Obelisk

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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.

1 Ancient obelisks
2 Modern obelisks
3 Miscellaneous
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Ancient obelisks

[edit] Egyptian obelisks

"Cleopatra's Needle" on the banks of the River Thames in London

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 the Unfinished 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 Re 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. 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 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 copperplate etchings, Della Trasportatione dell’Obelisco Vaticano et delle Fabriche di Nostro Signore Papa Sisto V (1590)[2] [3], which itself set a new standard in communicating technical information and influenced subsequent architectural publications by its meticulous precision [4]. 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:

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Image:Stela aksum.jpg

The Obelisk of Tuthmosis III, Istanbul, Turkey

Egypt – 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 – 1
- Pharaoh Ramses II, in Place de la Concorde, Paris
Israel – 1
- Caesarea obelisk
Italy – 11
- 8 in Rome (see Obelisks in Rome)
- Piazza del Duomo, Catania (Sicily)
- Boboli Gardens (Florence)
- Urbino
Turkey – 1
- Pharaoh Tuthmosis III, in Square of Horses, Istanbul
United Kingdom – 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 – 1
- Pharaoh Tuthmosis III, Cleopatra's Needle, in Central Park, New York

The Romans also commissioned obelisks in an Egyptian style, and there are five known ancient Roman obelisks located in Rome.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Axumite obelisks

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, 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.

[edit] Other ancient obelisks

In Place de la République, Arles, France - 4th century, of Roman origin

[edit] Modern obelisks

The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., USA

Image:Obelisk at Palace of Culture and Science Warsaw.jpg

Starting in the Renaissance, the obelisk has become a staple of monumental architecture, especially funerary, mainly for freemasons. Some claimed experts in architecture and psychology say they are phallic representations of manhood and an individual's standing or influence in or on a community. Also, occult symbology is invoked when placed in a circle of 8 wedges and or when a monolith or obelisk is fashioned 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 – 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 – a 19th century copy of the Egyptian obelisk moved to the Boboli Gardens in Florence in 1790.
Villa Torlonia, Rome – two obelisks erected 1842.
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.
The Bennington Battle Monument in Bennington, Vermont.
Dalhousie Obelisk, in Raffles Place, Singapore, 1891.
The San Jacinto Monument measuring 173.7 m in height is the tallest obelisk in the world, and commemorates the acquisition of Texas and other states from Mexico following the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836.
The Washington Monument in Washington DC, USA was built between 1848 and 1888 and is now the world's second 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
The Foshay Tower, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, modeled after the Washington Monument, completed in 1929.
Foro Italico, Rome (on Lungotevere Maresciallo Diaz) – obelisk erected in 1932 to honour Mussolini.
Obelisk of Buenos Aires, Argentina – built in 1936.
Obelisk of São Paulo, Brazil - built in 1954
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 – mostly of concrete, 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.
Knoxville, Tennessee, USA, Black Marble, seated on 8 wedge circle with Dome. Allegedly placed by Mayor Ashe as a memorial to the September 11, 2001 attacks^{[citation needed]}. Ashe was a Yale alumnus between Bush and Kerry^{[citation needed]}.

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Rutherford's Monument near Anwoth, Scotland erected in 1842 as a memorial to Samuel Rutherford
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.
The Capas National Shrine in Tarlac province in the Philippines has 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.

[edit] Miscellaneous

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.
Sigmund Freud believed that the obelisk was a giant phallus.
In the computer game Age of Mythology an obelisk is a tower built by Egyptian Priests to provide a greater line of sight.
In the computer games: Command & Conquer, Command & Conquer: Renegade, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, an Obelisk of Light is a Brotherhood of Nod defensive structure that emits a beam of light that destroys or heavily damages enemy units. It is shaped like an obelisk but is curved as a reference to Nod's symbol: a curved scorpion tail.
In Newcastle, New South Wales there is an obelisk, named, appropriately enough, "The Obelisk".

[edit] References

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Patricia Blackwell Gary and Richard Talcott, "Stargazing in Ancient Egypt," Astronomy, June 2006, pp. 62-67.