The many meanings of obelisks across nearly forty centuries, from Ancient Egypt (which invented them) to twentieth-century America (which put them in Hollywood epics).
Nearly every empire worthy of the name―from ancient Rome to the United States―has sought an Egyptian obelisk to place in the center of a ceremonial space. Obelisks―giant standing stones, invented in Ancient Egypt as sacred objects―serve no practical purpose. For much of their history their inscriptions, in Egyptian hieroglyphics, were completely inscrutable. Yet over the centuries dozens of obelisks have made the voyage from Egypt to Rome, Constantinople, and Florence; to Paris, London, and New York. New obelisks and even obelisk-shaped buildings rose as well―the Washington Monument being a noted example. Obelisks, everyone seems to sense, connote some very special sort of power. This beautifully illustrated book traces the fate and many meanings of obelisks across nearly forty centuries―what they meant to the Egyptians, and how other cultures have borrowed, interpreted, understood, and misunderstood them through the years. In each culture obelisks have taken on new meanings and associations. To the Egyptians, the obelisk was the symbol of a pharaoh's right to rule and connection to the divine. In ancient Rome, obelisks were the embodiment of Rome's coming of age as an empire. To nineteenth-century New Yorkers, the obelisk in Central Park stood for their country's rejection of the trappings of empire just as it was itself beginning to acquire imperial power. And to a twentieth-century reader of Freud, the obelisk had anatomical and psychological connotations. The history of obelisks is a story of technical achievement, imperial conquest, Christian piety and triumphalism, egotism, scholarly brilliance, political hubris, bigoted nationalism, democratic self-assurance, Modernist austerity, and Hollywood kitsch―in short, the story of Western civilization.

Obelisk: A History (Publications of the Burndy Library)

Arts & Photography

Long, Pamela O.

Curran, Brian A.

Weiss, Benjamin

Grafton, Anthony

History & Criticism

The MIT Press

This volume represents the interest of the American Academy in Rome (AAR), its fellows, residents, and the larger international community who use its excellent library and facilities. The Memoirs series presents a selection of articles on topics including—but not limited to—Roman archaeology and topography, ancient and modern Italian history, Latin literature, and Italian art and architectural history.   

Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 58 (2013)

History

Ancient Civilizations

American Academy in Rome

This volume represents the interests of the American Academy in Rome (AAR), its fellows, residents, and the larger international community who use its excellent library and facilities. The Memoirs series presents a selection of articles on topics including—but not limited to—Roman archaeology and topography, ancient and modern Italian history, Latin literature, and Italian art and architectural history. Volume 59/60 includes the following essays and articles: “Roma and the Virtuous Breast” by Lillian Joyce; “Roman Rhetoric, Metroac Representation: Texts, Artifacts, and the Cult of Magna Mater in Rome and Ostia” by Jacob Abraham Latham; “Female Patrons and Honorific Statues in Pompeii” by Brenda Longfellow; “Visual Evidence for Roman Infantry Tactics” by Michael J. Taylor; “A Reconsideration of Renaissance Antiquarianism in Light of Biondo Flavio’s Ars Antiquaria, with an Unpublished Letter from Paul Oskar Kristeller (1905–1999)” by Angelo Mazzocco; “Varro and the Development of Roman Topography from Antiquity to the Quattrocento” by Seth G. Bernard; “Argicida Mercurius from Homer to Giraldi and from Greek Vases to Sansovino” by Luba Freedman; “The Hieroglyphics of Kingship: Italy’s Egypt in Early Tudor England and the Manuscript as Monument” by Sonja Drimmer; “Regarding Parmigianino’s Early Portraits” by Giancarla Periti; “Locating the Chaldean Embassy to Pope Paul V in the Sala Regia of the Palazzo Quirinale in Rome” by Cristelle Baskins; “Waterworks for New St. Peter’s: The Four Rivers of Paradise and the Cult of Teresa of Avila in 1616” by Pamela M. Jones; “The Aviaries of the Farnese Gardens on the Palatine: Roman Antiquity, the Levant, and the Architecture of Garden Pavilions” by Natsumi Nonaka; “Virgil, Pietro da Cortona, and the Heroism of Aeneas” by Michael C. J. Putnam; and the 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 Reports on Research in the School of Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome.

Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, Vol. 59 (2014) / 60 (2015)

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