Obelisk #1

After writing the Obelisk of Many Names I thought it might be a nice idea to write a thread on Obelisks. These ancient Egyptian granite pillars became objects of desire for the Roman Empire and in more recent times have been acquired by The French, the British and the Americans. It seems as though you don’t have a proper empire unless you have an obelisk.

So I am beginning with an obelisk that never left Egypt. Indeed it never even left the quarry. The unfinished obelisk is found in Aswan in ancient stone quarries. The creation is attributed to Hatshepsut 1508 to 1458 BC and was possibly to be installed in Karnak. If completed it would have been the largest obelisk ever raised. During the carving process it developed cracks in the granite that made it unusable. The work was abandoned and covered up by the desert sands. It has been a wonderful find for archeology because it gives us insights into the techniques used by the stoneworkers of ancient Egypt.

Hatshepsut was the longest ruling female Pharaoh and a member of the powerful Thutmoside or 18th Dynasty. This was the first dynasty of Egypt’s new kingdom period, and ruled over an expanded Egypt at the very height of its power after the expulsion of the Hyksos invaders. Hatshepsut was daughter of Thutmose I, wife of her half brother Thutmose II and the aunt, stepmother and regent to Thutmose III. After her death Thutmose III (The Great) tried to remove all trace of Hatshepsut’s reign from the public record in an act known as Damnatio Memoriae.

The Egytian name for an obelisk “Tekhenu” means “to pierce” and this has clear phallic connotations of the earth mating with the sky. In Egyptian creation myths the sky goddess Nut mates with her half brother, the earth god Geb. From their pairing were born the Egyptian Gods Osiris, Set, Isis, Nephthys and Horus. I find it funny that Hatshepsut, a female Pharaoh, attempted to raise the largest phallic symbol. It was the greeks who gave us the word “Obelisk” which is the greek word for a spit or a skewer.

Finally I can’t leave this topic without a nod to the side-kick of Astérix; Obélisk who gained his strength when he fell into a vat of the magic potion as a baby and now works as a Menhir delivery man.

-=o0o=-

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