Obelisks can be seen all over Rome and appear outside the city’s most famous monuments. But what are these ancient Egyptian monoliths, which were dedicated to the pagan gods of past millennia, doing in front of some of the most important Christian buildings in Rome? The story of obelisks in Rome spans three important historical eras: ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, and the transformation of Rome into the center of Christianity. They have not only witnessed the succession of empires, but also represented the creation and the destruction of religion, technology, and magic. During the obelisk’s rich history, it has served as a symbol of worship, conquest, and power.
WHAT IS AN OBELISK?
An obelisk is a four sided structure that sits on a base and tapers to a pyramidal top. The ancient Egyptians created obelisks as early as 2400 BC, and they were usually placed in pairs in front of funerary monuments or temples. The bronze cross and pontificate’s coat of arms that cap the obelisks in Rome are not part of the original Egyptian structure, but were added by the Popes who re-erected the monuments during the Counter Reformation. The hieroglyphs that span the obelisk’s sides praise a pharaoh’s accomplishments or thank the gods for their goodwill and protection.
Obelisks at Karnak, Egypt
CONSTRUCTION
Obelisks were made from large pieces of granite, in a process that is largely not understood even today. The stone for Egyptian obelisks often came from the rock quarries at Elephantine. They were usually carved from a single block of red granite. Exactly how they were made remains something of a mystery, but an unfinished obelisk found partly hewn from its quarry in Aswan gives us an idea as to how they were created. According to what we can see from this site, the ancient Egyptians would have carved the obelisk out of the quarry horizontally, first releasing three sides and then gradually carving away at the bottom to leave a narrow connecting strip. Wooden beams were then placed under the obelisk and the connecting strip was carved out so that the weight of the monolith lay on the beams. The obelisk was then dragged out of the quarry by men with ropes who pulled it over a muddy surface to the Nile. It was then shipped down the river to the point closest to its intended site. How they erected the obelisk was another matter entirely. One theory is that the obelisk was raised incrementally with levers, while a mound of dirt was built up underneath it each time it was raised, so that it slowly reached a vertical position. Whatever their methods, the construction of an obelisk from a single block of granite exemplifies a great feat in engineering, especially considering the limited technologies available at the time.
Unfinished obelisk at Aswan
The ancient Romans moved the first obelisks from Egypt down the Nile, across the Mediterranean Sea, and finally to Rome. The Romans engineered new ships specifically for the transportation of the obelisks. These ships moved by the work of multiple levels of rowers and were so admired that they were put on display for Roman citizens to marvel at. Once the obelisk reached Rome, it took hundreds of workers months to pull it to its location. The effort, engineering, and manpower required for the transportation of these monoliths is a testament to the greatness of the Roman Empire.
SYMBOLISM IN ANCIENT EGYPT
Sun-god Ra
SYMBOLISM in ANCIENT ROME
Roman citizens recognized obelisks as symbols of Egypt. The ancient Egyptians were seen as masters of occult knowledge and expert practitioners of magic, astrology and alchemy, and the mysteriously hewn shaft of the obelisk proved the Egyptians’ mastery of nature. Roman emperors exploited this association between obelisks and the mystery of Egypt. Augustus, the first Roman emperor to bring obelisks to Rome, also understood the importance of the obelisk in Egypt as a symbol of association between the gods and the pharaohs. By creating a link between himself and the great pharaohs of Egypt, the emperor’s own power increased. Latin inscriptions were carved into the bases of obelisks as a further reminder of an emperor’s power. For example, the obelisk that stood in the Campus Martius had an inscription that dedicated the obelisk to Rome’s defeat of Egypt and to the sun god as a gift from Augustus.
The placement of obelisks was also important. While the Egyptians placed obelisks outside temples and funerary monuments, Augustus had a different purpose in mind. One of the obelisks was placed in Circus Maximus, an ancient Roman stadium used for chariot races and gladiator fights, which attracted many people. In this way, Roman citizens were reminded of the greatness of their emperor.
SYMBOLISM IN CHRISTIAN ROME
Just as there were multiple emperors who utilized the importance of the obelisk in history to promote themselves and the Roman Empire, six popes also used obelisks to further their own means. Between the 16th and 18th centuries, obelisks that had been lost and forgotten in antiquity were excavated, repaired, and purified by the Counter-Reformation popes.
When a pope repaired and re-erected an obelisk, it symbolized the triumph of Christianity over pagan religions. By moving obelisks to piazzas in front of Christian churches, they became symbols of Christianity’s power. Part of the re-erection process included an exorcism and purification process completed by the addition of a finial which usually included a bronze cross and papal coat of arms. Any surviving hieroglyphs were preserved, but the Christian symbolism that crowned the obelisk emphasized the defeat of paganism.
Obelisks played an important role in the urban planning efforts of Pope Sixtus V in the late 16th century. Sixtus hoped to make the city easily navigable for the many pilgrims that visited Rome. He placed obelisks at the ends of four major roads that led into Rome and connected important sites, specifically St. Peter’s Basilica, the churches of St. John the Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore, and Piazza del Popolo, the city’s Northern entrance. These obelisks helped to orient pilgrims so they would be able to find their way around the city by going from one obelisk to the next.
Obelisk at St. Peters Basilica
ELEPHANT OBELISK
Turn a corner behind the Pantheon to the Piazza Santa Maria sopra Minerva, and you are confronted with one of the more unusual monuments in Rome: a marble elephant placidly balancing a small granite obelisk on its back. It is Bernini’s Elephant and Obelisk, or, as it is commonly referred to, “Minerva’s Chick.” This obelisk was erected in 1667 in front of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (St. Mary over Minerva), a Dominican church whose name refers to its location over the ruins of a temple dedicated to Minerva, the ancient Roman goddess of knowledge.
This small obelisk was discovered in the garden of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in 1665, when several Dominican priests were digging the foundations for a wall. The obelisk was one of two that were built around 589 BC in Egypt and transported from Sais; the other is currently on display in Urbino. The obelisk was found under the pontificate of Pope Alexander VII, who was fascinated by the hieroglyphics and had them interpreted. He liked that the obelisk symbolized sunlight and therefore the light of divine knowledge.
A number of distinguished artists and architects were called upon to submit designs to a papal commission so that a suitable base for the obelisk could be chosen. One of the applicants was a Dominican priest and architect, Father Domenico Paglia. According to Paglia's plan, the obelisk would have rested on six small hills, as shown on the Chigi coat of arms, with a dog in each corner. The dog is the symbol of Dominican priests, who were nicknamed Domini canes (after the Latin Dominicanes) or “the Lord's dogs,” to represent their fidelity. By having the obelisk rest solely on Alexander’s family crest surrounded by signs of the Dominicans’ loyalty to the Church and the Pope, Paglia was clearly attempting to appeal to Alexander’s vanity. However, Alexander rejected this design. He wanted the monument to be a symbol of the Holy Knowledge, to recall the original dedication of the site, rather than just a celebration of himself and his family.
Bernini was then asked to design a more suitable base for the obelisk. His sketches for this project show that he wanted to take a more humorous approach to the project. At one point, he considered an unusual concept of having a gigantic figure of Hercules either heaving the obelisk up a rocky mound or staggering to hold it aloft at a slant. The architectural stability of the obelisk’s shape was contrasted with its unstable position as a visual joke. However, Bernini scrapped this idea due to the problems of equilibrium that made the stability of the obelisk questionable due to its large scale.
Two later sketches show Bernini going back to a more sensible arrangement that he had begun thinking about years earlier for Pope Urban VIII: an elephant carrying an obelisk on its back. In drawing his elephant, Bernini had been inspired by Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ("Poliphil's Dream of the Love Battle"), a novel written by Francesco Colonna in 1499. The book was widely circulated and would have been familiar to audiences of Bernini’s time. It contained several woodcut illustrations, including one of an elephant carrying an obelisk on his back.
In Bernini’s original plan, the weight of the obelisk would have fully rested on the elephant's four legs, without a stand beneath its body, to show that it was alive and carrying the obelisk rather than having its body pierced by the obelisk as in the drawing. But Father Paglia, who was jealous after his own design had been rejected, argued that traditional canons dictated that “no weight should rest vertically above an empty space, as it would neither be steady nor long-lasting,” and therefore, a cube should be inserted under the elephant's belly. This addition would of course undermine the uniqueness of Bernini’s design. The pope agreed with Paglia in the end, although Bernini strongly opposed the change. He then tried to disguise the cube by adding an elaborate saddle to cover the cube, but the addition of both the cube and the saddle made the statue rather stout. For this reason, it was nicknamed “Porcino della Minerva” (“Minerva’s Piggy”). The name eventually changed to “Pulcino” (Chick), probably because the pronunciation is very similar.
As one story goes, Bernini was able to take his revenge upon Paglia by placing the elephant so that its rear end was pointing toward the Dominican monastary. Its tail flips slightly to the left, as if the elephant were “saluting” Father Paglia as he walked out his door.
The obelisk is crowned by the insignia of Pope Alexander VII (six mountains, oak trees, and the Chigi family star). As Alexander requested, an inscription on the base reads, “A strong mind is needed to support a strong knowledge.”
MONTECITERIO
The most damaged of all Roman obelisks, the Monteciterio obelisk (often referred to as the Campense) is also one of the most famous. It is a 22-meter high red granite obelisk that once belonged to the ancient Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus II. It was brought to Rome in 10 BC by Augustus, who erected it in the Campus Martius to use as the gnomon of a giant sundial. The sundial was oriented in such manner so as to cast its shadow on the nearby Ara Pacis on Augustus's birthday, which also was theautumnal equinox. This use of an obelisk as a sundial highlighted the power that Augustus, a calendar reformer, claimed over the year and its seasons.
Augustus's sundial obelisk at Campus Martius (upper left corner)
Between the 9th and 11th centuries, the obelisk collapsed, probably due to fire, earthquake, or war, and was subsequently buried. Sixtus V made some fruitless attempts at cleaning some pieces in that had been found in 1502, but nothing came of it until 1748, when the obelisk was finally fully extracted under Benedict XIV. The stone was so badly corroded that Benedict just arranged the fragments in a nearby piazza. When Pope Pius VI decided to repair it in 1789, its poor condition made this resolution seem particularly daring.
Pius’s decision generated a variety of competing proposals that testify to the expanding interest in obelisks. After a long series of unusual ideas, including embedding the obelisk in the wall of a giant fountain and enclosing it in a spiral staircase, the architect Antinori was chosen for the job. Against popular belief, Antinori thought that the stone could be made to stand upright if its fragments were patched to create stackable sections. As for its location, he wanted to place it at a picturesque site where “the foreign admirer might, with a single turn of his head, realize he is in Rome.”
There was some debate as to where it should be located. Eventually it was decided that it would be placed in Monetcitorio. By this time, Pius had overseen restoration of two other obelisks, one at the Spanish steps and another on the Quirinal; but this project cost more than these two combined. Most of the money went toward restoration; the Campense was so corroded by fire that its six largest pieces required considerable refacing to construct a continuous shaft. The lowest section was completely rebuilt over a foreign core, and the upper sections needed extensive patching. One of the biggest problems was the hieroglyphic carvings, which would be next to impossible to fill in accurately. Antinori decided to keep the surviving hieroglyphs and have all the repaired areas appear flat without carving new symbols just for appearance.
Originally, Antinori had wanted to make the obelisk function as a sundial again, but others thought it was pointless to use a sundial in the age of watches. The considerable cost involved and the fact that it would have to be continually adjusted to be accurate further discouraged this idea. Also, the light beam would not be legible given its great height, and even then it would only give the crudest calendrical readings. In the end, a meridian was included in the design, but it was mostly for appearances and became inaccurate soon thereafter.
When it was time to choose a finial, Pius chose to exploit the obelisk’s Augustan associations rather than make it a symbol of Christianity. He restored Augustus’s original Latin dedications and displayed them on the north and south axes. He modestly relegated his own inscription to the east and west faces. The west face chronicles the obelisk’s creation by King Sesostris, its use as a sundial in the Campus Martius, its violent destruction by fire and time, and its belated re-erection in 1792. Pius announces that he “cleaned the obelisk of dirt and damage”, “carefully completed the missing parts”, and “gave it back to the city and the sky.” Pius thus becomes a new Augustus by renewing the obelisk’s celestial dedication. The eastern face reads, “The pyramid that formerly marked the swift hours lay spread on the ground, broken after its fall. Its ancient splendor renewed, its proud face now measures the auspicious times of Pius VI.” This compares the fleeting hours of ancient Rome to Pius’s more promising ones.
Obelisk at Montecitorio
CONCLUSION
Obelisks stand as reminders of the ingenuity of past eras and the varied ways in which their power has been interpreted over the years. Those who resurrected them did so for their own means, not those of their creators. But no one, neither in antiquity nor more recent years, seems to have destroyed an obelisk just to ruin it. Even rigorous reformers such as the popes wanted to reorient rather than demolish these soaring symbols of power human aspiration. The feats of engineering necessary to create, transport, and re-erect obelisk attest to the wonder they have continued to inspire across historical eras. Today, these towering monoliths stand as symbols of the power of ancient Egypt, ancient Rome, and Christian Rome, and their varied past is a fascinating chapter in the history of Rome.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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