OBELISCI ISEI CAMPENSIS
several small obelisks found at different times
near the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, which were probably brought
to Rome during the first century and grouped in pairs, with others, at
the entrances of the temple of Isis (
ISEUM, q.v.), which stood between
the Saepta and the temple of Minerva:
(1) that now standing above the fountain in front of the Pantheon.
This belongs to the time of Rameses II and stood in front of the temple
of Ra at Heliopolis. It is 6 metres high and covered with hieroglyphics
(
BC 1896, 260-264=Ob. Eg. 91-95). It is referred to in the fifteenth
century (Poggio ap. Urlichs, p. 24) as lying in the piazza in front of
S. Macuto (Arm. 317), but in the sixteenth it had already been set up
there (Fulvius, Antiquit. Urbis lxxi.), and it is also marked on the map of
Bufalini.
1 In 1711 Clement XI removed it to its present position.
(2) that now standing on Bernini's elephant in the Piazza della
Minerva, where it was placed by Alexander VII in 1667. It was erected
at Sais by Pharaoh Apries in the first half of the sixth century B.C., and
has only four lines of hieroglyphics (
BC 1896, 284-288=Ob. Eg. 115-119).
Nothing was known of it until it was found in 1665 (
BC 1883, 45).
(3) that now standing in the Viale delle Terme, which was found
in 1883 under the apse of S. Maria sopra Minerva (
NS 1883, 244).
It is about 6 metres high with hieroglyphics (
BC 1883, 72-103;
1896,
265-269=Ob. Eg. 96-100), and was erected by Rameses II at Heliopolis.
(4) Another of the obelisks that were probably set up in the precinct
of Isis is that which stands on Bernini's fountain in the Piazza Navona.
This seems to have been made in Egypt by order of Domitian, and
brought to Rome where the hieroglyphics were cut. They allude to the
repair of that which was ruined, i.e. the Iseum. When the circus of
Maxentius was built on the via Appia, the obelisk was transported
thither and erected on the spina. It lay among the ruins of the circus
until 1651 when Innocent X placed it in its present position (
BC 1897, 201-207=Ob. Eg. 125-131; JRS 1919, 188;
BC 1908, 254-272;
1917,
103-124;
RAP ii. 113-114; Erman in Preuss. Abh. 1917, Abh. 4, 4-10).
(5)-(7) Besides these, Ligorio (Bodl. 75v, quoted in
BC 1883, 42, 43),
mentions three more similar obelisks, one of which had been excavated
in front of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva (cf. Aldrovandi, Statue
di Roma, 314); this is in all probability that which passed into the
possession of the Medici, and remained in their villa on the Pincio until
1787 (
LS iii. 114, 121 ; Doc.
Ined. iv. 78, No. 54), when it was removed
to the Boboli gardens in Florence, as it has inscriptions almost identical
with those of (1). The remains of the other two were built into modern
houses, but had, he says, the same measurements and the same hieroglyphics. These fragments, three in number, were given to Cardinal
Alessandro Albani (Valesio, Diario, 16 Aug. 1702 ap. Cancellieri, Mercato
164, and Nibby, Roma
Antica ii. 290), who presented them to the city
of Urbino in 1737, where they now stand (made up into one obelisk)
with another fragment (probably not enumerated, as being without any
inscription) in front of the church of S. Domenico. They have inscriptions of the time of Apries like (2) (see Ungarelli, Interpretatio Obeliscorum Urbis, p. x.). For a drawing of one of the fragments, see
Heemskerck i. 63b=Vat. Lat. 3437, 5v: and of all three, Kircher (Obelisci
Aegyptiaci nuper inter Isaei Romani rudera effossi interpretatio
(Rome,
1666), 134, 135 .
(8) Another obelisk lies buried not far from S. Luigi dei Francesi, about
which no particulars can be given, as it has never been excavated
(Buonarroti, ser. 3, vol. i.
(1882), 41-59; Roma, ii.
(1924), 505-509).
(9) A portion of another small obelisk which may have come from
the Iseum is described and illustrated by Kircher, op. cit. 135, 136, as
existing in the Palazzo Cavalieri-Maffei in Piazza Branca, now Piazza
Cairoli (LF 21). It was later in Villa Albani (Zoega, De Origine Obeliscorum, 80), and appears to have been sent to Paris; from there it was
brought, with Cavaceppi's restorations, to the Glyptothek at Munich
(Furtwangler-Wolters, Katalog, No. 22). The inscription is much
injured, and the T. Sextius Africanus mentioned in it has not been
identified with certainty with either of the two known men of this name,
one of the time of Claudius and Nero, the other of the time of Trajan
(
Pros. iii. 236. 464, 465). If the two obelisks from the temple of Fortune
at Praeneste, which belong to the time of Claudius (one is still there, the
other in Naples: see
BC 1904, 252-257; Guida del Museo di Napoli,
p. 18, No. 335), can rightly be called counterparts of it, the identification
should be with the former.