Egypt’s Obelisks Are No Longer Standing Tall

Their sleek and sensual beauty captivated Roman emperors scouring their Egyptian domain for exotic trophies.

Egypt gave one to France and got a clock in return. England shipped one to London to celebrate a victory over Napoleon. New Yorkers spirited one away to Central Park.

But wherever it stands today, pity the poor obelisk. Its magic is shrinking.

Once king of the horizon, it’s fighting a losing battle in a world of high-rise skyscrapers.

Even in Egypt, their home, the few remaining obelisks are overshadowed by almost every other kind of monument--tombs, columns, pyramids, statues. In Cairo, a tower built in 1962 for a revolving restaurant that doesn’t revolve gets more attention than the 3,250-year-old Gezira obelisk at its base.

New York City’s obelisk, the oldest skyscraper in a city of skyscrapers, is a midget by today’s standards.

Erected with much fanfare in Central Park on Feb. 22, 1881, it was the last obelisk to leave Egypt. But, ravaged by the city’s corrosive fumes, it has suffered more from contact with the modern world than any of the others.

In ancient times, obelisks were in such demand as trophies of triumph that Roman emperors hauled away at least 13 to grace public places in Rome, “City of Obelisks.” Fifteen hundred years ago, the Emperor Theodosius erected an obelisk in the new Byzantine capital Constantinople, today’s Istanbul.

Paris, London and New York went shopping for their obelisks only last century.

Why obelisks? Nobody even knows what they are.

In his definitive work, “The Obelisks of Egypt,” the late archeologist Labib Habachi, Egypt’s greatest authority, defined an obelisk as “a four-sided single piece of stone, standing upright, gradually tapering as it rises and terminating in a small pyramid called a pyramidion.”

They were sacred, he wrote, carved from granite, basalt or quartzite and decorated with hieroglyphics.

Habachi’s American protege, Egyptologist Cynthia May Sheikholeslami, says obelisks are among the least-understood relics of ancient Egypt.

“They became one of the most characteristic and unique Egyptian symbols,” Sheikholeslami said. “But we don’t know for certain what they were for.

“In ancient times obelisks--at least their pyramidions--may have been covered with gold or electrum (an alloy of gold and silver) reflecting the sun’s rays. They would have been dazzling.”

Some people believe their stone shafts contain the origins of life, obelisk magic. Secret societies such as the Knights Templar of the Crusades and the Freemasons linked obelisks with mysticism.

America chose the obelisk style as the monument to honor George Washington, a Freemason.

Architect Robert Mills designed the Washington Monument with an elaborate and expensive circular colonnade serving as the obelisk’s base. Government infighting over money continued for decades. Finally, only the obelisk was left.

But building a real obelisk was “an impossible dream” as it had been for thousands of years, Sheikholeslami said.

The problem was, “Nobody on Earth possessed the skills to build an obelisk. The technology had vanished.”

Ancient workers took months to create an obelisk, pounding the mother rock with diorite balls.

The Washington Monument was fashioned of 36,000 marble-faced granite blocks. The 555-foot monument was dedicated on Feb. 21, 1885, an obelisk in shape only.

Nobody knows when the first obelisks appeared. Pharaohs of the 5th Dynasty, ardent sun worshipers whose period began almost 4,500 years ago, are thought to have been the first to decorate their temples with obelisks in pairs.

Sheikholeslami said some may have been put up to celebrate Pharaohs’ anniversaries, others their victories. Small obelisks were erected at tombs.

Despite their pagan origin, obelisks were blessed by popes and associated with early Christianity.

They decorated French and English houses. A wealthy citizen of Philadelphia erected a large obelisk over his family’s burial vault. Smaller versions served as grave markers.

But they are best known outside Egypt as centerpieces in public squares and parks.

Augustus Caesar, whose 44-year reign began in 30 BC, began the trend by taking one obelisk for Rome’s Circus Maximus, another for the Field of Mars.

Cairo didn’t get around to erecting an obelisk for show until 1958, a rose granite needle shipped upstream from the ancient Nile Delta city of Tanis to Gezira Island in the heart of the capital. True to form, the island now is famous not for its 47 1/2-foot-tall obelisk but for Cairo Tower, soaring 594 feet just behind.

“When we brought it to Gezira, we had no idea that the Cairo Tower would be built behind it,” Egyptologist Kamal el-Mallakh, a prime mover behind the project, said shortly before his death in 1987. “If we had known, we wouldn’t have done it. The obelisk is lost.”

Antiquities officials spent $1.2 million in 1984 to place an obelisk at Cairo International Airport. It’s lost, too, because most flights land and leave Cairo in the dark.

Scores of obelisks once guarded entry into Egypt’s sacred temples. Only four still stand in their original spots.

Twin obelisks were moved in antiquity from the temple of the sun god Ra, home of the phoenix in ancient Heliopolis, to the Mediterranean port of Alexandria. Misnamed “Cleopatra’s Needles,” one now stands beside the River Thames in London, the second in Central Park.

Other obelisks lie in ruins, toppled by earthquakes or desecrated by conquerors seeking to destroy a mysterious power said to lurk within.

The oldest standing obelisk dates from the reign of Pharaoh Sesostris I, 4,000 years ago, at the site of the Ra temple. Now enveloped by apartment houses, it rises from a small park in a bustling, crowded Cairo suburb.

The largest, 97 feet high and weighing 323 tons, was built 3,700 years ago by Queen Hatshepsut for the Karnak Temple complex in Luxor, 450 miles south of Cairo. A smaller, more damaged obelisk belonging to her father Tuthmosis I stands nearby.

Both are ignored by thousands of tourists daily, who prefer to photograph immense decorated columns and monumental statues erected 150 years later by Pharaoh Ramses II.

Egypt’s most famous survivor is Ramses’ own obelisk at the entrance to nearby Luxor Temple.

Its twin stands in Paris’ Place de la Concorde, a gift from Egypt. France reciprocated with a small clock, placed in a courtyard adjacent to Mohammed Ali Mosque in Cairo’s Citadel.

The timepiece doesn’t work.

And Ramses’ once-great obelisk outside Luxor Temple is leaning.