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lonial studies have made their mark, in no case more so than Edward
Saids Orientalism.5 Further, the evidence is enriched by comparanda
from parts of the ancient world beyond Egypt. The net effect of
such innovations has been to move away from the overwhelmingly
antiquarian approaches of earlier work. Increasingly, scholars have
sought to emphasise that objects (actually or seemingly) from Egypt
should be understood in contextand it is certainly necessary to
take that term in a broad range of cultural, religious, political and
economic senses. Indeed, if context is deemed all-important, we
should not hesitate to ask, in light of contemporary cultural studies,
just what context is, how we can delimit it for practical purposes,
and what the implications are of those delimitations.6
If Aegyptiaca are now subject to new and newly self-aware scholarship, what does this hold for obelisks? Certainly recent books contain
discussions of them, yet there remains more to be done. In this
paper I would like to outline a new framework within which to try
to make historical sense of obelisks. Let us restate as the overarching
question: What did obelisks mean to Romans of the Empire? This
broad question clearly invites several possible answers, urging us to
consider such varied aspects as their transportation; the measuring of
obelisks and the use of them to provide measurements; the habit of
adding inscriptions to them; problems involved in describing them;
and finally imitations and representations. In all these respects one
may examine Roman responses to and interactions with obelisks.
By contrast, Egyptian ideas and practices are obviously relevant in
a broader sense, without being central. By the same token, we must
be aware that material from later periodsfrom the medieval to our
ownmay offer further lines of inquiry. A fuller account of visual
responses to obelisks might thus examine not only ancient frescoes
and mosaics but also modern architectural appropriations of the
obelisk form. In other words, if we consider any one surviving obelisk
its longevity invites us to look forward and backward in time. It is
insufficient to recognize that obelisks have been objects of collection
5 P. Vasunia, Hellenism and empire: reading Edward Said, Parallax 9 (2003) 8897; cf. D.J. Mattingly (ed.), Dialogues in Roman Imperialism: power, discourse and discrepant
experience in the Roman Empire (Newport, Rhodes Island 1995).
6 E.A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: historians and the linguistic turn (Cambridge, Mass.
2004), following the cultural theorist Dominic LaCapra. Note the insistence on context in M.J. Versluys and P.G.P. Meyboom, Les scnes dites nilotiques et les cultes
isiaques. Une interprtation contextuelle, in: De Memphis Rome 111-128.
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1. Transporting
Appropriation has a physical aspect, and it behooves us to begin
in this most concrete sense. Both Pliny and Ammianus emphasise
the physical act of movement, suggesting that this was an important
aspect of their social meaning in Rome; the Latin inscriptions added
to their bases in many cases emphasise their transportation. The act
of moving is illustrated on the base of the Hippodrome obelisk in
Istanbul, in which the process of moving the object is effectively made
part of the product itself. From this point of view the relief invites
comparison with the paintings of Queen Hatshepsut at Karnak, in
which she celebrates her act of moving obelisks downstream to her
temple complex.7 Early modern instances include Domenico Fontanas and Athanasius Kirchers illustrations in the late sixteenth and
mid-seventeenth centuries, on the Nile and in the Mediterranean (in
the case of Kircher) and within the city of Rome (Fontana).8
These physical acts of moving are, in another sense, metaphors for
their changes in audience, and hence changes of meaning. Physical
and metaphorical displacement are in this sense related, particularly
if when we recognise that the transportation of obelisks become
part of their social meaning. This much is clear from the inscribed
bases upon which obelisks were erected, as we shall see below. It is
necessary to ask how (or whether) the transportation of an obelisk
specifically is an index of monarchic power, and particularly riverine
despotism. The skill of Augustus, for one, in manipulating political
power makes it important to scrutinise the earliest Roman obelisks
from such a perspective.
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2. Measuring
3. Inscribing
Most of Romes obelisks arrived in the city already inscribed in Middle
Egyptian on their flanks: once there, a Latin inscription would be
added to the base.10 For example, the Lateran obelisk has both,
the Latin inscription of Constantius II being all of twenty-four lines
long (CIL VI 1163).11 The Vatican obelisk is a major exception
in that it has no hieroglyphic texts: from its brief Latin text, the
name of the disgraced prefect Cornelius Gallus has been erased,
and thus it offers an instance of damnatio memoriae.12 The obelisk
at Piazza Navona, coming from the Iseum Campense and inscribed
at Domitians behest in Middle Egyptian, is another unusual case,
which seems to have been intended to make an impression rather
than be read in any usual sense. This may be regarded as a mystifying or even magical use of writing, where the purpose is clearly
not to impart information. Like a number of other obelisks, such
as Hadrians on the Pincio in honour of Antinous, it shows the fact
that Roman emperors sometimes used the Middle Egyptian language
9 A. Wallace-Hadrill, Time for Augustus: Ovid, Augustus and the Fasti, in: M.
Whitby et al. (eds.), Homo Viator: Classical essays for John Bramble (Bristol 1987) 221-230.
10 In an unusual and telling instance, the Hippodrome obelisk reflects the different
language politics of Constantinople, its base being inscribed in both Greek and Latin:
Iversen, Obelisks (1972) 12-13.
11 Cf. Iversen, Obelisks (1968) 57-58
12 Iversen, Obelisks (1968) 19-46; cf. C.W. Hedrick Jr., History and Silence: purge and
rehabilitation of memory in late antiquity (Austin, Tex. 2000) esp. 89-131.
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4. Describing
The relation of word and object will be examined under two closely
related rubrics: description and narration. When the elder Pliny and
Ammianus Marcellinus discuss obelisks their descriptions contain
narrative elements. It is necessary to read Plinys and Ammianus
comments in light of those authors concerns, to consider their physical
being in relation to the mechanics of their transportation as well as
to the political dealings with which they were caught up. Into what
kinds of Roman discourse were obelisks incorporated? Ammianus,
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writing about one particular obelisk, implies that its history was a
matter of defeating human intentions, particularly those of arrogant monarchs. An eminent case is presented by Constantines two
obelisks (now at the church of St John Lateran in Rome and at the
Hippodrome in Istanbul): these he had moved to Alexandria, with
the intention of transporting them across the Mediterranean, but
it was only after his death that Constantius II had one moved to
Rome and Theodosius the other to Constantinople.
Such narrations also raise the topic of origins: do they suggest
that the intentions of those raising obelisks determined the meaning of the object for all time? It appears rather that both Pliny and
Ammianus, concentrating as they do on the Roman afterlives of the
obelisks, themselves see the objects as belated, and thus show hints
of challenging the foundational approach to their meaning. Clearly,
intentions are central to the concept of a monument, namely to
commemorate, and it is necessary to investigate these; but, equally,
these intentions themselves are of limited significance if we consider
the lives of these objects more broadly. Indeed, the longer an object
survives, the more likely it is to be appropriated by others. It is in such
descriptions that we find clues as to how the obelisks have become
objects of collection. The fact that they are individual objects and
few in number, even in the case of Augustus, merely increases their
social value as objects of collection.17
5. Imitating
The Nilotic landscapes found on ancient frescoes and mosaics offer
ancient representations of obelisks, and may be considered in a broader frame that includes replications of their form in modern times.18
The early modern period offers several examples, all the more interesting for the fact that they frequently conflate the terminology and
forms of pyramid and obelisk. In Rome of the 1930s Mussolini not
only had a massive obelisk made for display in his Foro Italico, but
imported the most easily available approximation of an ancient
Egyptian obelisk, namely the stele from Axum. Its return in April
17 G. Parker, Narrating monumentality: the Piazza Navona obelisk, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 16 (2002) 193-215 raises questions of narrative.
18 Meyboom, Nile Mosaic, and Versluys, Aegyptiaca Romana.
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Again: Measuring obelisks
21
For the Middle Egyptian inscription, see Ciampini, Gli Obelischi 142-149.
On the obelisk now at Montecitorio, see further Iversen, Obelisks (1968) 142160. On the Horologium, see E. Buchner, Die Sonnenuhr des Augustus (Mainz 1982), with
detailed criticism by M. Schtz, Gymnasium 97 (1990) 432-457; also S. Berti, Orologi
publici nel mondo antico (1991) 83-87.
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obelisk was taller. This was destined to be one of the four obelisks
re-erected by Pope Sixtus V, who had it placed in the Piazza del
Popolo in 1587.
We can infer from the Einsiedeln itinerary that it was still standing
in the eighth century. But around the time of the Norman invasion
of 1084 it collapsed or was destroyed. On its early modern history
we are much better informed. Antiquarians and scholars came upon
its base in 1475 and the obelisk itself in 1502. The usual suspects
took an interest: Sixtus V had some excavations done in 1587 and
likewise the learned Jesuit Athanasius Kircher in 1654-1666. Yet it
was not until 1748 that it was fully excavated, and erected in 1792
in its present location at the behest of pope Pius VI. Substantial
parts of the shaft were replaced with blocks of granite taken from
the column of Antoninus Pius. Most of the inscriptions have in fact
been lost, so fragmentary is the lower section of its shaft. It underwent substantial renovations in the 1960s, when the 18th-century
brickwork threatened to collapse as a result of corroded pins and
water seepage.23
What do these two obelisks have to do with measuring, in the
spatial and temporal senses of that term? In the city of Rome, they
created or emphasised lines of sight within public spaces. Obelisks
placed in the spina of a hippodrome or circus measured the centre
of that space by demarcating the horses track. The circling of the
horses suggested movement of the planets around the sun, and hence
suggested solar cult, according to the hostile evidence of Tertullian
(Spect. 8).
The temporalities they marked out were complex. With the Campus Martius obelisk Augustus not only denoted his birthday (and thus
cyclical time) but also connoted Egypts deep antiquity (linear time),
and with it Romes conquest over Egypt. In particular, it evoked the
victory at Actium in 31 BCE, so central to Augustus self-presentation.24 It connoted further, one might add, Romes control over its
grain supplythe metropolis had long since outgrown the nutritive
capacity of Italy. In both temporal and spatial respects Augustus
use of obelisks deserves examination in light of his concern with
23 The life-history of the Piazza del Popolo obelisk is recounted in greater detail at
Iversen, Obelisks (1968) 65-75.
24 P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor 1990) 144; more
generally D. Favro, The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (Cambridge 1996) 252-270.
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Fig. 2. The small monolith standing at Macquarie Place in central Sydney, Australia,
inscription on the base.
Conclusion
I hope I have made a case for studying obelisks as signifiers: for posing
questions about their social meaning without imposing meaning in
the process. Indeed, I have in effect been arguing for a reception
studies approach, one that urges us to inhabit the space between
viewer/reader and creator/author rather than trying to overcome
it, and to see that space as an object of interpretation rather than
an obstacle to it. The post-antique lives of obelisks, no less than
the creation of modern or postmodern neo-obelisks, can raise
questions about ancient obelisks themselves, ones that the available
evidence cannot always answer conclusively but are nonetheless good
to consider. I hope also to have shown that obelisks in Roman eyes
were linked to measuring in several waysand I mean not only the
measuring of obelisks but also the use of obelisks in order to measure
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