Obelisk
For the obelisk punctuation mark, see dagger (typography).For the fictional structure,see Obelisk of light.An
obelisk (greek
obeliskos, diminutive of
obelos, "needle") 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.
Egyptian obelisks
In
1911,
Encyclopædia Britannica wrote, "The earliest
temple obelisk still in position is that of
Senwosri I. of the
XIIth Dynasty at
Heliopolis (68 ft. high)" (ref. [
1]).
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 hewn 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.
It is hypothesized by
New York University Egyptologist Patricia Blackwell Gary and
Astronomy senior editor Richard Talcott ("Stargazing in Ancient Egypt,"
Astronomy, June 2006, pp. 62-67) that the shapes of the
ancient Egyptian
pyramid and obelisk were derived from natural phenomena associated with the
sun (the sun-god being the Egyptians' greatest deity). 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, although they all fell after the Roman period and were re-erected in different locations.
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
390 A.D. 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 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 dell'Obelisco Vaticano et delle Fabriche di Nostro Signore Papa Sisto V (1590), which itself set a new standard in communicating technical information and influenced subsequent architectural publications by its meticulous precision [
2]. 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 26 known ancient Egyptian obelisks in the following current locations:
|
Tip of Hatshepsut's fallen obelisk, Karnak |
* Egypt â€" 8
**
Pharaoh Tuthmosis I,
Karnak Temple,
Luxor** Pharaoh
Ramses II,
Luxor Temple** Pharaoh
Hatshepsut, Karnak Temple, Luxor
** Pharaoh
Sesostris I,
Heliopolis,
Cairo** plus 4 more
* France â€" 1
** Pharaoh Ramses II, in
Place de la Concorde,
Paris* Israel â€" 1
**
Caesarea obelisk* Italy â€" 11
** 8 in
Rome (see
Obelisks in Rome)
** Piazza del Duomo,
Catania (
Sicily)
**
Boboli Gardens (
Florence)
**
Urbino* Turkey â€" 1
** Pharaoh Tuthmosis III, in
Square of Horses,
Istanbul* United Kingdom â€" 3
** 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, in
Wimborne,
Dorset* United States â€" 1
** Pharaoh Tuthmosis III,
Cleopatra's Needle, in
Central Park,
New YorkThe Romans also commissioned obelisks in an Egyptian style, and there are five known ancient Roman obelisks located in Rome.
Assyria
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 obelisks
A number of obelisks were carved in the ancient
Axumite Kingdom of
Ethiopia. The most notable example â€" the 24 m high
Obelisk of Axum carved around the
4th century AD â€" 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, 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.
* In
Place de la République,
Arles,
France -
4th century, of
Roman origin
|
The Wellington Monument in Phoenix Park, Dublin |
|
A Socialist obelisk. The Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw. Built 1952-1955. |
Starting in the
Renaissance, the obelisk has become a staple of monumental architecture, especially funerary mainly for freemasons. Some claimed experts in archatecture and psycology say they are phallac representations of manhood and a individual's standing or influence in or on a community. Also, occult symbology is involked when placed in a circle of 8 wedges and or when a monolith or obelisk is fasioned from "black" marble, it becomes a symbol of fertility or copulation. Many thousands of modern obelisks can be found the world over, almost any American cemetery offering several examples. Among all these, the following are worthy of particular mention:
*
Stowe School,
Buckinghamshire â€" General Wolfe's Obelisk, 1754.
*
Kagul Obelisk in
Tsarskoe Selo,
1772.
*
Chesma Obelisk in
Gatchina,
1775*
Rumyantsev Obelisk in
St Petersburg,
1799.
* Villa Medici, Rome â€" a 19th century copy of the Egyptian obelisk moved to the Boboli Gardens in Florence in 1790.
* Villa Torlonia, Rome â€" two obelisks erected 1842.
*
Patriots' Grave, Old Burying Ground, Arlington, Massachusetts (1818)
*
Bunker Hill Monument,
Charlestown, Massachusetts â€" built between 1827 and 1843, the first monumental public obelisk erected in the United States.
* The
Bennington Battle Monument in
Bennington, Vermont.
*
Dalhousie Obelisk, in
Raffles Place,
Singapore, 1891.
* The
Washington Monument in
Washington DC,
USA was built between 1848 and 1888 and is the world's tallest, measuring 169.29 m in height; dedicated in 1907.
*
McKinley Monument, on Niagara Square, in
Buffalo, New York, USA.
* The
William Dudley Chipley Memorial, in the
Plaza Ferdinand VII,
Pensacola, Florida, dedicated in 1901
* The Chalmette Monument, in
Chalmette, Louisiana, commemorating the
Battle of New Orleans, dedicated in 1908
* Foro Italico, Rome (on Lungotevere Maresciallo Diaz) â€" obelisk erected in 1932 to honour
Mussolini.
*
Obelisk of Buenos Aires,
Argentina â€" built in
1936.
*
Demidov Column in
Barnaul, Siberia, Russia.
*
Victory Obelisk in
Moscow*
Palace of Culture and Science in
Warsaw.
* 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).
*
Wellington Monument, 62m (205 foot),
Phoenix Park,
Dublin,
Ireland.
* Jefferson Davis Monument,
Fairview, Kentucky â€" construction began in 1917 and was completed in 1924. The 351 foot obelisk rests on a foundation of solid Kentucky limestone , and contains walls seven feet thick at the base, tapering to two feet thick where the point inclines.
*
Plaza Francia obelisk at the Altamira neighborhood in
Caracas,
Venezuela built in 1944.
* The name of the comic book figure
Obélix (from the
Asterix strips) is derived from the word
obelisk, but originates more directly from use of the word as an alternative for the typographical punctuation symbol '
dagger', in the same way that the name of Asterix is derived from
asterisk.
* In the
manga Yu-Gi-Oh! and the
anime Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters,
Obelisk the Tormentor is one of the Three Divine Beasts, also known as the
God Cards.
* The obelisk stone (rock) crosses of Kerala form another category of obelisks which perhaps were inspired by the Egyptian originals. For one thing, 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.
*
Totem pole*
* Patricia Blackwell Gary and Richard Talcott, "Stargazing in Ancient Egypt,"
Astronomy, June 2006, pp. 62-67.
*
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*
Proponent of the theory that Egyptians used wind power in obelisk erection*
History of the obelisk of Arles (in French)
*
Obelisk Crosses of Kerala,India in Christian Art
