Labib Habachi

I seem to be doing at lot of Egypt books recently. Luck of the draw from the stacks of unread books. The Obelisks of Egypt, by Labib Habachi, is not without flaws but is the seems to be the best overall work on the subject.


Flaws first. It’s dated; my edition was published in 1985 and there’s been a lot of Egyptian research, on obelisks and otherwise, since then. For example, Habachi accepts a relief of Hatshepsut showing two obelisks placed end-to-end in a barge as an accurate description. The current belief is this is Egyptian artistic convention and the obelisks were actually transported side-by-side. On that general theme, the book could use a little more engineering analysis. Habachi discusses ancient quarrying and erection methods, but not very much, surprisingly, about the engineering involved in the later movement of obelisks out of Egypt (the dates and responsible parties are treated well, however). Next, it badly needs one table of obelisks – who built them, where they were erected, where they are now. All this information is available but scattered through the text. Last (although this is obviously a personal nitpick) Habachi should have talked to a geologist, especially in a book about big hunks of rock. My particular gripe is repeated references to “basalt” when Habachi means greywacke (argillite), and “schist” when he also means greywacke (also argillite), and “granite” when he means syenite.


The good stuff is OK, however. Habachi speculates a little on the religious significance of obelisks but doesn’t go outside what the evidence justifies. The meat of the work is discussion of all the known obelisks, which range from the 1168 ton uncompleted monster still in its quarry in Aswan down to little three-foot-high guys scattered around various museums, estates, and back gardens in Egypt and elsewhere. The post-Egyptian history of obelisks is also well done; there are more obelisks in Rome than in Egypt (in fact, more than in the entire rest of the world combined). Many of these have complicated histories; originally looted by Roman emperors, they collapsed, were buried, and were then uncovered, repaired, and re-erected by various popes (and, in one case, by Mussolini). The New York and London obelisks are originally part of a matched pair erected by Thutmose III at Heliopolis (Biblical ON, Ancient Egyptian Iunu, now a suburb of Cairo), then usurped by Ramses II, then moved to Alexandria by Augustus, then presented to the American and English governments by the Khedive of Egypt. The Paris one was brought directly from Karnak and was the first removed from Egypt since late Roman times.


At least one obelisk, discovered by Egyptological dilettante William Bankes on Philae and moved to his estate in Dorset, was partially responsible for the decipherment of Egyptian. It had a bilingual inscription in Greek and Egyptian; copies were made available to Thomas Young and Jean-Franҫois Champollion and supplemented the trilingual inscription on the Rosetta Stone.


Worth it; I think I’ll make up my own table of obelisks.… (mehr)