From Egypt to Cities Around the World

BY AWAKE! WRITER IN ITALY

“THEY have ‘traveled’ out of the land of their origin,” says the Italian magazine Archeo, “becoming tangible symbols of the great civilization that had produced them.” Most left Egypt long ago and were brought to such places as Istanbul, London, Paris, Rome, and New York. Visitors to Rome may observe that many of the city’s most famous squares are adorned by their presence. What are they? Obelisks!

Each tapering four-faced stone column, known as an obelisk, is crowned by a pointed cusp in the form of a pyramid. The earliest dates back some 4,000 years. Even the most recent one is about 2,000 years old.

Obelisks, generally of red granite, were quarried by the ancient Egyptians as monolithic blocks of stone and were erected in front of tombs and temples. Some are huge. The largest still standing rises 105 feet [32 m] above a Roman piazza and weighs some 455 tons. Most are embellished with hieroglyphs.

The monuments’ purpose was to honor the sun-god Ra. They were erected to thank him for his protection and for victories granted to Egyptian sovereigns as well as to request favors. Their shape is thought to have been derived from that of the pyramid. They represent beams of sunlight descending to warm and illuminate the earth.

Additionally, obelisks were used to glorify the Pharaohs. Their inscriptions proclaim various Egyptian sovereigns as “beloved of Ra” or “beautiful . . . like Atum,” who was the god of the sun at sunset. One obelisk says of a Pharaoh’s military prowess: “His power is like that of Monthu [god of war], the bull that tramples foreign lands and kills rebels.”

The first obelisks were raised in the Egyptian city of Junu (the Biblical On), thought to mean “City of the Pillar,” perhaps referring to the obelisks themselves. The Greeks called Junu Heliopolis, meaning “City of the Sun,” since it was the chief center of Egyptian sun worship. The Greek name Heliopolis corresponds to the Hebrew name Beth-shemesh, meaning “House of the Sun.”

The Bible’s prophetic book of Jeremiah speaks of the breaking of “the pillars of Beth-shemesh, which is in the land of Egypt.” This may refer to the obelisks of Heliopolis. God condemned the idolatrous worship they represented.​—Jeremiah 43:10-13.

Extraction and Transportation

How obelisks were made is shown by the largest of these monuments. It still lies abandoned near Aswân, Egypt, where it was being quarried. After choosing a promising bed of rock and leveling it, workers excavated trenches around what was to become the obelisk. They dug passages beneath it and filled them with beams, until the bottom face was freed. The monolith, which weighed about 1,170 tons​—heavier than any other block of stone quarried by the ancient Egyptians—​was then to have been hauled down to the Nile and conveyed to its destination by barge.

As things turned out, the Aswân obelisk was abandoned when workers realized that it was irreparably fractured. Had it been finished, it would have stood 137 feet [42 m] high, with a base 13 feet square [4 m by 4 m]. How obelisks were raised upright is still not known.

 From Egypt to Rome

In 30 B.C.E., Egypt became a Roman province. Various Roman emperors desired to adorn their capital with monuments of great prestige, so as many as 50 obelisks were transferred to Rome. Moving them meant building huge ships designed especially for that purpose. Once in Rome, the obelisks continued to be closely associated with sun worship.

When the Roman Empire fell, Rome was ransacked. Most of the obelisks were toppled and lay forgotten. Various popes, however, took an interest in reerecting the obelisks taken from the ruins of the ancient city. The Roman Catholic Church has acknowledged that the obelisks were “dedicated to the Sun by an Egyptian king” and that they once “brought vain magnificence to sacrilegious pagan temples.”

The reerection of the first obelisks during the reign of Pope Sixtus V (1585-90) was accompanied by exorcisms and blessings, as well as the sprinkling of holy water and the burning of incense. “I exorcise you,” sang a bishop before the Vatican obelisk, “to bear the holy Cross and remain devoid of all pagan impurity and all assaults of spiritual iniquity.”

So as a tourist examines the obelisks that stand in Rome today, he may well ponder the genius it took to extract, transport, and raise them. He may also marvel that monuments used in sun worship adorn the city of the popes​—a strange combination indeed!

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Luxor, Egypt

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Rome

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New York

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Paris