obelisk

 

(ŏb'əlĭsk) , slender four-sided tapering monument, usually hewn of a single great piece of stone, terminating in a pointed or pyramidal top. Among the ancient Egyptians these monoliths were commonly of red granite from Syene and were dedicated to the sun god. They were placed in pairs before the temples, one on either side of the portal. The greatest number erected in any one place was in Heliopolis, but eventually almost every temple entrance was flanked by a pair of them. Down each of the four faces, in most cases, ran a line of deeply incised hieroglyphs and representations, setting forth the names and titles of the Pharaoh. The cap, or pyramidion, was sometimes sheathed with copper or other metal. Obelisks of colossal size were first raised in the XII dynasty. Of those still standing in Egypt, one remains at Heliopolis and two at Al Karnak, one from the time of Thutmose I and one of Queen Hatshepsut which is estimated to be 97.5 ft (29.7 m) high. Many of the historic shafts have been carried from Egypt, notably one of the reign of Ramses II from Luxor, now in the Place de la Concorde, Paris, and Cleopatra's Needles in London and New York. Others are in Rome and Florence. In the United States two familiar structures of obelisk form (though not monoliths) are the Washington and the Bunker Hill monuments.

An obelisk (Greek ὀβελίσκος [obeliskos], diminutive of ὀβελός [obelos], "needle") is a tall, narrow, four-sided, tapering monument which ends in a pyramidal top. Ancient obelisks were made of a single piece of stone (a monolith). The term stele (plural: stelae) is generally used for other monumental standing inscribed sculpted stones not of classic obelisk form.

Ancient obelisks

Egyptian

Obelisks were a prominent part of the architecture of the ancient Egyptians, who placed them in pairs at the entrance of temples. The word "obelisk" is of Greek rather than Egyptian origin because Herodotus, the greek traveler, was the first writer to describe the objects. 28 ancient Egyptian obelisks are known to have survived, plus the Unfinished obelisk found partly hewn from its quarry at Aswan.

The earliest temple obelisk still in its original position is the 68 ft. high red granite obelisk of Senusret I of the XIIth Dynasty at Heliopolis.^[1]

The obelisk symbolized the sun god Ra or Re as some know him 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.

It is hypothesized by New York University Egyptologist Patricia Blackwell Gary and Astronomy senior editor Richard Talcott that the shapes of the ancient Eygyptian pyramid and obelisk were derived from natural phenomena associated with the sun (the sun-god Ra being the Egyptians' greatest deity).^[2] The pyramid and obelisk would have been inspired by previously overlooked astronomical phenomena connected with sunrise and sunset: the zodiacal light and Sun pillars, respectively.

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. All fell after the Roman period except for the Vatican obelisk and were re-erected in different locations.

The tallest Egyptian obelisk graces the square in front of the Lateran Basilica in Rome.

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 Judea. It was discovered by archaeologists and has been re-erected at its former site.

In Constantinople, the Eastern Emperor Theodosius shipped an obelisk in AD 390 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 is the 25.5 m obelisk at Saint Peter's Square in Rome. The obelisk had stood since AD 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."^[3]

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 copperplate etchings, Della Trasportatione dell’Obelisco Vaticano et delle Fabriche di Nostro Signore Papa Sisto V (1590),^[4][5] which itself set a new standard in communicating technical information and influenced subsequent architectural publications by its meticulous precision.^[6] 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 Trinità 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 28 known ancient Egyptian obelisks in the following current locations:

• Egypt – 8
  • Pharaoh Tuthmosis I, Karnak Temple, Luxor
  • Pharaoh Ramses II, Luxor Temple
  • Pharaoh Hatshepsut, Karnak Temple, Luxor
  • Pharaoh Senusret I, Heliopolis, Cairo
  • Pharaoh Ramses III, Luxor Museum
  • Pharaoh Ramses II, Gezira Island, Cairo, 20.4 m
  • Pharaoh Ramses II, Cairo International Airport, 16.97 m
  • Pharaoh Seti II, Karnak Temple, Luxor, 7 m
• France – 1
  • Pharaoh Ramses II, in Place de la Concorde, Paris
• Israel – 1
  • Caesarea obelisk
• Italy – 11 (includes the only one located in the Vatican City)
  • 8 in Rome (see Obelisks in Rome)
  • Piazza del Duomo, Catania (Sicily)
  • Boboli Gardens (Florence)
  • Urbino
• Poland – 1
  • Ramses II, Poznań Archaeological Museum, Poznań (on loan from Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Berlin^[7]
• Turkey – 1
  • Pharaoh Tuthmosis III, in Square of Horses, Istanbul
• United Kingdom – 4
  • Pharaoh Tuthmosis III, Cleopatra's Needle, on Victoria Embankment, London
  • Pharaoh Amenhotep II, in the Oriental Museum, University of Durham
  • Pharaoh Ptolemy IX, Philae Obelisk, at Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne Minster, Dorset
  • Pharaoh Nectanebo II, British Museum, London
• United States – 1
  • Pharaoh Tuthmosis III, Cleopatra's Needle, in Central Park, New York

Assyrian

One obelisk form is known from the early Assyrian civilization, represented by the Black Obelisk of King Shalmaneser III from the 9th century BC, now in the British Museum.

Axumite

A number of obelisks were carved in the ancient Axumite Kingdom of Ethiopia. The most notable example – the 24 m high Obelisk of Axum carved around the 4th century AD – was looted by the Italians after the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and taken to Rome in 1937 where it stood in the Piazza di Porta Capena. Italy agreed in a 1947 UN agreement to return the obelisk but didn't first truly affirm its agreement until 1997, after years of pressure. In 2003 the Italian government made the first steps toward its return, and as of 2006 it is in Axum still awaiting re-erection due to the finding of older burial chambers on the intended site.

The largest obelisk, Great Stele at Axum, now fallen, at 33 m high and 3 by 2 meters at the base is the largest single piece of stone ever worked in human history and probably fell during erection or soon after, destroying a large part of the massive burial chamber underneath it. The obelisks, properly termed stelae or the native hawilt or hawilti as they don't end in a pyramid, were used to mark graves and underground burial chambers. The largest of the grave markers were for royal burial chambers and were decorated with multi-story false windows and false doors, while nobility would have smaller less decorated ones. While there are only a few large ones standing, there are hundreds of smaller ones in various "stelae fields". The obelisks were kept standing through the use of massive counterweights.

Ancient Roman

The Romans commissioned obelisks in an Egyptian style.

• Arles, France — in Place de la République, a 4th century obelisk of Roman origin
• Munich — obelisk of Titus Sextius Africanus, Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Kunstareal, 1st century AD, 5.80 m
• Rome — there are five known ancient Roman obelisks located in Rome. See Obelisks in Rome.

Byzantine

• Walled Obelisk, Hippodrome of Constantinople. Built by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (905–959) and originally covered with gilded bronze plaques.

Keralan

The obelisk stone (rock) crosses of Kerala form another category of obelisks which perhaps were inspired by the Egyptian originals. The Syrian Christians or St. Thomas Christians of Malabar on the west coast of India had close contacts with the Egyptian and Assyrian worlds, the original habitat of obelisks. The "Ray of the Sun" and Horus concepts are to be found in the idea of Christ and in the orientation of the churches East-West. The use of the cylinder and socket method is found extensively used in both structures.^[8]

Pre-Columbian

The "Tello Obelisk", from Chavín de Huantar, now in the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú in Lima is a monolith stele with obelisk-like proportions.

Notable modern obelisks

17th century

• Aix-en-Provence – Fontaine des Quatre Dauphins, 1667

18th century

• Stowe School, Buckinghamshire – General Wolfe's Obelisk, 1754
• Kagul Obelisk in Tsarskoe Selo, 1772
• Chesma Obelisk in Gatchina, 1775
• Rumyantsev Obelisk in St Petersburg, 1799
• Obelisk at Slottsbacken, Stockholm, erected 1800

19th century

• Villa Medici, Rome – a 19th century copy of the Egyptian obelisk moved to the Boboli Gardens in Florence in 1790
• Patriots' Grave, Old Burying Ground, Arlington, Massachusetts (1818)
• Bunker Hill Monument, Charlestown, Massachusetts – built between 1827 and 1843, the first monumental public obelisk erected in the United States
• Villa Torlonia, Rome – two obelisks erected 1842
• Reggio Emilia obelisk, comemorates marriage of Francis V, Duke of Modena to princess Adelgunde of Bavaria, built 1842.
• Rutherford's Monument near Anwoth, Scotland erected in 1842 as a memorial to Samuel Rutherford
• Newcastle, New South Wales – "The Obelisk", built 1850.
• Wellington Monument, Wellington, Somerset, completed 1854 (175 ft)
• Obelisk of Fontenoy, 1860
• Wellington Monument, 1861, 62m (205 feet), Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland.
• The Washington Monument in Washington DC, USA, measuring 169.29 m in height, is the world's tallest true obelisk; completed in 1884
• The Bennington Battle Monument in Bennington, Vermont, 1889
• Dalhousie Obelisk, in Raffles Place, Singapore, 1891

20th century

• The William Dudley Chipley Memorial, in the Plaza Ferdinand VII, Pensacola, Florida, dedicated in 1901
• McKinley Monument, on Niagara Square, in Buffalo, New York, USA, 1907 (96ft)
• The Veterans' Monument obelisk, constructed primarily from river rock collected from the nearby Doe River in downtown Elizabethton, Tennessee and guarded by two short American Civil War field cannon, dedicated in 1904 to Union and Confederate veterans from Carter County, Tennessee.
• The Chalmette Monument, in Chalmette, Louisiana, commemorating the Battle of New Orleans, dedicated in 1908
• The War Memorial in London Square, Southport, Lancashire, England, erected in 1923 to a design by Grayson and Barnish. It is flanked by two colonnades each supported by Doric columns, all constructed of Portland stone.
• Jefferson Davis Monument at Jefferson Davis State Historic Site in Fairview, Kentucky, 351 feet (107 m) tall, mostly of concrete, completed in 1924.
• The Foshay Tower, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, modeled after the Washington Monument, completed in 1929.
• Obelisk of Montevideo, Uruguay - built in 1930
• High Point Monument, 1930, in Montague, New Jersey. A 220 foot obelisk sitting on top of New Jersey's highest point, 1,803 ft above sea level.
• Foro Italico, Rome (on Lungotevere Maresciallo Diaz), erected in 1932 to honour Mussolini.
• Obelisk of Buenos Aires, Argentina – built in 1936.
• Plaza Francia obelisk at the Altamira neighborhood in Caracas, Venezuela built in 1944.
• The Obelisk on One Tree Hill in Auckland, New Zealand
• Obelisk of São Paulo, Brazil - built in 1954
• Trujillo Obelisk — 1960, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (137 feet)
• Obelisk of La Paz, Bolivia
• Demidov Column in Barnaul, Siberia, Russia.
• Victory Obelisk in Moscow
• Abolition Park in Ponce, Puerto Rico.
• A small obelisk stands at Trinity site, the location of the first atomic bomb explosion.
• Rugby, North Dakota, the geographical center of North America (Mexico, USA and Canada).
• Pirulito da Praça Sete in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
• In Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., an obelisk stands in front of the Luxor Hotel, a pyramid-shaped hotel along The Strip.

21st century

• Capas National Shrine in Tarlac province, Philippines — a 70-meter obelisk (erected in 2003) that towers above the grounds of the former concentration camp at the final stop of the Bataan Death March. This site is in memory of the 31,000 Filipino and American soldiers who died here during World War II.
• Pond and white obelisk monument in the main square of Vigan City in the Philippines.
• "Obelisco Novecento", Rome, 2004. Sculpture by Arnaldo Pomodoro.

References

External links

• Obelisk of the World
• History of the Egyptian obelisks
• Obelisks in Rome (Andrea Pollett)
• Obelisks of Rome (series of articles in Platner's Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome)
• Obelischi di Roma
• History of the obelisk of Arles (in French)
• Octavo Edition of Domenico Fontana's book depicting the exact method he used to erect the Vatican obelisk in 1586.
• National Geographic: "Researchers Lift Obelisk With Kite to Test Theory on Ancient Pyramids"

nrm:Obélisque

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