Black siltstone obelisks of Nectanebo
II
Found in Cairo but originally from Hermopolis
(modern Al-Ashmunayn), Middle Egypt
30th
Dynasty, around 350 BC
The Thirtieth Dynasty (380-343 BC) saw a
revival of Egyptian art and architecture which had lain relatively
dormant since the end of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty in 525 BC. Many
temples were expanded and new ones built, particularly under the
first king, Nectanebo I. These fragments were part of a pair of
obelisks, probably originally about 5.5 m high. Obelisks were solar
symbols placed in temples. Many are massive, such as
'Cleopatra's Needles' now in London and New
York, but smaller examples such as these may have been placed at
the entrance to a ramp into part of a
temple.
The inscriptions
records the dedication to the Egyptian god
Thoth,
'Lord of Hermopolis', one of Thoth's major
cult centres. Most of the extant remains of the site date to the
Graeco-Roman period, but a British Museum expedition (1980-90)
found many remains of older
temples.
One of the
obelisks (EA 523) was seen reused in a window-sill in the citadel
in Cairo by Richard Pococke, one of the first British travellers to
Egypt, in 1737. The other was seen in 1762 in the same area by the
Danish mathematician Carsten Niebuhr. Both fragments were recorded
for the Description de
l'Egypte by Napoleon's 1798
expedition and taken to Alexandria in preparation for transport to
France in 1801. Following their surrender to the British and the
Treaty of Alexandria in the same year, the two fragments, along
with other material such as the Rosetta Stone, came to Britain.
Another fragment of the upper part of EA 524 has been located in
the Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
L. Habachi, The obelisks of Egypt: skyscra (New York, Scribner, 1977)
E. Iversen, Obelisks in exile, (2 vols). (Copenhagen, G.E.C. Gad, 1968-1972)