in Central Park, the obelisk was then hauled through Manhattan. It traveled at the rate of 97 feet a day, taking 112 days to arrive at the knoll. The shaft was raised in January 1881 before more than 10,000 jubilant New Yorkers.
At the raising, William Maxwell Evarts, then U.S. Secretary of State, declared, "Who indeed can tell what our nation will do if any perversity is possible of realization; and yet this obelisk may ask us, 'Can you expect to flourish forever? Can you expect wealth to accumulate and man not decay? Can you think that the soft folds of luxury are to wrap themselves closer and closer around this nation and the pith and vigor of its manhood know no decay? Can it creep over you and yet the nation know no decrepitude?' These are questions that may be answered in the time of the obelisk but not in ours."
all taken from the Egypt during the Roman Conquest
Italy Returns Obelisk to Ethiopia Discovery - April 2005
Ancient tombs found near obelisk BBC - April 2005
Archaeologists have found a vast new network of royal
tombs in Ethiopia, near the site where the 1,700-year-old
Axum obelisk is to be re-erected
Obelisks were a prominent part of the architecture of the ancient Egyptians, who placed them in pairs at the entrance of temples. Twenty seven ancient Egyptian obelisks are known to have survived, plus one incomplete obelisk found partly hewed from its quarry at Aswan.
The obelisk symbolized the sun god Ra and during the brief religious reformation of Akhenaten was said to be a petrified ray of the aten, the sundisk. It was also thought that the god existed within the structure.
The Romans were infatuated with obelisks, to the extent that there are now more than twice as many obelisks standing in Rome as remain in Egypt.Not all the Egyptian obelisks re-erected in the Roman Empire were set up at Rome.
Herod the Great imitated his Roman patrons and set up a red granite Egyptian obelisk in the hippodrome (racetrack) of his grand new city Caesarea in northern Palestine. It was discovered by archaeologists and has been re-erected at its former site.
In Byzantium, the Eastern Emperor Theodosius shipped an obelisk in 390 CE and had it set up in his hippodrome, on a specially-built base, where it has weathered Crusaders and Seljuks and stands in the Hippodrome square in modern Istanbul.
Rome is the obelisk capital of the world. The most prominent must be the 25.5 m obelisk at Saint Peter's Square in Rome, The obelisk had stood since A.D. 37 on its site on the wall of the Circus of Nero, flanking St Peter's Basilica:"The elder Pliny in his Natural History refers to the obelisk's transportation from Egypt to Rome by order of the Emperor Gaius (Caligula) as an outstanding event.
The barge that carried it had a huge mast of fir wood which four men's arms could not encircle. One hundred and twenty bushels of lentils were needed for ballast. Having fulfilled its purpose, the gigantic vessel was no longer wanted.
Therefore, filled with stones and cement, it was sunk to form the foundations of the foremost quay of the new harbour at Ostia." (James Lees-Milne, Saint Peter's (1967).
Re-erecting the obelisk had daunted even Michelangelo, but Sixtus V was determined on erecting it directly in front of St Peter's, of which the nave was yet to be built, and had a full-sized wooden mock-up erected within months of his election.
An uproar of suggested projects ensued, but Domenico Fontana, the assistant of Giacomo Della Porta in the Basilica's construction, presented the Pope with a little model crane of wood and a heavy little obelisk of lead, which Sixtus himself was able to raise by turning a little winch with his finger.
Fontana had the project. The obelisk, half-buried in the debris of the ages, was first excavated as it stood; then it took from April 30 to May 17, 1586 to move it on rollers to the Piazza: it required nearly 1000 men, 140 carthorses, 47 cranes.
The re-erection, scheduled for September 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, stunned an enormous crowd of silent onlookers. It was a famous feat of engineering, which made the reputation of Fontana, who detailed it in a book magnificently illustrated with engravings, Della Trasportatione dellšObelisco Vaticano et delle Fabriche di Nostro Signore Papa Sisto V (1590), which iteslf set a new standard in communicating technical information and influenced subsequent architectural publications by its meticulous precision .
Before being re-erected the obelisk was cautiously exorcised. It is said that Fontana had teams of relay horses to make his getaway if the enterprise failed. When Carlo Maderno came to build the nave, he had to put the slightest kink in its axis, to line it precisely with the obelisk.
Another obelisk stands in front of the church of Trinitā dei Monti, at the head of the Spanish Steps. There is a further famous obelisk in Rome, sculpted as carried on the back of an elephant.
Rome lost one of its obelisks, which had decorated the temple of Isis, where it was uncovered in the 16th century. The Medici claimed it for the Villa Medici, but in 1790 they managed to move it to the Boboli Gardens attached to the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, and left a replica in its stead.Several more of the original Egyptian obelisks have been shipped and re-erected all over the world.
The best-known examples outside Rome are the pair of so-called 21 m Cleopatra's Needles in London and New York City and the 23 m obelisk at the Place de la Concorde in Paris.There are 27 known ancient Egyptian obelisks in the current following locations:
Location: Karnak Temple, Luxor, Egypt
Pharaoh: Tuthmosis I (reigned 1525-c.1512 B.C.)
Height: 66 feet
Weight: 143 tons
Tuthmosis I was one of the great warrior-kings of ancient Egypt, extending his domains south into Nubia and north into Syria. He raised a pair of red-granite obelisks at Karnak, though only one remains standing today. In his tomb in the Theban necropolis, Aneni, one of the pharaoh's officials, relates how he "saw to the erection of two [great] obelisks...having built an august boat 120 cubits in length and 40 cubits in width in order to transport these obelisks." [One royal cubit = 1.72 feet] "They arrived safe and sound, and landed at Karnak."
Typical of the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the obelisk are those of the west face, which relate that Tuthmosis I "made it as a monument for his father Amun-Re, foremost of the Two Lands, erecting for him two large obelisks at the double gate of the temple, the pyramidions being of [electrum]...." (Alas, the electrum is all gone today.) About 400 years after the obelisks were raised, Ramses IV added his own inscriptions on either side of those of Tuthmosis I.
Location: Luxor Temple, Egypt
Pharaoh: Ramses II (reigned 1304-1237 B.C.)
Height: 82 feet
Weight: 254 tons
Ramses II (the Great) erected more obelisks than any other pharaoh; in the ruins of the Delta city of Tanis alone, fully 23 obelisks or partial obelisks bearing his name have turned up. Most of Ramses' obelisks are relatively small, but the two that stood before Luxor Temple were quite large. One stands there today; the other was shipped off to Paris in the 18th century.
Each of the four sides of the Luxor obelisk bear scenes of Ramses making offerings to the god Amun-Re, beneath which are three columns of inscriptions. On the northern face, the column on the right deems Ramses "splended of statues, great of monuments in the Southern Opet [Luxor]...making monuments in Thebes for the One." The left-hand column meanwhile, proclaims the pharaoh "the sovereign, great of Jubilees like Tatenen, making monuments in Karnak for his father Amun-Re who placed him upon his throne...." At the base of the obelisk, four stone baboons raise their front feet in adoration of the sun.
Location: Karnak Temple, Luxor
Pharaoh: Hatshepsut (reigned 1503-1482 B.C.)
Height: 97 feet
Weight: 323 tons
Not long after her father Tuthmosis I died, leaving the throne to his young grandson Tuthmosis III, Hatshepsut declared herself "king." She erected four obelisks at Karnak, but only this one remains standing. On its base are 32 horizontal lines of hieroglyphs, eight to a side, that describe why she had the obelisk built. The inscription reads in part:
"I was sitting in the palace and I remembered the One who created me; my heart directed me to make for him two obelisks of electrum [a natural alloy of gold and silver], that their pyramidions might mingle with the sky amid the august pillared hall between the great pylons of [Tuthmosis I]....My Majesty began work on them in Year 15, second month of Winter, day 1, continuing until Year 16, fourth month of Summer, day 30, making 7 months in cutting [them] from the mountain."
Lest anyone doubt her sincerity, Hatshepsut went on to say, "I acted for him with a straightforward heart, as a king does for any god...Let not anyone who hears this say it is boasting which I have said, but rather say, 'How like her it is, she who is truthful to her father.' The god knows it in me [namely] Amun, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands...I am his daughter in very truth, who glorifies him."
Click on map for great QuickTime video of Obelisk Court
Location: Heliopolis, Cairo, Egypt
Pharaoh: Sesostris I (reigned 1972-1928 B.C.)
Height: 67 feet
Weight: 120 tons
Dating to the Middle Kingdom (2050-1786 B.C.), this is the oldest surviving giant obelisk. An inscription on it says, "The first occasion of the Jubilee, he made [it] to be given life forever." A Jubilee was traditionally given in the 30th year of a pharaoh's reign, so scholars believe Sesostris I erected the obelisk in 1942 B.C. Once part of a pair, its companion was thought to have toppled sometime in the 12th century A.D.
The first mention of these obelisks in the historical literature may come from a chapter of Isaiah by St. Epheaim (fourth century A.D.), who wrote that in Heliopolis "there are two great columns which excite admiration...On these columns are depicted figures of the men and animals which were shown by their priestly character to contain the mysteries of paganism." Yakut, an Arab historian of the 13th century, wrote that locals called them Messalat Far'un, or "Pharaoh's Packing Needles."
Location: Square of Horses, Istanbul, Turkey
Pharaoh: Tuthmosis III (reigned 1504-1450 B.C.)
Height: 65 feet (originally 95 feet)
Weight: (originally 380 tons)
Now standing in the Square of Horses in Istanbul, this obelisk once graced the Great Temple of Karnak in ancient Thebes. It was one of two erected near the Seventh Pylon by Tuthmosis III, whose inscriptions glorify his military exploits, including a crossing of the river Euphrates in Syria: "Crossing the Great Circle of Naharina in valor and victory at the head of his army, making great slaughter...Lord of Victory who subdues all lands, establishing his frontier at the Beginning of the Earth [the extreme south] up to the Swampy Lands of Naharina [the farthest north]...."
No one knows who ordered its removal from Karnak, or whether it was still standing when it was taken. Now about 65 feet tall, its lower half reputedly also once stood in Istanbul but is now lost. Unlike the obelisks in Rome, it appears to have stood unmoved in the former Hippodrome of Constantinople since its erection by an unidentified Roman emperor.
Location: Place de la Concorde, Paris, France
Pharaoh: Ramses II (reigned 1304-1237 B.C.)
Height: 74 feet
Weight: 227 tons
Legend has it that Josephine's parting words to Napoleon before he began his failed conquest of Egypt in 1798 were: "If you go to Thebes, do send me a little obelisk." Whether or not the story is true, Napoleon's expedition first left France desiring an obelisk of its own, though it wasn't until 1831 that the moment arrived. That year, a French naval engineer named Jean Baptiste Apollinaire Lebas secured permission from the then-ruler of Egypt, Mohammed Ali, to make off with Ramses the Great's pair of obelisks before Luxor Temple.
Fortunately, it was all Lebas could do to take the western one. (The eastern obelisk remains at Luxor.) In the 3,000 years since Ramses had raised the obelisk, the area around it, including the temple itself, had filled up with earth, houses, and streets. Lebas had this cleared amidst summer heat that could reach 120°F. In the end, it took two months to get the obelisk down and on board the ship Louxor, and another three years before Lebas successfully re-erected it in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
Location: Victoria Embankment, London, England
Pharaoh: Tuthmosis III (reigned 1504-1450 B.C.)
Height: 69 feet
Weight: 187 tons
The British first began to consider appropriating this obelisk, which had originally stood in the Temple of the Sun in Heliopolis, after the French were defeated at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801. But it was not until the 1870s, when the soldier-turned-writer General James Alexander took up the cause, that serious efforts were made to collect it. After much negotiation and preliminary work, "Cleopatra's Needle" -- as this and its companion, now in New York, were dubbed -- was loaded aboard a special barge and towed to England.
Disaster struck in the Bay of Biscay, when a gale separated the barge, the Cleopatra, from its mother ship, the Olga. In their attempt to secure the barge to the Olga, a number of seamen were lost, and the barge was finally set adrift. Coming upon it on the high seas, a Glasgow steamer towed it into port. In January 1878, the Cleopatra was finally pulled up the Thames and moored near the Houses of Parliament. Eight months later, on September 13th, its precious cargo was raised on the Victoria Embankment, where it may be seen today.
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