OBELISCUS
OBELISCUS (
ὀβελίσκος) is a
diminutive of
Obelus (
ὀβελός), which properly signifies a
sharpened thing, a
skewer or
spit, and is the name given to certain works of
Egyptian art.
1 A detailed description of such works would be inconsistent with the
plan of this work, but some notice of them is required by the fact that
several of them were transported to Rome under the emperors. Ammianus
Marcellinus (
17.4) says that “an obelisk
is a very rough stone in the shape of a kind of land-mark or boundary
stone, rising with a small inclination on all sides to a great height;
and in order that it may imitate a solar ray by a gradual diminution of
its bulk, it terminates in a prolongation of four faces united in a
sharp point. It is very carefully smoothed.” Most ancient writers
consider obelisks as emblematic of the sun's rays. (Comp.
Plin. Nat. 36.64.)
An obelisk is properly a single block of stone, cut into a quadrilateral
form, the sides of which diminish gradually, but almost imperceptibly from
the base to the top of the shaft, but do,
[p. 2.253]not
terminate in an apex upon the top, which is crowned by a small pyramid,
consisting of four sides terminating in a point. The Egyptian obelisks were
mostly made of the red granite of Syene, from which place they were carried
to the different parts of Egypt. They were generally placed in pairs at the
entrance to a temple, close to other monuments of proportionate size. But
the Romans, as Mr. Burn remarks, viewed them only as trophies, and, except
those at the Mausoleum of Augustus, they stood apart from anything of equal
height, presenting a naked and forlorn appearance. (
Rome and
Campagna, p. xliv.)
Obelisks were first transported to Rome under Augustus, who caused one to be
erected in the Circus and another in the Campus Martius. (
Plin. Nat. 36.71;
Mon. Ancyr.
iv.) The former was restored in 1589, and is called at present the Flaminian
obelisk. Its whole height is about 116 feet, and without the base about 78
feet: it now stands in the Piazza del Popolo. The obelisk in the Campus
Martius was set up by Augustus as a sun-dial. It stands at present ,on the
Monte Citorio, where it was placed in 1792. (Burn's
Rome and
Campagna, p. 333.) Its whole height is about 110 feet, and
without the base about 71 feet. Another obelisk was brought to Rome by
Caligula, and placed on the Vatican in the spina of the Circus of Caligula.
(
Plin. Nat. 36.74,
16.201.) In drawings of the 16th century it
is represented as still standing in its original place. It stands at present
in front of St. Peter's, where it was placed in 1586, and its whole height
is about 132 feet, and without the base and modern ornaments at top about 83
feet. But the largest obelisk at Rome is that which was originally
transported from Heliopolis to Alexandria by Constantine, and conveyed to
Rome by his son Constantius, who placed it in the Circus Maximus (
Amm. Marc. 17.4). Its present position is before
the north portico of the Lateran church, where it was placed in 1588. Its
whole height is about 149 feet. and without the base about 105 feet. (See
Gibbon,
Hist. of Rome, vol. ii. p. 400.)
There are nine other obelisks at Rome besides those mentioned above, but none
of them are of historical importance. Three, however, which were found under
and near the church of S. Stefano del Cacco, one as late as 1882, are
interesting as remains of the temples of Isis and Serapis on that site. They
are now in the Piazza della Rotonda, the Piazza della Minerva, and the
Piazza del Collegio Romano. (See Middleton's
Rome, p. 392.)
There are also obelisks in various other places, as at Constantinople,
Arles, Florence, Catana in Sicily, &c., some of which are works of
Egyptian art, and others only imitations.
The preceding brief account is chiefly taken from Long's
Egyptian
Antiquities, vol. i. cc. 14, 15.
[
W.S] [
G.E.M]
