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Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 16.2 (2003) 193-215
ISSN 0952-7648
Narrating Monumentality: The Piazza Navona Obelisk
Grant Parker
Department of Classical Studies, Duke University, 236 Allen Building, PO Box 90103, Durham, NC
27708-0103, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract
The Egyptian obelisks at Rome are monuments par excellence: as sites of memory they have been distinctive, but over time also prone to appropriation and recontextualization. Owing to their bulk, ancient
(and modern) attempts to transport them have attracted much attention. This paper begins with a biography of the obelisk now at Piazza Navona and proceeds to a broader consideration of the qualities that
constitute a monument. In particular, its physical transportation is examined in relation to transmutations of context and audience in time and space. The social processes within which they have been implicated suggest reconsideration of the nature, and indeed direction, of biographic narrative. To what
extent can narrative, in this biographic form, adequately represent monumentality?
Introduction
The obelisk now standing at the center of
Piazza Navona in Rome (Figure 1) has had an
eventful life: quarried in Egypt, inscribed and
shipped to the heart of Rome in the first century AD; moved to a new location outside the
city walls some two centuries later; excavated,
repaired from its broken state and magnificently reinstalled in the mid-17th century;
studied for its hieroglyphic inscription from
that point up to the decipherment in the
early 19th century and beyond. These are
some of the points that occur in any rendition
of its life story.
It is one thing to rehearse this life-story in
its own right, following the lead of several
earlier scholars of Roman topography (e.g.
Platner and Ashby 1929: 368-70; Nash 1968:
II, 159; Richardson 1992: 275; Steinby 1997:
355-59) or of Egyptian obelisks (e.g. Marucchi 1917: 125-31; Iversen 1968: 76-92;
Habachi 1978: 141-44; D’Onofrio 1992: 288301). It is another to question what is at stake
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
in such a life-story by critically examining its
workings and assumptions. One issue that the
obelisk brings to the forefront is that of monumentality: If we make the working assumption that this is a monument, what are the
distinctive features of a monument? What are
we to make of the fact that this obelisk has
occupied different locations in the city of
Rome and elsewhere? In our consideration of
this obelisk, what is the relation between its
mobility and its monumental qualities? These
are questions that will be addressed in the different social contexts that emerge in the life
of this obelisk.
To these ends, we will begin by recounting
the life of the obelisk and then step back from
that biography to a more abstract consideration of the issues raised in that account. To
ensure that the initial biography retains an
episodic quality (thus making a virtue out of
necessity), and with a view to these later considerations, this biography will proceed not in
the usual chronological order, but in reverse.
In this way we shall begin in the present time
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Figure 1. Engraving of the Fountain of Four Rivers, Piazza Navona, Rome (Falda 1665).
and venture ever further, in unequal measure,
into the past.
Part 1: Scenes from a Life
Tourist at a Landmark (2003)
Italy, as a country, was the world’s fourth most
popular tourist destination in 2000, attracting
41.2 million overseas visitors; only France, the
US and Spain surpassed it (World Tourism
Organization statistics, quoted in Wright
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
2001: 416). If, within Italy, Rome is a major
attraction, then Piazza Navona is certainly a
major landmark for visitors. While detailed
statistics are hard to come by, there can be no
doubt that the square is one of Rome’s public
spaces par excellence. The same square that is
now such a tourist attraction once housed a
stadium built by the emperor Domitian; in
between it has had various roles, whether for
public spectacles or for regular markets. This
single place contains a thick texture of mem-
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ory, evoking different periods of modern and
premodern history.
A contemporary tourist will be drawn, at
some point during a visit to the square, to
inspect the obelisk standing at its center.
Poised miraculously at a height of some six
meters above the ground, the obelisk itself is
16.54 m tall. It has inscriptions in hieroglyphics on all four sides. In this respect it differs
from the taller obelisk at the center of the Vatican’s Piazza San Pietro, which is part of
another major landmark. It stands on a rectangular base, which is inscribed in Latin on two
of its sides.
The obelisk and the fountain stand in the
middle of the square, dominating the surrounding space. It forms an axis together with
two smaller fountains. The fountain supporting the obelisk features four world rivers, represented by their male personifications,
namely the Plata, Ganges, Nile and Danube.
Details about its construction by Bernini
around 1650, as well as information about its
pre-modern pasts, both Roman and medieval,
are available in the Blue Guide to Rome and
other guidebooks—guidebooks that may be
concerned with monuments and the past, or
more concerned with the culinary, shopping
and entertainment offerings of the piazza and
its surrounds (e.g. Fodor’s or the Rough Guide),
or many that aim at single-volume utility.
Champollion and the Decipherment (1821–24)
Not even the Blue Guide provides a translation of the hieroglyphic inscription (for
which, see Erman 1917: 4-10, 18-28). It was
only after 1822 that the obelisk became readable in the modern sense, during the decipherment of hieroglyphics. For the first time
it became clear that the inscriptions on its
flanks date back to the reign of the emperor
Domitian (81–96 AD) and no further. This
episode in the life of the obelisk applies to the
study of the object rather than to a change of
its physical status.
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195
Among the many scholars who had studied
Egyptian writing, it was the work of JeanFrançois Champollion (1790–1832) that
proved decisive. Following Napoleon’s expedition there was a profusion of scholarship on
Egypt within the borders of France and
beyond; this included the detailed study of the
Egyptian languages (Said 1978: 80-88). Foremost among the scholars, from the point of
view of hieroglyphics, was Sylvestre de Sacy
(1758–1838), professor of Oriental languages
in Paris at the time of the Revolution. Sacy’s
work, together with that of the Swede J.D.
Åkerblad and the Englishman Thomas Young,
went a long way towards questioning the then
still widespread notion that hieroglyphs represented a ‘natural’ language, based purely on
ideograms. Champollion’s contribution was to
develop this hypothesis further, culminating
with the decipherment (Pope 1999: 68-84). In
this process, as we shall see, the Piazza Navona
played a small but discernible part.
Growing up in Figeac in southern France,
Jean-François took early to the study of western Asian languages, having mastered Greek
and Latin at a young age. His early work
on Egypt received detailed expression in his
L’Egypte sous les Pharaons (1814). Though this
reveals nothing of the linguistic insights that
later led to the decipherment, it did indicate
his general mastery of Egyptian antiquities.
The work is a detailed topography of Egypt, in
which he links contemporary sites and their
Arabic names with those in ancient Greek,
Latin and Coptic texts.
Champollion’s subsequent researches on the
Egyptian languages were sustained by the
stream of epigraphic texts, copies of which
were still coming to France from Egypt in the
aftermath of Napoleon’s invasion. He paid particular attention to texts written in different
scripts, but which contained identical illustrations—suggesting that they were in fact the
same text in different scripts. Close comparison led him to the conclusion that ancient
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Egyptian epigraphy produced as many as four
different systems of writing: hieroglyphics
proper, cursive or linear hieroglyphics, hieratic
and demotic. Initially, Champollion believed
that the hieratic and demotic scripts were
ideographic (1821–22), but later he changed
his view. At the same time, he worked on the
premise that the hieroglyphic script is phonetic in character rather than ideographic. He
concluded, after several years’ study of putative
homophones, that the phonetic character of
hieroglyphics was not ancillary but central. His
examination of Roman and Greek proper
names showed that phonetic and ideographic
signs were used together. This realization,
more than anything, was crucial to the decipherment and was applied not only to proper
names but later also to other words. Champollion did not initially realize the implications of
his conclusions regarding the proper names.
His Précis du système hieroglyphique (1827–28)
conveys a lengthy exposition of his findings, in
some 400 pages. Beyond this, much of his work
was published posthumously by his elder
brother Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac.
It was the obelisk at Kingston Lacy in
Dorset, England, that provided the younger
Champollion with the crucial text against
which to read the Rosetta Stone. The important overlap came in the name of Ptolemy,
which occurs six times within six cartouches
(oval shapes) on the Rosetta Stone. Now, the
Bankes obelisk had come from the island of
Philae to the private estate of Sir William
Bankes, acquired with the help of the adventurer and large-scale pillager, Giovanni Battista Belzoni (1778–1823, on whose exploits,
see Fagan 1975: 214-22). That obelisk also
offered the name of Cleopatra for comparison.
It would be stretching a point to suggest
that the Piazza Navona obelisk was central to
the decipherment. Rather, its biography
intersected with the labours of Champollion
and others: the obelisk presented the personal
names of Domitian and those of ‘his father
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
Vespasian’ and ‘his brother Titus’—the possessive adjectives adding important evidence, as
Champollion shows in the fourth chapter of
his Précis (1827–28: 78). The use of this
inscription by Champollion reflects not so
much the nature of the obelisk but the
scarcity of texts, certainly up to the time of
Napoleon’s expedition and even after.
When Champollion died in 1832 at the age
of 42, his grave in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, was marked by a tombstone in the
shape of an obelisk. This is in a sense unremarkable, given the frequent use of obelisks to
mark graves in the 19th century and before.
But the form is significant here in view of the
role of obelisks—more substantially that at
Kingston Lacy, but more visibly that at Piazza
Navona—in his life’s work, the study of hieroglyphics.
Zoega: Antiquarianism to Archaeology (1797)
Champollion’s study of the inscription on the
obelisk was part of a lengthy scholarly tradition. The appearance in 1797 of a volume
nominally devoted to the obelisks of Rome
constitutes the next landmark as we examine
this tradition. The Piazza Navona obelisk
receives only brief discussion (1797: 74-75).
Despite its title, De origine et usu obeliscorum
was not devoted narrowly to obelisks, but
more generally to Egyptian antiquities and to
the study of hieroglyphics. Central to the present discussion is the extent to which Zoega’s
scholarly work set obelisks in a context of
archaeology generally, and Egyptology particularly (Iversen 1993: 117-21).
Georg Zoega was born in 1755 in the town
of Dahler in Jutland, Denmark, to a Protestant
family of Italian origin. At an early age he
began the study of Greek, Latin and Hebrew,
first in his home town, later at Altona and
finally at the university of Göttingen under the
distinguished classicist C.G. Heyne (1729–
1812). After two brief visits to Rome (in 1776
and 1780) he moved to the city in 1780, never
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to leave again for the remaining 26 years of his
life.
Zoega’s first significant work with antiquities involved cataloging the royal numismatic
collection in Copenhagen, which appeared
between July 1781 and May 1782. But his
major works were the ones completed during
his Roman sojourn. First came a catalogue of
Egyptian coins in the possession of the cardinal Borgia (1787), followed ten years later by
the work on obelisks. Most famous, however,
is his two-volume work on Roman reliefs,
published as Li bassirilievi di Roma (1808). The
last was a catalogue of Coptic manuscripts in
Borgian hands (1810).
Zoega gave a sounder scholarly framework
to the study of Roman art, beyond the narrower enthusiasms evidenced by many of his
predecessors (see Wilamowitz-Moellendorff
1982: 101-102; Pfeiffer 1976: 179). Certainly
his descriptions of ancient artifacts read more
like modern scholarship than do those of
Winckelmann, with their overwhelmingly
aesthetic vision of classical antiquity. Three
features of Zoega’s work, and indeed of De origine et usu obeliscorum, mark him out from his
contemporaries: his insistence on systematic
typology in the study of ancient artifacts, the
importance of using Greek and Latin texts in
that exercise, and finally a holistic approach to
the study of ancient societies. In this third
respect, particularly, he is an important figure
in what was soon to be known as Altertumswissenschaft, to use a term coined by another
of Heyne’s pupils, F.A. Wolf (1759–1824). It is
characteristic of Zoega’s sober approach that
he even denied that the shape of the pyramids
embodied any esoteric secrets.
The significance of all this for the Piazza
Navona obelisk lies in the new scholarly contexts it acquired: within the antiquities of
Rome, particularly its Egyptian antiquities,
and more generally in scholarship that
involved texts alongside artifacts. In more personal terms, the book was part of Zoega’s fasci© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
197
nation with Rome, even a sense of personal
destiny linked to the city. In particular, Zoega’s
researches destabilized the idea that hieroglyphs were a natural language: this conclusion
proceeded, among others, from his hypothesis
that a combination of signs (not merely a single sign) was required to represent a single
object. Zoega’s catalogue of separate signs on
the obelisks reached 270 in number; even
adding other signs from other inscriptions
housed in the European museums, such a number could not embrace all objects represented
in the Egyptian language, he assumed (Pope
1999: 57-58). In light of his work, Egyptian
hieroglyphics took on a very different aspect to
that of 150 years earlier.
Pope Innocent X, Bernini, Kircher: A Fountain
and a Treatise (1650–52)
The next episode to consider in the life of the
obelisk is a complex one involving not only
its study, but also modifications to its physical
form and location. It takes us not quite as far
as the papacy of Sixtus V (1585–90). Though
merely five years in duration, that papacy saw
the moving of no fewer than five obelisks:
those he had moved to the squares of San
Pietro, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Giovanni
Laterano, the Piazza del Esquilino and the
Piazza del Popolo (Grafton 2002). Sixtus was
made aware, by the scholar Michele Mercati
if not earlier, of the broken obelisk lying in
what was then known as the Circus of Caracalla (namely the Circus of Maxentius), but
by the time of his death the pope had taken
no steps to excavate it (Mercati 1981 [1589]:
233). This task was to wait more than half a
century for Innocent X; it was to involve two
of the most colourful characters of Baroque
Rome: Bernini and Kircher.
Piazza Navona had been the site of Innocent’s mansion while still a cardinal; directly
after his enthronement he set about adding
luster to his residence, and also to the piazza as
a whole. It had long connections with the
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Pamphili family, to which Innocent belonged.
To this end, Innocent had two fountains built;
soon afterwards, in 1647, he decided to
replace the unglamorous horse-pond at its
center with a third fountain, this one on a
monumental scale. Several prominent architects were invited to submit proposals for this
fountain; that by Francesco Borromini was
successful. Excluded from these architects was
Bernini, who at the time was out of favor at
the papal court, linked as he was with Innocent’s despised Barberini predecessor, Urban
VIII (1623–44).
Though the commission to build the fountain had already gone Borromini’s way,
Bernini’s elaborate design prevailed by underhand means. It caught Innocent’s attention
through the intervention of the pope’s advisor, Prince Nicolò Ludovisi, and the prince’s
mother-in-law, Donna Olympia Maidalchini.
As part of a well-planned ruse, Innocent
caught sight of and became fascinated with a
model of the fountain during a visit to
Olympia’s palace at Piazza Navona on 25
March 1647. He soon retracted his earlier
commission to Borromini in favor of Bernini.
Borromini was nonetheless to design the
façade to Sant’ Agnese, immediately adjacent
to the fountain. (This reached completion in
1657, and hence postdates the fountain by six
years or more—a sequence of events that
belies the popular story that the river Nile’s
gesture of shock represents Bernini’s response
to Borromini’s façade of that church.)
Meanwhile, the Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher supervised the process of exhuming the obelisk from the Circus of Romulus,
which took place under the direction of the
archbishop of Ravenna, Lucas Torregiano.
Before it was transported, Innocent inspected
the excavated obelisk for himself. The process
was a difficult one, leaving some pieces of the
obelisk missing. Most fragments eventually
came to light, but several were too fractured
to be reincorporated into the broken obelisk.
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
Some of the fragments were in any case misplaced, after being copied. (The accuracy of
this copying of the hieroglyphs continues to
pose difficulties for the modern study of the
obelisk, in cases where only the copy and not
the original fragment remains.)
By the middle of 1648 the two parts of the
project were in their advanced stages: the
foundations of the new fountain were nearly
complete, and the obelisk was ready to be
transported across the city. It was not until
August 1649 that the last fragment of the
obelisk was installed, the end of an exacting
process. Meanwhile, work on the fountain’s
stonework was to continue a further two years.
In the late spring of 1651 Latin inscriptions
were added above the stone base.
Innocent made sure that the inscriptions
commemorated his act of beneficence. He
eschewed the crosses and epigraphic language
that made Sixtus’ four obelisks into objects of
divine reverence, choosing instead to make
this obelisk a secular monument to himself
and his family. No attempt was made to align
the obelisk with Sant’ Agnese, or to mention
that church in the inscription.
This obelisk was the subject of Kircher’s
treatise Obeliscus Pamphilius, published at
Rome in 1650 (Figure 2). Subsequently, much
of his voluminous Egyptological work ostensibly on obelisks, for example the multi-volume
Oedipus Aegyptiacus (1652–54) and Obelisci
Aegyptiaci (1666), constitutes expansion and
development of the semiotic theories expounded in Obeliscus Pamphilius. For Kircher,
the obelisks and their hieroglyphic inscriptions were the source of hermetic wisdom
beyond conventional historical time, namely
prisca sapientia. This timeless divine wisdom
expressed in the hieroglyphs was, for Kircher,
continuous with Christian revelation. ‘His
interest in Egyptology was… based on the
conviction that the Egyptians were the first to
have understood [the] fundamental truth [of
harmonious cosmic unity], over which the
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Figure 2. Engraving of the Piazza Navona obelisk and its hieroglyphic inscriptions (Kircher 1650).
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
199
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whole of their religion and their philosophy
had been formed’ (Iversen 1993: 95; cf. Eco
1995: 156-57). In such work Kircher drew
heavily on, and considerably developed, ideas
expressed in ancient texts: thus, for example,
the ancient Greek authors Herodotus, Plato,
Diodorus and Plutarch all had much to say
about the antiquity of Egypt, its monuments
and its religious specialists (Vasunia 2001). In
the case of one philosopher, the Egyptianborn Plotinus (c. 205–69 AD), there are special
claims for the ‘natural’ quality of the hieroglyphic script, constituting a system of signification that linked it directly to reality, and not
requiring acts of interpretation (Enneads
5.8.6). The translation of Plotinus into Latin
by Marsilio Ficino in 1492 did much to spread
Platonic philosophy in Renaissance western
Europe and Kircher’s Egyptological studies
owe much to Renaissance Platonism (Yates
1964; Eco 1995: 144-45; Rowland 2000).
Kircher associated the obelisk not with
Domitian, but with Caracalla (211–17 AD,
1650: 83): the Circus of Maxentius was then
known as the Hippodrome of Caracalla. In
the chronological chart (chronologia) of
obelisks that Kircher includes immediately
after the dedication of Obeliscus Pamphilius,
there is in fact no reference to Domitian. The
same is true of the chronological section in
his later work, Obelisci Aegyptiaci (1666).
Bernini’s fountain was to prove one of his
sculptural masterpieces. Its virtuoso design
placed the obelisk amidst the four world rivers.
The river-gods recoil from the obelisk as if in
awe. The most daring part of Bernini’s design
was to elevate the obelisk by some six metres
above ground level (and a further distance
counting the elevation of the overall structure), thus making it possible for a viewer to
look from one side of the grotto to the other.
The effect is to give the impression that the
obelisk is suspended in the air. Like his statue
of Apollo and Daphne, where the laurel
branches counterweigh Apollo’s considerable
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
train, Bernini is here experimenting with balance, using a design that ostensibly defies gravity. Bernini’s working sketches, which include
one that made Hercules hold the obelisk at an
angle, make it clear that virtuosity was part of
his thinking (Schama 1995: 289-306).
Maxentius and the Memory of Romulus (311–
12 AD)
The sojourn of the obelisk at the location
from which Innocent X had it excavated was
in itself something of a feat. The emperor
Maxentius had it moved from within the city
walls to the Circus of Romulus, his new public complex on the Via Appia. This Circus
was built in order to memorialize his son,
Valerius Romulus, who died in 309 (Jones et
al. 1971: I 571). Romulus’ death put paid to
any dynastic ambitions Maxentius might
have harbored.
Maxentius’ action should be seen in light of
the volatile politics and shifting constellations that followed on the retirement of Diocletian in 305 AD (Barnes 1981: 29-43; 1982:
12-14, 34-35). Diocletian’s invention of the
Tetrarchy ultimately backfired—that is, his
policy of dividing up the eastern and western
parts of the empire, under one senior and one
junior emperor each, known as Augustus and
Caesar respectively. The rivalry between
claimants to supreme command had in fact
magnified since Diocletian’s time, whereas
the division of the imperial office was
intended to avoid such competition. The
youthful Maxentius had neither the consulship nor a military command on which to
stake his claim. His own father Maximian was
at one point among his rivals.
And so a need for support within the city of
Rome appears to be the spur for Maxentius’
decision to build the circus and move the
obelisk. For it was in Britain that his rival Constantine was proclaimed emperor by the army.
Maxentius’ own elevation to imperial office on
28 October 306 was an act of retaliation on the
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part of the city-based praetorian guard, with
the support of the urban plebs and presumably
also the senate. It was only in the summer of
307 that Maxentius began to use the title
Augustus. Once having assumed the imperial
title, Maxentius’ policy of religious toleration
was one method by which he continued to
court popular support; another was an active
building program in the city. He was intensely
aware of his public image (Cullhed 1984).
But all was to no avail: his resources were
too limited, the demands on them too great for
him to withstand the pressures that Constantine and others brought to bear. He was killed
at the battle of the Milvian Bridge on 27 October 312, when Constantine entered the city of
Rome, along with his ally Maximin Daia. The
posthumous reputation of Maxentius as a
tyrant is very much the product of Constantinian propaganda and one that largely continues to prevail (Barnes 1981: 37). The battle
of the Milvian Bridge is well known in ecclesiastical history beginning with Eusebius, and in
monumental form on the triumphal Arch of
Constantine, built in 315 to commemorate it.
Rome under Maxentius was no longer the
center of power it had been in the age of
Augustus, that earlier, paradigmatic monarch
and mover of obelisks (Bowersock 1990). The
Circus of Romulus and Maxentius’ other public works in the city may be seen in this light as
a kind of rearguard action: they reveal the need
to assert power within the city and thus win
popular urban support and even legitimacy.
Domitian the Pharaoh (81–96 AD)
Champollion’s decipherment of hieroglyphics
in 1822 revealed the name of an earlier
emperor, Domitian (Grenier 1987). This came
as a surprise for the obvious reason that it is
the name of a Roman emperor rather than an
Egyptian pharaoh. Yet, to describe this earliest
phase in the life of the obelisk is to reveal the
Egyptianizing habit of Domitian, what we
might almost call his self-presentation as a
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pharaoh. It is in the city of Rome that discussion of this phenomenon will begin.
Among Domitian’s many building projects
two will concern us here, both located on the
Campus Martius: his Stadium and his temple
to Isis (Iseum Campense, on which see Lembke
1994). Firstly, the Stadium was the site at
which the obelisk has stood subsequently,
since 1650. In Domitian’s time it could seat
15,000 spectators (Suetonius, Domitian 5;
Eutropius 7.23) and measured all of 250 m in
length. It was located on the site of the Piazza
Navona, which today retains the size and
shape of the original. In fact, the Italian name
Navona derives from the Latin agonalis, referring to the athletic competitions it hosted.
Nonetheless, Domitian’s ambitious building
plans for the city get short shrift from his biographer Suetonius, who mentions Domitian’s
massive palace complex merely in passing.
Such neglect may stem from Suetonius’ negative attitude to his subject. In fact, such was
the scale of Domitian’s building policy that we
can compare the goal attributed to his successor, Trajan: to make Rome a ‘habitation worthy of a people that had conquered [foreign]
nations’, digna populo uictore gentium sedes
(Pliny the Younger, Panegyricus 51.3).
Secondly, the Iseum built by Domitian was
its likely first location (Roullet 1972: 72;
though Grenier 1997: 357 argues instead for
an original location on the Quirinal, cf.
Richardson 1992: 275). This complex is today
more familiar from a rich cache of artifacts
that appears to have originated there, many of
which now reside in the Egyptian Museum of
the Vatican and in the Capitoline Museums.
Among them are two crouching lions of black
granite (Roullet 1972: 130-31 with figs. 27478). This temple complex of Isis and Serapis
now lies underneath one side of Santa Maria
sopra Minerva (Coarelli 1997: 107-109). It is
part of a massive building program following
the fire of 80 AD. Presumably this temple
complex was the original site of the Piazza
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Navona obelisk, as well as of three others,
namely those now at the Pantheon, the Piazza
della Minerva and the Viale delle Terme di
Diocleziano.
The link between the Piazza Navona obelisk
and Domitian’s cult-center of Isis is not so
much proven as assumed to be probable (cf.
Marucchi 1917: 120). Certainly, whatever the
topographic questions that remain, the Domitianic origins of the obelisk are established
beyond doubt by the inscription, and the
Iseum Campense may have been its original
location. But nonetheless, this is circumstantial evidence and nothing more conclusive.
Domitian’s decision to build the Iseum on
the Campus Martius is in keeping with his
concern for Isis, which is variously attested
(Takács 1995: 98-104). It had considerable
precedent, especially from the reign of Augustus. Already by the late second century BC,
cult-centers to Alexandrian divinities had
arisen at Puteoli and more widely in Campania, for example, Herculaneum and Pompeii
(Tran Tam Tinh 1964). The cult of Isis at
Rome underwent various changing degrees of
enthusiasm, but from the time of Gaius
(Caligula, 37–41 AD) was permanently established and received imperial support (Roullet
1972: 1-5; Arslan 1997). Despite substantial
archaeological evidence for Domitian’s Egyptomania, this is a topic on which Suetonius’
biography of him provides few clues (for one
brief anecdote involving priests of Isis, see
Domitian 2). The picture of his Egyptianizing
tastes is complicated by a brief glance at his
building initiatives elsewhere. Whereas the
Circus of Romulus is a short distance beyond
the walls of Rome, it is farther down the
Appian Way that we see evidence of Domitian’s Egyptian tastes, namely in the city of
Benevento. This city shows very considerable
evidence for Italian interest in religions from
Egypt, particularly the worship of Isis, dating
back to the first century BC. According to
archaeological remains, Domitian appears to
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
have put up two obelisks in Benevento, one of
which stands today in Piazza Papiniano, the
other now in fragmentary remains housed in
the Museo del Sannio. The standing obelisk,
some 2.75 m in height, carries cartouches with
the name of Domitian (Müller 1969).
Among the artifacts in the Museo del Sannio are a statue head and a statue, both of
which have been identified with Domitian. If
these identifications are correct, they certainly give a striking image of the emperor as
pharaoh—that is, on the elements by which
an Egyptian king would have presented himself. Against this background, Domitian’s
decision to inscribe his own name on the
Piazza Navona obelisk points to a pharaonic
aspect of his imperial identity—the appropriation of Egyptian royal tradition to articulate
his own power, at Rome just as he also did
elsewhere in Italy (Benevento) and in Egypt
itself. If the historical circumstances of
empire have often been analyzed in terms of
cultural encounter, then Domitian’s assumption or appropriation of an Egyptian identity
is fascinating: it occurs not only in Egypt but
in Italy and even in Rome, even though its
metropolitan articulation, in the form of his
hieroglyphic inscription, does not seem to
have been readily understood by contemporary viewers, nor indeed to later ones up to
the time of Champollion and even beyond.
Part 2: Themes from a Life
The foregoing narrative is a basis for the more
detailed consideration of particular topics.
These will begin with a reflection on the narrative itself before proceeding to the related
questions of monumentality, temporality and
meaning.
Narrative
To begin with the most obvious: the foregoing
narrative is divided into segments, arranged in
reverse chronological order. Whereas the biog-
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raphy of objects is by now a familiar aspect of
archaeology and anthropology (Gosden and
Marshall 1999; cf. Kopytoff 1986; Appadurai
1986), such biographies usually proceed in
diachronic fashion, if indeed they are spelled
out rather than merely alluded to.
To take some recent instances in Classical
archaeology, this approach has been used to
emphasize the role of objects in early Greek
society (Langdon 2001), and to point to the
presence in Athens of resident aliens at an earlier period than had been supposed (Papadopoulos and Smithson 2002; cf. also Whitley
2002). The biographical conceit is apposite in
the case of obelisks both because they are subject to being moved and because their
integrity—that is, avoidance of breakage—is
crucial. Indeed, narrative per se does not play
an important part in the landmark collection
of essays on the biography of objects (Appadurai 1986). Here, the reversal of the usual narrative pattern is part of an experiment in
method. In the case of this obelisk, such an
approach brings to light various aspects of its
material existence, and in the process defamiliarizes the standard narrative of objects.
On the face of it, obelisks qualify handsomely to be considered commodities, particularly in the special, luxurious ‘register’ of
consumption. Such luxury goods should not be
seen in contrast to everyday necessities, but as
‘goods whose principal use is rhetorical and
social, goods that are simply incarnated signs.
The necessity to which they respond is fundamentally political’ (Appadurai 1986: 38). The
narrative above easily shows the Piazza
Navona obelisk to be an ‘incarnated sign’,
whose manipulations respond to ‘fundamentally political’ needs. Indeed, obelisks fulfill all
the criteria of luxury goods: restricted access
and complex acquisition (Figure 3), which
guarantee their scarcity; ‘semiotic virtuosity,
that is, the capacity to signal fairly complex
social messages’; they require specialized
knowledge for their ‘appropriate’ consump© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
203
tion; and they are linked to a high degree with
particular persons (Appadurai 1986: 38). But
equally, it must be emphasized, obelisks are
commodities not by destination, as in the classic definition of Marx, for whom commodities
are objects intended for exchange; rather, they
may be considered commodities by metamorphosis, in that their physical appropriation is
secondary to their original use in pharaonic
Egypt (Appadurai 1986: 16).
To reverse the order of the narrative is to give
the social processes of appropriation priority
over original intentions—metamorphosis over
destination, in Appadurai’s terms. In this case,
the Piazza Navona obelisk does not have a
pharaonic pedigree, in the manner of the Lateran obelisk, for example (Roullet 1972: 7071). The unorthodox direction of the current
narrative defaces such a distinction by giving
greater prominence to similarities exhibited
within the contemporary or modern world, involving popes and tourists, than to differences
in antiquity, involving emperors and pharaohs.
It lends greater value to the present as a point
of a departure—from which explorations can
be made into distant times, and indeed places;
it makes the origin of the artifact seem less like
the moment at which its transcendent meaning is determined for all time. Domitian’s act of
inscribing thus emerges in this account as one
moment among many, rather than the making
of a puzzle that various later people tried to
solve, as it might otherwise have seemed in a
more conventional rendition. This is, admittedly, a difference of emphasis rather than in
absolute terms. But, in preferring the counterdiachronic over the diachronic, the narrative
replicates the direction of contemporary inquiry into its past, rather than the shape of its
life. This choice may be taken as a response to
Edward Said’s comment that ‘beginning implies return and repetition rather than simple
linear progression’ (1975: xiii).
One result of the biographical approach is to
provide a variety of contexts for the obelisk,
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Figure 3. Engravings showing the transport of two obelisks from Egypt to Italy (Kircher 1650: 90).
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
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both its physical being and interpretations of it.
Another is to emphasize the uniqueness of the
obelisk, that is to say, that the obelisk stands as
one object on its own. It is thus a highly ‘singular’ object, apparently resistant to exchange
or duplication (to use, in an adapted context, a
term from Kopytoff 1986: 68). In this respect,
the obelisks at Rome differ from their original
contexts in pharaonic Egypt. It is clear that in
Egypt obelisks were usually erected in pairs,
outside temples, whereas in Rome (and subsequently other major capital cities, including
Constantinople, Paris, Munich, London and
New York) they were imported and erected on
an individual basis (Iversen 1968; 1972). Their
Roman use at the centers of public spaces usually involves individuals rather than pairs, and
the same is true of their placing in that city’s
piazzas since the Renaissance. The one exception may be the pair erected in front of the
Mausoleum of Augustus (Iversen 1968: 256-67;
Grenier 1997: 359). While many accounts of
obelisks examine the kinds of use to which they
were put, the biographic approach most readily
brings out particular obelisks on an individual
basis. It also stresses their unitary nature, which
we can contrast, for example, with other artifacts that have been broken up. One example
is the Paris-Munich relief, a Roman sarcophagus from the late Republic whose thematically
different parts now reside in two different
museums.
The segments constituting the narrative correspond to periods, and their compartmentalization is more evident than would usually be
the case. (For the purposes of this analysis I
prefer the term ‘segment’ to the very widely
used ‘fragment’, to convey much the same
idea, but without as pointed a connotation of
breakage.) In this sense they reveal a specific
morphology of the narrative. The segmentary
periods result from known episodes in the life
of the Piazza Navona obelisk. In the case of
another obelisk a different periodization would
emerge. For example, the obelisk now at the
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Piazza San Pietro in the Vatican had a lengthy
spell in pharaonic Egypt (Roullet 1972: 6769), something apparently unmatched by the
much less ancient Piazza Navona obelisk. Further, this does not match other major obelisks
of the city in that it was not part of Pope
Nicholas V’s grand plan for Rome (1447–55),
nor was it part of the considerable urban
designing of Pope Sixtus V and Domenico
Fontana.
A crystallization of specific moments in the
life of the obelisk emerges from the segmentary structure of the narrative. In each case,
human intervention has specific effects on its
existence, bringing about what are essentially
changes in its status. In particular, the erection of the obelisk by Domitian and the moving of it by Maxentius and Innocent are the
results of human agency. What these segments do not specifically reveal is the ongoing
existence of the obelisks. While such a point
might seem sophistic, it is worth insisting
upon it because this ongoing existence seems
central to its role as a monument. This
longevity is something that does not emerge
explicitly from narratives, though it is sometimes the theme of artistic evocations, such as
Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’ or Du Pérac’s 16thcentury engraving of the Circus of Maxentius
(1575: folio 40). In both cases, we may note,
these are ruined, truly fragmented objects.
Ruined or whole, what we witness here is a
phenomenon we can call quiddity—the brute
fact of existence, something that has elsewhere been labeled ‘thingness’ (Thomas
1996: 79). Any overall evaluation of the lives
of obelisks must balance this fact of survival
with the episodes of change, irregular and
haphazard episodes at that.
Finally, we return to the reversal of chronological ordering: what, if anything, does it
achieve? To disrupt the conventional ordering of academic discourse is a well-known tactic, especially when the resultant critique of
methodology has a reflexive element (e.g.
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Hodder 1989). In this case, the reversed narrative accentuates, firstly, the segmentary
quality of the biography of objects. Episodes
are less liable to blend with each other by this
approach. This is true even though these
episodes are not always clearly divisible, as we
see for example in the link between the decipherment and Domitian’s initial epigraphic
act. It is obvious that this episodic quality is,
in part, the result of surviving textual records
associated with the obelisk. Secondly, this
approach indicates where the present inquiry
starts by beginning with its most recent history as a window into the more distant past.
Beyond that chronological point of departure
it even suggests a point of view. A more conventional alternative might begin with the
most distant past possible, giving it a narrative prominence that its greater degree of
obscurity does not necessarily merit. One
danger implicit in a more conventional
choice of beginning is that it would have naturalized the narrative beginning as an origin,
rather than revealing the degree to which any
narrative beginning is the result of choice
(Said 1975). Thirdly, the reversal is an initial
gesture towards the destabilizing of linear narrative tout court. Now, the post hoc, ergo
propter hoc fallacy is a feature of many narratives; that is, the implication that when X
happened after Y, it happened because of Y. In
some cases, the connection between X and Y
may indeed be causal (e.g. Kircher’s use of
Pliny and other ancient texts to describe the
obelisk), but the problem comes when causation is speciously implied. It would be wrong
to assume, for example, that the tourist’s
appreciation of the obelisk is necessarily
determined by Kircher, Zoega and Champollion—at least any more than it is today part of
a single piazza, offering any visitor an apparent spatial unity. In this sense, time does not
accumulate. Rather, the contemporary tourist
is one viewer among many, considered over
time. One many extrapolate, further, that the
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
tourist is merely one viewer among many in
the present day, and not necessarily representative of his or her time. In the present
account, we have circumvented the fallacy by
choosing to reverse the direction of the narrative. We might even point to a paradox
here: a key feature of any interpretation of the
obelisk is its long-term existence, its quiddity,
which focuses on a state and is even resistant
to narrative; on the other hand, the narrative
of its existence is expressed in segmentary
episodes, implying change over time. This is a
contradiction, within the physical being of
the obelisk, between continuity and change.
The unorthodox approach here will have
served a purpose if it has shown both the possibilities and especially the limitations of the
biography of objects.
Monumentality and Time
Another feature of the Piazza Navona obelisk
seems obvious from a modern point of view,
but is striking when compared with the history
of medieval and early modern antiquarianism,
namely its verticality. In the most immediate
sense, the fact that an ancient object today
stands upright is the issue at stake. In the case
of the obelisk, this is because of the building
program of Pope Innocent, without whose initiative it might have remained, for some time
at least, buried and fragmented at the Circus
of Maxentius. At many archaeological sites,
the choice of whether to rebuild a fallen structure or whether to leave it lying brings the
interests of scholars into conflict with those of
tourists (cf. Zanker 1998: 1-2). Tastes have
changed over time, and today there is greater
hesitancy to reconstruct than there was, say,
around the turn of the previous century, when
Sir Arthur Evans excavated at Knossos on
Crete. The Piazza Navona obelisk has been
standing since the 17th century, and thus is
not subject to exactly the same considerations.
To focus on the verticality of obelisks is to
give them a place between artifact and archi-
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tecture. On the one hand, the most obvious
comparanda for obelisks, in terms of their vertical aspect, are columns that are part of buildings. Or not part of buildings, to take the case
of the so-called Pillar of Pompey in Alexandria: the frontispiece to the Déscription de
l’Egypte is a reminder that obelisk and column
are part of the same grammar of public architecture. In a few cases, the destruction of the
building complex has left behind individual
columns—for example, the three Corinthian
pillars supporting part of the architrave of
Tiberius’ temple of Castor and Pollux (dedicated 6 AD) in the Forum Romanum. Sometimes columns stand because of restoration
programs. Clearly, therefore, the obelisks merit
architectural comparison to a limited degree
only. On the other hand, they are artifacts and
commodities, something that emerges most
obviously from the fact of their transportation.
Thus they are, or can be in practice, mobile in
ways that architectural structures are not,
except in a handful of rare instances. The
Elgin marbles are perhaps a comparable case,
but one that merely instances the moving of
artifacts that are detachable from their original structures. Larger-scale instances such as
the Pergamon altar in Berlin may be considered exceptions that prove the rule; they are in
any case the result of 19th-century industrialage technology. In each such case of mobility,
there arise questions of legitimate ownership.
In the case of antiquities at Rome, this has
been an issue more with the so-called Axumite obelisk, which has been at the center of
dispute between Ethiopia and Italy since the
end of World War II. Brought to the Piazza
della Porta Capena in 1937 at Mussolini’s
behest, this fourth-century artifact sustained
severe damage during a storm in mid-2002,
after which its fragile state merely intensified
debate (Corriere della Serra 2002). In each of
the cases mentioned, there is a significant
power differential between the source of the
object and the locus of its appropriation. In
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this sense it is as well to invoke an important
study of the ‘entangled objects’ involved in
colonial encounters of the Pacific (Thomas
1991), itself taking inspiration from Edward
Said’s concept of Orientialism (Said 1978).
There is also a more abstract sense in which
the verticality of the obelisk relates to temporality: we might say that an obelisk provides a
kind of cross-section of time. It provides an
entrée into the periods covered on the basis of
historical accident, rather than any systematic
coverage of successive periods of historical
time. The very idea of a cross-section is a spatial metaphor and comes easily from the foregoing discussion of biographical narrative. On
this note we must consider monumental time,
a concept that has already received detailed
study with regard to the classical Greek world
(Foxhall 1995).
It is thus with time in mind that we can pose
the question: What are the features that make
the obelisk a monument? What are the temporalities in which it is implicated? The first
question is easily addressed in relation to the
usual, etymological definition of a monument,
namely as a spur to memory. The classic expression of this is Horace’s well-known poem,
Exegi monumentum aere perennius (‘I have produced a monument more lasting than bronze’,
Odes 3.30.1). Here Horace writes about his
poetic creation as the monumentum, using the
more material kinds of monumentum (e.g.
bronze, the pyramids) as the referent of a
metaphor. The material nature of a monument emerges here, and so does the phenomenon of intentionality: a monument by this
account exists only once someone has invested it with the power to evoke the past, and
intentionally so. By this reckoning Horace’s
claim, coming as a seal (sphragis) at the end of
his collection, is a performative speech-act:
the collection becomes a monumentum by virtue of Horace’s explicitly stated intention to
that effect. Horace’s literary monumentum is
not a material object in the first instance, but
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is metaphorically defined with reference to the
more usual, tangible kind. His intentionality
underlies the extended simile of poetry with
object; one might say that Horace’s use of
metaphor serves to connect poetry-as-performance with monumental quiddity.
It is this sense of the monumental, more
than anything, that imbued Egypt, in ancient
Greek and Roman minds, with a sense of
‘strange time’, to adapt an evocative term from
Hughes (1995: 1). By this I mean a mystical
sense of time as distant, even irretrievable,
antiquity. As we have seen with regard to Plotinus and other ancient authors, this is something often connected with Egypt (cf. Fowden
1993: 14-16; Vasunia 2001: 110-35). Monuments were thus central to the exotic fantasy
of Egypt as a land of ancient wisdom.
The most obvious sense of monumental
time, then, is the linear one pointing infinitely
towards the antiquity of Egypt. But in the case
of another obelisk there is a further temporality as well, a cyclical one. When Augustus
erected an obelisk in the Campus Martius, its
placing was designed to make it an instrument
of time-reckoning, a kind of sundial (gnomon:
Grenier 1997: 355-56; cf. Bowersock 1990).
As Pliny the Elder remarks, its alignment was
such that this did not remain accurate for long:
it had been inaccurate for 30 years already,
either because it had sunk in the soft soil or
else because of the changing alignment of the
heavenly bodies (Natural History 36.73). Its
present location at the Piazza di Montecitorio,
determined by Pope Pius VI in 1792, places it
amidst markings that recreate its imperial
Roman role as a sundial.
There is a coexistence of two different temporalities here for ancient Romans: on the one
hand, the long-range, linear, strange time of
Egyptian antiquity, and on the other a scheme
of time-reckoning that articulates the cycle of
the year—one that is in keeping with Julius
Caesar’s calendrical reforms and thus more
modern. By virtue of this coexistence, the obel© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
isk represents a process whereby the strange
time of Egypt was modernized, assimilated into
the Rome of Augustus. It did so as a dominating place of memory (lieu de memoire), in the
familiar terms of Pierre Nora (e.g. 1989). Such
was its relation to the space around it that it
connoted, or even denoted, imperial power,
not least dominion over the Egyptians conquered when Octavian (later Augustus)
defeated the combined forces of Cleopatra VII
and his rival Marcus Antonius at the battle of
Actium in 31 BC. There is no overlooking the
politics of appropriation.
Finally, there is the matter of what Marx
called the economic base. It is worth remembering that, at the time obelisks were being
erected in Rome, Egypt was one of the city’s
major suppliers of grain. Whereas Rome of the
mid-Republic could still feed itself from the
Italian hinterland, it was by now so large that
it relied heavily on the grain-supply (annona)
from Egypt, and also from North Africa, Sardinia and Sicily (Rickman 1980: 67-71). This
superstructure of artistic expression is thematically related to its economic base, to use Marxian terms. The importation of obelisks thus
appears as a displacement of concerns with the
supply of wheat—a less imposing commodity
but one central to the everyday life of the city
of Rome. The grain supply of Rome is the subject of various kinds of artistic representation
including the Torlonia relief at Ostia Antica,
but none of these compares with an obelisk’s
monumental scale. What obelisks shared with
the corn supply is that both were commodities,
brought from Egypt to Rome, from province to
metropolis; the obelisks differ in the much
greater public visibility they enjoyed.
Meaning
How can we go about trying to understand the
meaning of the Piazza Navona obelisk? Should
we imagine that it emerges principally from
the artifact itself, or from the inscription on it?
Given the episodic nature of the narrative,
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this is something that we must approach with
regard to specific contexts, that is, different
communities of interpretation (cf. Davis 1997,
drawing on the reception theory of literature).
Our analysis proceeds from the assumption
that we are talking here about historically
specific social contexts for the creation of
meaning, rather than transcendent meanings
for all time, meanings that are supposedly
inherent in the object itself. It is as well here
to take note of a recent attempt to determine
the meaning of ancient Roman interests in
Egypt and its objects, in light of contexts that
are religious, decorative or political; but it may
be asked to what extent these contexts can be
separated from each other (Versluys 2002).
In the search for ancient meanings, there
are two ancient texts concerning obelisks that
are of great significance, the elder Pliny’s Natural History and Ammianus Marcellinus’ Res
gestae. Neither mentions this specific obelisk,
and indeed Pliny died two years before
Domitian came to power. But both provide
points of entry into the question of the meaning of obelisks in the Roman world. Pliny’s
account of marble in book 36 includes a section in which he considers obelisks, the product of a special kind of colored marble. In fact
marble provides the subject of that entire
book of Pliny’s encyclopedia. Obelisks, seen
in this context, are interesting as objects in
their own right, that is, as products made of
marble. Pliny’s larger context for the discussion of marble is thus marked by his overriding concern with luxury and the moral
problems it raises (cf. Beagon 1992: 190-94).
Pliny’s second sentence about obelisks
addresses the question of their meaning: radiorum eius [sc. solis] argumentum in effigie est, et
ita significatur nomine Aegyptio (‘it symbolically
represents the sun’s rays, and is named accordingly in Egyptian’, 36.64). From this we can
conclude that the issue of meaning did engage
Pliny, and that he considered this meaning to
be linked with the Egyptian language. For him
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there is a direct connection between name
and meaning, between signifier and signified.
This suggests an essentializing notion of
meaning, according to which an original (and
true) meaning of obelisks preexisted all possible later contexts. (As we shall see below,
when Ammianus interprets the inscription on
the Lateran obelisk he responds in different
ways to the idea that language is the key to its
meaning.)
Yet for Pliny, the marvel of obelisks emerges
as much from the circumstances of their transportation as from the objects themselves: this
is a major theme of his passage on obelisks.
Their journey to Rome required nothing short
of an engineering feat, merely one of many in
the lives of obelisks. There are in fact four different phases in Pliny’s narrative, which moves
between the various obelisks known to him
rather than focusing on any one in particular:
erection at Thebes (involving Ramses II and
his son); the move downstream to Alexandria
(Ptolemy II Philadephus); the move across the
Mediterranean to Italy (Augustus); and,
finally, recontextualization in the city of Rome
(again Augustus). Significantly, for Pliny, it
was a greater accomplishment (maius opus) to
move and erect than to quarry it (36.67). Thus
Pliny views obelisks both as product (that is, as
objects made from marble) and as process (its
transportation). There is a further clue to suggest that this sense of process was not limited
to Pliny’s thought. Both the emperors Augustus and Gaius made sure that the ships that
had transported obelisks were sunk and then
displayed in dry dock in order to celebrate the
fact of their transportation. Until they sank,
these ships became tourist attractions in their
own right, says Pliny (spectatis admodum
nauibus, ‘the ships having been much gazed
upon’, Natural History 36.70).
This is not the only obelisk to inspire fascination for its transportation. By way of a modern comparison for this sense of process, there
are the articles in Blackwood’s Magazine and
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the London Illustrated News, focusing even
more exclusively on the process whereby the
Cleopatra’s Needle obelisks traveled from
Alexandria to London and New York (Hayward 1978).
Closer to Pliny’s time, there is the base of the
Hippodrome obelisk in Istanbul (Bruns 1935;
Safran 1993). Moved by Constantius II, this
artifact is a monument not only to the monarchs linked with it, but in particular to the
process by which they were moved. The text
on the base begins, ‘I have been instructed to
heed the serene masters and to carry the palm
[of victory] from deceased despots—a hard
task, once upon a time’ (difficilis quondam,
dominis parere serenis | iussus et extinctis palmam
portare tyrannis). Difficilis here is a transferred
epithet: syntactically it refers to the obelisk
itself, but in context it obviously denotes the
effort involved in erecting or moving it. On
these lines, a new study of exceptional building
in the Roman world goes as far as to suggest
that ‘[s]ome of the value of ingenuity lay in the
temporary, constructional aspects that left no
obvious signs in the finished structure, but
were an essential part of the achievement and
wonder for contemporaries who watched the
process of construction’ (DeLaine 2002: 213).
To focus in this way on obelisks as process is
to follow the lead of a major new study of the
premodern Mediterranean, focusing as it does
on connectivities within Mediterranean space
(Horden and Purcell 2000: 123-72). This
examination of links between different parts
of the fragmented Mediterranean landscape—
underlined with a view to food production in
the first instance—pertains in surprising ways
to this very different kind of commodity. The
mobility of obelisks served as emblematic for
Rome’s power to move commodities within
the Mediterranean, particularly to its imperial
center. If the corn supply was the kind of commodity that kept the inhabitants of the city
alive, it was the obelisks that answered their
rulers’ desire and need to assert their power.
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
Ammianus shares with Pliny a concern for
the ways in which obelisks become part of a
process. But there is also a distinctive feature of
his account: the longevity of the obelisk
is at odds with the mortality of the humans
that interacted with it. In fact, in Ammianus’
account mortality and hubris together are
aspects of human interactions with the obelisks. Ammianus’ biography of the obelisk is
centered on a series of episodes, which involve
significant individuals. If his discussion of the
obelisk is itself a digression in his account of
Constantius’ reign, then there is further a subdigression on the original location of that obelisk. Thebes was where the Persian emperor
Cambyses nearly lost his life while besieging
the city in a freak accident involving his dagger; that is where the Roman governor Gallus
took his own life during the reign of Augustus.
While these two episodes seem merely to add
incidental detail to the description of Egyptian
Thebes, they underline a context of hubris.
It is thus clear that both of the two ancient
texts about obelisks are concerned with their
meaning; and that in both cases their meaning
is conceived through a moralizing lens.
Beyond that, what can we conclude about the
meaning of obelisks with regard to the emperor
Domitian himself? This is much harder to
answer, since we have no source directly composed by the emperor, or indeed one that is
sympathetic to him. But we do know that he
had a strong interest in things Egyptian, as
emerges not only from Rome but also from
smaller cities such as Benevento. We also
know that Domitian’s Egyptianizing interests
had considerable precedent, not least in the
emperor Augustus (Roullet 1972: 42-45).
The strangeness of his decision to have the
obelisk inscribed in hieroglyphics deserves
attention, especially when it goes against a
common-sensical notion of comprehensibility.
A recent survey of inscriptions under the
Roman empire reaches the following conclusion:
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Writing contributed to the monument
through its capacity to communicate things
that could not be portrayed in a single pictorial image, a sequence of offices held, for
example, a military as well as a civic career,
priesthoods as well as magistracies and perhaps a notable benefaction. It also contributed a name (Woolf 1996: 28).
This view is persuasive enough with regard
to the kinds of writing Woolf has in mind. But
the obelisk evidences a different kind of writing, one that did not communicate information in the same way as those discussed by the
author. Thus the quotation also serves to
emphasize the unusual character of Domitian’s
speech-act. This choice points to an emperor
that sought to present himself in the image of
one of his subject nations. The statuette of
him in pharaonic garb at Benevento bears this
out. While the principle is thus familiar, what
marks out Domitian’s use of hieroglyphs is its
metropolitan setting: the obelisk is something
displayed in the city of Rome, not in the
provinces. It is likely that there is an earlier
instance of the copying of a Middle Egyptian
inscription being done at Rome, namely that
of Augustus’ inscription in the Circus Maximus, which was clumsily repeated on that
now at Trinità dei Monti (Roullet 1972: 71;
Grenier 1997: 358). But the Piazza Navona
obelisk differs in Domitian’s use of his own
name, together with those of his relatives,
however clichéd the form of the inscription
thus added.
It appears from this discussion that nobody
was more concerned with the meaning of the
obelisk as Kircher. Whereas Pliny was content
with a brief statement on their relation to the
sun, a statement prominently placed in his discussion of obelisks, for Kircher obelisks generally and the Piazza Navona obelisk in
particular become nothing short of an obsession. The thrust of Obeliscus Pamphilius is to
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
211
outline an entire system of linguistic signification centered on obelisks. Many aspects of
this work indicate its importance to Kircher:
its sheer length, his readiness to extrapolate
from the single artifact to a generalized system
of language, and from that to the wisdom of all
ages. For Kircher, the Piazza Navona obelisk
possessed, above all else, ‘semiotic virtuosity’
(Appadurai 1986: 38).
Finally, then, to what extent is it possible or
even desirable to be seeking after the meaning(s) of an obelisk? Firstly, the changes of
context, centered on their physical movement, are one way of deflecting the conversation from the idea that meaning is something
specific, something that can be articulated
and described. The brute fact of existence is
itself a kind of answer to the meanings of an
obelisk, and indeed it is something that overarches the historical particularities of the different episodes discussed above. Quiddity
emerges as a kind of radical state of being, of
existing through time. It is not the same thing
as essentialism, since it transcends rather
than ignores multiplicities of context. Rather,
the intransitiveness of meaning is what we
find at different points in the life of the
obelisk—less a sense of what the obelisk and
its writing mean, than the fact that they mean
something. By this reckoning, meaning is
something that remains just beyond grasp.
The scorn Kircher’s work has attracted before
his rehabilitation of recent years may come
from his insistence on having cracked the
code, of having solved the puzzle of meaning
(e.g. Pope 1999: 30-33; contrast Iversen 1993:
97 and Brauen 1982 for more sympathetic
treatments). Even if Kircher’s attempts to
interpret the hieroglyphs bear little resemblance to modern readings, they suggest, in
their lofty metaphysical abstractions, a sense
of this intransitiveness of meaning.
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Conclusion
The most important point to stress, by way of
conclusion, is that monumentality, the qualities that define a monument, should and can be
examined with regard to meaning. By this
reckoning, meaning is not something transcendent, but relative to particular communities of
interpretation. A major concern of this paper
has been to open up the question of meaning
in relation both to physical amendment and to
other changes of context—without deciding it
dogmatically. By this reckoning, context
emerges as both the historical contingency
informing its communities of interpretation
and the chance survival of clues that make it
possible to recover those contingencies. Certainly monumentality can be examined with
regard to original intentions and it is clear that
the conscious act of memorializing is one part
of monumentality; but that is by no means
where the story ends. In the case of the Piazza
Navona obelisk, movement across the Mediterranean and within the city of Rome has
been emblematic of changes of social setting,
recontextualizations that bear analysis as much
on temporal as on a spatial axes.
The episodes are not exhaustive, as it would
have been possible to narrate other moments
in the life of the obelisk, for example, references to it in late medieval and later texts and
illustrations (Roullet 1972: 72-73). Further,
the fact that these episodes are distinguished in
time should by no means be taken to indicate
that all people at a particular time thought the
same thing. It is by no means likely, for one,
that Kircher’s views were widely held by his
contemporaries. Rather, texts such as his give
the opportunity, however limited, of exploring
the question of meaning in different contexts.
Each episode could bear expansion; indeed,
each context is infinitely expandable. But they
do serve to make an important, if obvious,
point: that narrative is an important means by
© The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003.
which to gain access to the meanings of the
obelisk. Narrative here is a conglomeration of
micronarratives. The advantage of segmenting
the narrative of the object’s life into micronarratives is that is explicitly allows for both continuity and rupture; it avoids a sense of
causality between them, though without foreclosing the possibility that there might indeed
be links. Indeed, (perceived) past meanings
can influence a reinterpretation, but equally it
would be wrong to assume that they must do so.
If there is one pervasive meaning that applies
to various episodes, and comes as close as we
can to a definition of monumentality, it is quiddity. This quality, that which makes an object
keep on keeping on, is a phenomenon that
both underlies and defies narrative. When
social process has become so central to the
biography of objects (esp. Kopytoff 1986; cf.
Baudrillard 1994), this concept offers an important corrective.
Acknowledgments
My thanks to JMA’s anonymous referees, who,
however varied their responses, offered many
suggestions and points to ponder; and especially to John Cherry. The initial stimulus to
think about obelisks was provided by Kathleen
Coleman’s invitation to lead a Harvard University Classics seminar, ‘Monuments and
Memory’. I learned much from that audience,
as well as later ones at Greenville, NC (East
Carolina University), Oxford (Corpus Christi
College) and Stellenbosch (Pacific Rim Roman
Literature Seminar); and from colleagues in
Duke’s Mediterranean Studies Initiative and
Classical Studies department. The standard
disclaimer applies.
About the Author
Grant Parker’s interest in Roman exotica and
orientalism has thus far related mostly to
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India, as shown in his article, ‘Ex oriente luxuria: Indian commodities and Roman experience’, Journal for the Economic and Social
History of the Orient 45.1 (2002): 40-95. He
teaches in the Department of Classical Studies at Duke University, having earlier been a
postdoctoral fellow in the Michigan Society
of Fellows at the University of Michigan.
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