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Ancient Egypt was famous for its towering obelisks, which were the subject of great interest, reaching the point of reverence in pre-dynastic times (ca. 4000-3500 BC).
Obelisks became numerous in the New Kingdom (1550-1077 BC), where each temple was topped by two obelisks with gilded pyramidal peaks. Then, individual obelisks were erected on the axis of each temple, and these obelisks were a reminder of the sun worship that ancient Egypt had known thousands of years before.
Obelisks spread throughout the cities of ancient Egypt, including the city of Heliopolis (currently east of Cairo). They were carved from red granite stone, and their cutting was done in the quarries of Aswan (southern Egypt) and then transported across the Nile River to Luxor and other historical cities of Egypt.
The obelisks were carved from granite stone, and pink granite was more often used for obelisks than gray ones.
According to the sources, the obelisk weighs several hundred tons, and the largest obelisks remained unfinished in their quarry in Aswan (southern Egypt) and weigh more than a thousand tons.
Aesthetic architecture
The obelisk is an architectural element with 4 sides, ending with a pyramidal peak that rests on an independent base on which text may be recorded, and is decorated with statues of monkeys rejoicing in the sun’s rays. The four sides of the obelisk are engraved with scenes and texts related to the king who owned it, and to the gods to whom the obelisk was dedicated.
Al-Masry wanted to achieve a number of goals with the obelisk, including that it is an aesthetic architectural element located to the right and left of the temple entrance, and appears floating in space linking heaven and earth, and then it is a memorial that commemorates its owner in his relationship with the gods.
The ancient Egyptian obelisks – which were transferred from the temples of ancient Egypt to decorate some squares in a number of cities around the world – have a large presence in Arab and foreign sources and the books of archaeologists and Egyptologists.
The great journey of the obelisk
In his book “The Great Journey of the Obelisk,” issued by the Egyptian General Book Authority, and translated by Zainab Al-Kurdi, the French novelist and journalist Robert Soulet (born in Cairo in 1946) tells how a French team moved the Obelisk of King Ramses II from its original location, in front of the ancient edifice of the Luxor Temple, to France, where it settled in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
In his book, Solé reveals how the huge obelisk was uprooted from its location in the temple and transferred to a ship bearing the name “Luxor.” He provides a description of the efforts made to complete the transportation process, and how cholera attacked a number of members of the French team that transported the obelisk.
The book “Dictionary of Ancient Egyptian Civilization” by Egyptologists George Posner, Serge Sonron, Jean Yoyot, and A. a. Edwards and F. to. Leonhenn, and translated by Sayyid Amin, indicate that ancient Egyptian obelisks were transported outside the country at all times. The last king of the Assyrian Empire, Ashurbanipal, transferred two of them to Nineveh in present-day Iraq.
The Roman emperors transferred many of them to Rome and Constantinople, and modern countries followed their example during the 19th century, as we find Egyptian obelisks in many countries such as Italy, France, the United States, and other countries.
According to the Egyptian Society for Tourism and Archaeological Development, there are a number of small-sized obelisks in a number of international museums, and there are 13 obelisks inside Egypt, while the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities was able to restore some of them and return them to the way they were thousands of years ago.
Remnants of ancient civilization
The Egyptian Egyptologist, the late Dr. Abdel Halim Nour El-Din, says that obelisks are a prominent sign of ancient Egyptian civilization, and points out that if the pyramids, for example, are considered an engineering and architectural achievement, then the obelisks are considered a distinct creation because they are a single piece of pink granite stone or other stone. In addition to the way they are cut, transported and erected, and some of them remain tall facing all natural and human conditions.
According to a series of lectures published by the Library of Alexandria, and delivered within the archaeological cultural seasons it organizes with the participation of leading Egyptologists, obelisks have religious connotations, as they were one of the sacred primitive symbols in ancient Egypt, which people in early history may have begun erecting for the god Ra in Heliopolis in the form of a simple column. It links them to these gods. This shape then evolved to take the shape of a body with four sides, which ends with a pyramidal peak.
Some sources indicate that the obelisk symbolizes the rays of the sun descending from the sky, represented by its pyramidal top.
Some archaeologists have linked the obelisk to the god “Atum,” one of the most important deities among the ancient Egyptians, which symbolizes the origin of the universe. There is also a relationship between the obelisk and the god Ra, given that the sun disk is the oldest symbol of this deity and was depicted on top of an obelisk, as some Egyptologists have argued. To link the obelisk and the moon, and that the use of obelisks occurred with the beginning of the crystallization of religious thought and the beginning of the emergence of the doctrine of the sun in ancient Egypt.
One of the most prominent sources indicating the religious role of the obelisk is the ritual that accompanied the erection of the obelisk, which is known as the ritual of “erecting two obelisks for the gods.”
This ritual appeared since the New Kingdom, and continued throughout the Pharaonic and Greco-Roman eras. There are some examples from the New Kingdom, the most important of which is the scene depicted on the walls of the red chapel of Queen Hatshepsut in Karnak, which is depicted with the text accompanying the erection of two obelisks by this queen for her father, the gods “Amun.”
One of these two obelisks still remains complete, while the second fell and part of it is still standing on the base. There is also part of the summit at the Holy Lake in the Karnak Temples in the historic city of Luxor in Upper Egypt.
In ancient times, the Abu Sir area (in Giza Governorate) witnessed the construction of a group of sun temples that were dedicated by the kings of the Fifth Dynasty to the worship of the sun gods. The obelisk was a major element in these temples, given the strong relationship the obelisk had with the sun gods in ancient Egypt.
