The obelisk is one of the most incredible and recognized archaeological monuments on the face of the earth and in all of history. The obelisk, originating during the Early Dynastic Period of ancient Egypt, serves as a monumental reminder of the civilization's forgotten glory. If you have ever visited the Washington Monument, however, or walked across the Place de la Concorde in Paris, or seen any rendering of ancient Egypt in its glory, you are very familiar with obelisks: vertical stone columns that taper as they rise, topped by a pyramid.
This object was able to serve as a reminder of the forgotten hiding glory of the ancient Egyptian civilization. The obelisk holds powerful and meaningful mythical tales and facts that shed light on the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, who had deep concepts when it came to creation, as can be seen on the obelisk, which looks like the BEN-BEN.
Washington’s Monument and the Fascinating History of the Obelisk, by John Steele Gordon, is an absorbing account of the obelisk’s place in human civilization. Here are some things revealed by Gordon and other sources that you might not know about obelisks.
Obelisk in Place de la Concorde, Paris. This monolithic obelisk is 3300 years old and once marked the entrance to the Temple of Thebes in Egypt.
1. Origin and Purpose
The obelisk came to being during the Early Dynastic Period (3150- 2613 BCE) after the construction of the mud brick mastaba tombs of the Step Pyramid of Djoser in 2670 BC; it was carved out of a single piece of red granite from the quarries at Aswan. These early obelisks are considered a form of prototype for working with stone, which stopped in order to develop the necessary steps to create an ideal pyramid building.
Read also: The Language of the Pharaohs
The hidden symbolism behind the creation of the obelisk is their initial goal to honor the gods and pharaohs, which was believed to embody the spirit of the honored pharaoh and deity. The obelisk is also associated with the Benu Bird, which is a symbol of the morning star and the renewal that resides in the city of Heliopolis, the center of solar worship, plus whose cry would awaken creation and set life in motion.
The obelisk was created by the pharaohs in order to immortalize their names across time, which also symbolizes the deity's living presence, the pharaoh's immortality, and the concept of balance. The obelisk acts as a sundial, which tracks the god of the sun and the resurrection of Ra's movement except when the sun is directly overhead.
- The ancient Egyptians placed pairs of obelisks at the entrances of their temples.
- According to Gordon, the columns were associated with the Egyptian sun god and perhaps represented rays of light.
- They were often topped with gold, or a natural gold-and-silver alloy called electrum, in order to catch the first rays of the morning light.
The obelisks always came in pairs, which were symbols of true harmony and balance, which is able to shed light on the duality value in the heart of the Egyptian society, which highlighted the complementary nature of opposites, thus conforming to the essential unity of the entire existence. They were designed and positioned to catch the first and last light of day, honoring Ra's journey from night through the dangers of the underworld, symbolizing the cycle of day and night.
The origin of obelisks was derived from natural astronomical phenomena associated with the sun pillars and zodiacal light. The obelisks were used as training monuments in the old kingdom of ancient Egypt around 2570 BC to harness their skills in order to create the pyramids.
The first obelisks appeared at the beginning of the third millennium B.C. in a northern Egyptian city home to the main cult of Re. This city would later become known as Heliopolis, meaning “city of the sun” in Greek. The Egyptians, meanwhile, called the place Iunu, or “city of pillars,” an allusion to the obelisks that symbolized petrified sunbeams.
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Most of the obelisks were built during the new kingdom of Egypt (1550-712 BC) under the hand of Ramesses II in his temple of Amun at Thebes in Upper Egypt and down to Heliopolis in Lower Egypt. The development of the obelisk started as a stone pillar with a highly distinctive tapered top, which formed a marvelous pyramidion that was placed on a great base in order to immortalize and glorify many great gods, events, and rulers.
During the New Kingdom, Thebes became the capital of Egypt and the center of the cult of Amun-Re, a divinity born from the union of the Theban god Amun and the sun god Re. The affinity between these two divinities was such that Thebes was also called Iunu Shema’u, “Heliopolis of Upper Egypt.” In the Theban sanctuaries of Karnak and Luxor, numerous obelisks were erected, but today only three remain: two in the temple of Karnak and one in Luxor.
The spread of the obelisk came due to a multifaced symbolism that showcased the eternal immortality and vitality of the pharaoh; plus, it stood as a symbol of duality and balance. They personified the powers of the gods, like the sun god Ra. They were constructed and placed in strategic spots so that they could witness the first and last light of the day.
The architecture of the obelisk is an epic monolithic stone pillar that was placed in pairs at the grand entrance of the ancient Egyptian temples. The Obelisks are carved from a single piece of red granite harvested from the Aswan quarried. They are recognized for their incredible shape, which is wider at the base and tapering to a pyramidal top, often covered with an alloy called electrum, made of gold and silver.
Both sides of the obelisk shafts are decorated with marvelous hieroglyphs that possess religious dedications for the rulers and the solar gods and creatures. The pyramidion on top of the obelisk had to be designed to catch the last and first rays of the sun, which needed ideal height and positioning.
Read also: The Art of Ancient Egypt
The word Obelisk is of an English nature of Greek origin rather than Egyptian because Herodotus (greek traveler & historian) was one of the first writers to describe the obelisks in his writings. The ancient Egyptians called them Tekhenu which means "To Pierce The Sky". It was mentioned by the Greeks as resembling long cooking skewers in order to reach the sky.
The Obelisks held a great symbolism and purpose behind them as they held an important religious value which represented the ben-ben, which was a primordial mound where Atum stood at the creation of the world many ancient and Greco-Roman Egyptians believed the Bennu or Phoenix bird, which is known its cry has the power to awaken creation and was linked to signifying the daily renewal, morning star plus marked the end world with its great cry which in a way mirrored the cyclical nature of creation.
The connection between the sun god Ra, the Bennu Bird, and the Obelisk increased heavily in the New Kingdom period when the worship of Ra also increased.
The sole purpose of creating the obelisk was to honor the incredible heritage of many rulers and gods in order to achieve absolute immortality plus even commemorate a number of very important events. Offerings were presented to obelisks, which was similar to the temple rituals.
An obelisk in ancient Egypt symbolized the sun god Ra and the pharaoh's power.
2. Calculating the Circumference of the Earth
Around 250 B.C., a Greek philosopher named Eratosthenes used an obelisk to calculate the circumference of the Earth. He knew that at noon on the Summer Solstice, obelisks in the city of Swenet (modern day Aswan) would cast no shadow because the sun would be directly overhead (or zero degrees up).
He also knew that at that very same time in Alexandria, obelisks did cast shadows. Measuring that shadow against the tip of the obelisk, he came to the conclusion that the difference in degrees between Alexandria and Swenet: seven degrees, 14 minutes-one-fiftieth the circumference of a circle.
He applied the physical distance between the two cities and concluded that the circumference of the Earth was (in modern units) 40,000 kilometers. This isn’t the correct number, though his methods were perfect: at the time it was impossible to know the precise distance between Alexandria and Swenet.
If we apply Eratosthenes's formula today, we get a number astonishingly close to the actual circumference of the Earth. In fact, even his inexact figure was more precise than the one used by Christopher Columbus 1700 years later. Had he used Eratosthenes’s estimation, Columbus would have known immediately that he hadn’t reached India.
3. Monolithic Construction
True obelisks as conceived by the ancient Egyptians are “monolithic,” or made from a single piece of stone. (The literal translation of monolith-a Greek word-is “one stone.” On that note, the word “obelisk” is also Greek, derived from obeliskos, or skewer. An ancient Egyptian would have called an obelisk a tekhen.)
The obelisk at the center of Place de la Concorde, for example, is monolithic. It is 3300 years old and once marked the entrance to the Temple of Thebes in Egypt. So difficult is the feat of building a monolithic obelisk that Pharaoh Hatshepsut had inscribed at the base of one of her obelisks the proud declaration: “without seam, without joining together.”
4. Construction Challenges
Nobody knows exactly why obelisks were built, or even how. Granite is really hard-a 6.5 on the Mohs scale (diamond being a 10)-and to shape it, you need something even harder. The metals available at the time were either too soft (gold, copper, bronze) or too difficult to use for tools (iron’s melting point is 1,538 °C; the Egyptians wouldn’t have iron smelting until 600 B.C.).
The Egyptians likely used balls of dolerite to shape the obelisks, which, Gordon notes, would have required “an infinity of human effort.” Hundreds of workers would have each had to pound granite into shape using dolerite balls that weighed up to 12 pounds.
This doesn’t even address the issue of how one might move a 100-foot, 400-ton column from the quarry to its destination. While there are many hypotheses, nobody knows precisely how they did it.
The tools used for crafting the obelisks included using metals like copper and diorite. Many techniques were used to extract the stone from the bedrock, which required wooden wedges.
Many facts about the carving and moving of the obelisk are documented and understood, but the method of raising them remains a mystery to this very day.
Evidence at Aswan indicates that to remove the stone the masons probably chiseled holes into the rock to a depth of about six inches and then forced wooden wedges into these holes before moistening them with water so that the wood swelled and caused the rock to split. The tools used were metal, such as copper, and stone. Volcanic rock (Diorite) was also used to loosen the stone once holes had been made.
It is unknown exactly how long it took workers to quarry and shape an obelisk but the entire process, from initial quarrying to transport to raising of the monument, took approximately seven months.
When the pillar was carved to satisfaction, ropes were slung around it and the stone was raised and placed on a heavy sledge. It took several thousand workmen to pull the sledge to the banks of the Nile. There, vessels waited in dry docks specially designed to allow safe loading of the pillars.
A ramp was prepared in advance and the pillar was pulled to the incline. The unique part of the ramp was a funnel shaped hole, filled with sand. The obelisk was positioned over the hole and the sand was emptied, thus lowering the pillar into place.
An illustration of ancient Egyptian obelisk construction.
5. Role in Translating Hieroglyphics
Until the 19th century, hieroglyphics were thought to be untranslatable-mystical symbols with no coherent message beneath. Jean-François Champollion, a French Egyptologist and linguist, thought differently, and made it his life’s purpose to figure them out.
His first success came from the Rosetta Stone, from which he divined the name “Ptolemy” from the symbols. In 1819, “Ptolemy” was also discovered written on an obelisk which had just been brought back to England-the Philae obelisk.
The “p,” “o,” and “l” on the obelisk also featured elsewhere on it, in the perfect spots to spell the name “Cleopatra.” (Not that Cleopatra; the much earlier Queen Cleopatra IX of Ptolemy.) With those clues, and using this obelisk, Champollion managed to crack the mysterious code of hieroglyphics, translating their words and thus unlocking the secrets of ancient Egypt.
(Almost 200 years later, the European Space Agency’s mission to land a spacecraft on a comet commemorated these events; the spacecraft is named Rosetta. The lander is named Philae.)
How Did We Really Crack The Rosetta Stone?
6. Age and Historical Significance
The oldest obelisks are almost impossibly old-ancient even by the standards of antiquity. Seaton Schroeder, an engineer who helped bring Cleopatra’s Needle to Central Park, called it a “might monument of hoary antiquity,” and commented eloquently, “From the carvings on its face we read of an age anterior to most events recorded in ancient history; Troy had not fallen, Homer was not born, Solomon’s temple was not built; and Rome arose, conquered the world, and passed into history during the time that this austere chronicle of silent ages has braved the elements.”
7. Global Presence
Twenty-eight Egyptian obelisks remain standing, though only six of them are in Egypt. The rest are scattered across the globe, either gifts from the Egyptian government or plunder by foreign invaders.
During the Roman Empire, many obelisks were transported from Egypt to places like Rome, where they were prominently displayed. Dozens of obelisks were taken to Rome as seen in the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano that was made by Thutmose III at Karnak Temples Complex.
Across the world are a number of obelisks that were transported in the Roman era from Egypt to Italy.
After the New Kingdom, erecting obelisks continued but on a smaller scale. The final two date from the reign of Ptolemy IX Soter II (r. 116-107, 88-81 B.C.), who commissioned the monuments for a temple dedicated to the goddess Isis on Philae Island.
This marked the end for construction of obelisks in their homeland, but following Egypt’s conquest by Romans in 30 B.C., the monoliths became popular elsewhere.
Augustus Caesar (r. 31 B.C.-A.D. 14) began a tradition of transporting obelisks to Rome that would continue throughout the imperial period. At first, the obelisks were considered to be spoils of war, a symbol of Roman victory over Egypt.
Today Rome has 13 Egyptian obelisks, far more than any other city-or country-in the world.
One of Cleopatra’s Needles, a 224-ton Egyptian obelisk enveloped in hieroglyphs, stands today for all to admire-not in Cairo but in London.
The spread of the obelisk continued as a tradition across the next centuries as many rulers like Hatshepsut, Ramesses the Great, Amenhotep III, and more across the shining land of Thebes. Many great foreign cultures, like the Phoenicians and Canaanites, produced obelisks inspired by the Egyptian model.
Egyptian obelisks remain a source of fascination, serving as a reminder of past glories and a symbol of state power.
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