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OBELISKS STILL IN EXILE: MADE TO MEASURE?

Grant Parker

Introduction

The first volume of Erik Iversen’s magisterial Obelisks in Exile (1968- 1972) provides not only the basis for my own title but in fact the necessary starting point for any consideration of ’s obelisks.1 This work encapsulates earlier scholarship that goes back to Michele Mercati’s Gli Obelischi di (1589),2 offering detailed individual accounts of the thirteen major pieces imported to the city of Rome between the time of and Constantius II. As Iversen’s dis- cussion shows, documentary sources on obelisks are much richer for the early modern period than for the . The appea- rance in recent years of several scholarly works points to renewed interest in the topic.3 But if we were to ask the question, “What did obelisks mean to Romans?”, the ancient period provides little direct evidence compared to the early modern. The handful of inscriptions and the descriptions by the elder Pliny ( 36.70-36.74) and Ammianus Marcellinus (Res gestae 17.4) seem, in this light, like lean pickings. “Direct” should, however, be the operative word here: indirectly, there is much more that can be gleaned, especially if we take into the account the wealth of recent scholarship on the eastern religions of the Roman empire.4 Now, we can turn to several broader-based approaches to the issue of the exotic, many of them drawing on theoretical and comparative approaches. Cultural studies and postco-

1 Iversen, Obelisks (1968 & 1972). 2 Also available in a reprint edition, G. Cantelli (ed.) (Bologna 1981). A valuable modern work is L. Habachi, Die unsterblichen Obelisken Ägyptens, in: C. Vogel (ed.) (Mainz 2000); see also Roullet, Rome. 3 B.C. Curran, The Egyptian Renaissance: the afterlife of ancient in early modern (Chicago forthcoming 2006); a collected volume is under contract with MIT Press. 4 I think here particularly of titles in Brill’s series, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World and its predecessor, Études Préliminaires aux Religions Orientales dans l’Empire Romain.

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lonial studies have made their mark, in no case more so than Edward Said’s Orientalism.5 Further, the evidence is enriched by comparanda from parts of the ancient world beyond Egypt. The net effect of such innovations has been to move away from the overwhelmingly antiquarian approaches of earlier work. Increasingly, scholars have sought to emphasise that objects (actually or seemingly) from Egypt should be understood in context—and it is certainly necessary to take that term in a broad range of cultural, religious, political and economic senses. Indeed, if context is deemed all-important, we should not hesitate to ask, in light of contemporary cultural studies, just what “context” is, how we can delimit it for practical purposes, and what the implications are of those delimitations.6 If Aegyptiaca are now subject to new and newly self-aware scholar- ship, what does this hold for obelisks? Certainly recent books contain discussions of them, yet there remains more to be done. In this paper I would like to outline a new framework within which to try to make historical sense of obelisks. Let us restate as the overarching question: “What did obelisks mean to Romans of the Empire?” This broad question clearly invites several possible answers, urging us to consider such varied aspects as their transportation; the measuring of obelisks and the use of them to provide measurements; the habit of adding inscriptions to them; problems involved in describing them; and finally imitations and representations. In all these respects one may examine Roman responses to and interactions with obelisks. By contrast, Egyptian ideas and practices are obviously relevant in a broader sense, without being central. By the same token, we must be aware that material from later periods—from the medieval to our own—may offer further lines of inquiry. A fuller account of visual responses to obelisks might thus examine not only ancient frescoes and mosaics but also modern architectural appropriations of the form. In other words, if we consider any one surviving obelisk its longevity invites us to look forward and backward in time. It is insufficient to recognize that obelisks have been objects of collection

5 P. Vasunia, Hellenism and empire: reading Edward Said, Parallax 9 (2003) 88- 97; cf. D.J. Mattingly (ed.), Dialogues in Roman Imperialism: power, discourse and discrepant experience in the Roman Empire (Newport, Rhodes Island 1995). 6 E.A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: historians and the linguistic turn (Cambridge, Mass. 2004), following the cultural theorist Dominic LaCapra. Note the insistence on con- text in M.J. Versluys and P.G.P. Meyboom, Les scènes dites nilotiques et les cultes isiaques. Une interprétation contextuelle, in: De Memphis à Rome 111-128.

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par excellence: it is necessary to examine the issues of power with which they became entangled. In what follows I shall outline each of those five aspects before focusing on one in particular.

1. Transporting

Appropriation has a physical aspect, and it behooves us to begin in this most concrete sense. Both Pliny and Ammianus emphasise the physical act of movement, suggesting that this was an important aspect of their social meaning in Rome; the inscriptions added to their bases in many cases emphasise their transportation. The act of moving is illustrated on the base of the obelisk in , in which the process of moving the object is effectively made part of the product itself. From this point of view the relief invites comparison with the paintings of Queen at , in which she celebrates her act of moving obelisks downstream to her complex.7 Early modern instances include Domenico Fonta- na’s and Athanasius Kircher’s illustrations in the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, on the and in the Mediterranean (in the case of Kircher) and within the city of Rome (Fontana).8 These physical acts of moving are, in another sense, metaphors for their changes in audience, and hence changes of meaning. Physical and metaphorical displacement are in this sense related, particularly if when we recognise that the transportation of obelisks become part of their social meaning. This much is clear from the inscribed bases upon which obelisks were erected, as we shall see below. It is necessary to ask how (or whether) the transportation of an obelisk specifically is an index of monarchic power, and particularly riverine despotism. The skill of Augustus, for one, in manipulating political power makes it important to scrutinise the earliest “Roman obelisks” from such a perspective.

7 R.F. Heizer, Ancient heavy transport, methods and achievements, Science 153.3738 (1966) 821-830 at 825. 8 D. Fontana, Della trasportatione dell’Obelisco vaticano et delle fabriche di nostro signore papa Sisto V (Rome 1590); A. Kircher, Obeliscus Pamphilius (Rome 1650). Exemplary among recent scholarship on Kircher is P. Findlen (ed.), Athanasius Kircher: the last man who knew everything ( 2004).

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2. Measuring

The authority to measure time can be an index of state power, in the Roman world and beyond. One eminent case here is the obe- lisk placed at Augustus’ behest in the , which by its shadow denoted the emperor’s birthday (hence denoting cyclical time). But it also connoted Egypt’s deep antiquity (linear time) and Rome’s conquest over that land. In both respects Augustus’ use of obelisks deserves examination in light of his concern with calendrical reform, for which there is of course also substantial epigraphic and literary evidence.9 To the matter of measuring we shall return in the second half of this article.

3. Inscribing

Most of Rome’s obelisks arrived in the city already inscribed in Middle Egyptian on their flanks: once there, a Latin inscription would be added to the base.10 For example, the has both, the Latin inscription of Constantius II being all of twenty-four lines long (CIL VI 1163).11 The Vatican obelisk is a major exception in that it has no hieroglyphic texts: from its brief Latin text, the name of the disgraced prefect Cornelius Gallus has been erased, and thus it offers an instance of damnatio memoriae.12 The obelisk at , coming from the Iseum Campense and inscribed at ’s behest in Middle Egyptian, is another unusual case, which seems to have been intended to make an impression rather than be read in any usual sense. This may be regarded as a mys- tifying or even magical use of writing, where the purpose is clearly not to impart information. Like a number of other obelisks, such as Hadrian’s on the Pincio in honour of , it shows the fact that Roman emperors sometimes used the Middle Egyptian language

9 A. Wallace-Hadrill, Time for Augustus: Ovid, Augustus and the Fasti, in: M. Whitby et al. (eds.), Homo Viator: Classical essays for John Bramble (Bristol 1987) 221-230. 10 In an unusual and telling instance, the Hippodrome obelisk reflects the different language politics of Constantinople, its base being inscribed in both Greek and Latin: Iversen, Obelisks (1972) 12-13. 11 Cf. Iversen, Obelisks (1968) 57-58 12 Iversen, Obelisks (1968) 19-46; cf. C.W. Hedrick Jr., History and Silence: purge and rehabilitation of memory in late antiquity (Austin, Tex. 2000) esp. 89-131.

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and hieroglyphic script to have their own names inscribed.13 There are grounds to consider these inscriptions as performances of power, that is, the very display of writing as a means of exercising power: it will be necessary to inquire how this functions.14 In what ways does the writing on an obelisk transform the object for the viewer? Do inscriptions attempt to fix the meaning of their obelisks for all time? What powers of writing can we see here, when the text itself is so exotic? There seems at least a prima facie case that obelisks present a highly unusual use of writing, from the point of view of their Roman audiences. Questions about the pragmatics of writing are subject to considerable scholarly interest. If the relation of writ- ing and power is a key topic here, then classical Athens provides fascinating material for potential comparison.15 But the search for comparanda can lead us even further afield: studies of cross-cultural encounter in the early modern Americas offer much here, not least the concept of the colonisation of language.16 What the Roman obelisks and this material have in common is an abstracted, decon- textualised (and recontextualised) use of a language from a “contact zone” of colonialism.

4. Describing

The relation of word and object will be examined under two closely related rubrics: description and narration. When the elder Pliny and Ammianus Marcellinus discuss obelisks their descriptions contain narrative elements. It is necessary to read Pliny’s and Ammianus’ comments in light of those authors’ concerns, to consider their physical being in relation to the mechanics of their transportation as well as to the political dealings with which they were caught up. Into what kinds of Roman discourse were obelisks incorporated? Ammianus,

13 Iversen, Obelisks (1968) 161-162; E. M. Ciampini, Gli Obelischi iscritti di Roma (Rome 2004) 168-187; in detail H. Meyer (ed.), Der Obelisk des Antinoos. Eine kommentierte Edition ( 1994). 14 G. Woolf, Monumental writing and the expansion of Roman society in the Early Empire, JRS 86 (1996) 22-39. 15 D.T. Steiner, The Tyrant’s Writ (Princeton 1994); see now also A. Bresson et al. (eds.), L’écriture publique du pouvoir ( 2005). 16 W. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: literacy, territoriality and colonization (Ann Arbor 1995).

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writing about one particular obelisk, implies that its history was a matter of defeating human intentions, particularly those of arro- gant monarchs. An eminent case is presented by Constantine’s two obelisks (now at the church of St John Lateran in Rome and at the Hippodrome in Istanbul): these he had moved to , with the intention of transporting them across the Mediterranean, but it was only after his death that Constantius II had one moved to Rome and Theodosius the other to Constantinople. Such narrations also raise the topic of origins: do they suggest that the intentions of those raising obelisks determined the mean- ing of the object for all time? It appears rather that both Pliny and Ammianus, concentrating as they do on the Roman afterlives of the obelisks, themselves see the objects as belated, and thus show hints of challenging the foundational approach to their meaning. Clearly, intentions are central to the concept of a , namely to commemorate, and it is necessary to investigate these; but, equally, these intentions themselves are of limited significance if we consider the lives of these objects more broadly. Indeed, the longer an object survives, the more likely it is to be appropriated by others. It is in such descriptions that we find clues as to how the obelisks have become objects of collection. The fact that they are individual objects and few in number, even in the case of Augustus, merely increases their social value as objects of collection.17

5. Imitating

The Nilotic landscapes found on ancient frescoes and mosaics offer ancient representations of obelisks, and may be considered in a broa- der frame that includes replications of their form in modern times.18 The early modern period offers several examples, all the more inte- resting for the fact that they frequently conflate the terminology and forms of and obelisk. In Rome of the 1930’s Mussolini not only had a massive obelisk made for display in his Foro Italico, but imported the most easily available approximation of an ancient Egyptian obelisk, namely the from . Its return in April

17 G. Parker, Narrating monumentality: the Piazza Navona obelisk, Journal of Med- iterranean Archaeology 16 (2002) 193-215 raises questions of narrative. 18 Meyboom, Nile Mosaic, and Versluys, Aegyptiaca Romana.

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2005 came amidst heated debates over cultural property—debates that take place against a background of postcolonial world politics and of the international art market.19 Beyond Italy, the shipping of obelisks to Paris, and New York in the nineteenth century should be seen alongside imitations of their form in the same century and after, for example in Sydney, Buenos Aires and Washington DC. As in the case of Theodosius’ Constantinople, it appears obelisks are a useful way of making a new city into a metropolis, conferring grandeur and history on the city even as it adds a measure of legi- timacy to the power structures associated with it. An aura of modernity is part of such enterprises, as we have already glimpsed above. In the case of Moscow’s Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics, built in 1964 to commemorate the launch of the Sputnik, the use of titanium and a 100-metre soaring shape reveal innovation brought to an ancient form. Its title, To the Conquerors of Space, underlines its obvious triumphalism. Such an adaptation suggests that a moment of high modernity can be articulated in relation to antiquity. Again, this poses questions concerning Roman uses. From this point of view, the “remaking of Rome” is not merely a matter of Roman topography in the narrow sense, but points to the metropolitan status or aspirations of other cities as well. In this case, an obelisk helps complete the triad of the Three Romes, each aiming in their time to some kind of universal power. The obelisk has done less well in postmodern art. Yet there are a number of instances that clearly seek to challenge the phallocen- tric self-promotion so obviously linked with obelisks. An eminently postmodern appropriation of the obelisk form is found in Barnett Newman’s three identical steel designed in 1963-1967, entitled Broken obelisk, one of which has a commanding position in New York’s revamped Museum of Modern Art. The version at Hou- ston, Texas was dedicated in 1968 to Martin Luther King, who was assassinated in that year; a third resides on the Seattle campus of the University of Washington. This abstract expressionist work is clearly a reaction to the conventional aggrandising use of obelisks, and a subversive comment on that ancient convention.20

19 R. Pankhurst, , the Axum obelisk, and the return of Africa’s cultural heritage, African Affairs 98.391 (1999) 229-239; K. von Henneberg, Monuments, public space, and the memory of empire in modern Italy, History and Memory 16.1 (2004) 37-85. 20 S. Polcari, Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk, Art Journal 53.4 (1994) 48-55.

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Again: Measuring obelisks

If we want to consider the matter of measuring in greater detail, we should first rehearse some basic details of the obelisks now at the Piazza di Montecitorio and the . The Monteci- torio obelisk is 21.79 metres tall, weighing some 214 metric tons, and originates in Egypt’s Late Kingdom, the 26th dynasty. As the fragmentary inscriptions on its flanks indicate, it was quarried on the instruction of Psammetichus II (594-589 BCE). Installed at Heliopolis, it commemorated the first anniversary of his inauguration.21 Augustus had it brought to Rome in 10 BCE to be the gnomon of his giant sundial on the Campus Martius. Located adjoining the Augustae and loosely linked with Augustus’ Mausoleum, this sundial covered an extensive area of 160 x 75 metres. At its top was a bronze ball whose function was to augment the sun’s shadow. According to the elder Pliny (HN 36.72-36.73), it was designed by the mathematician Novius Facundus in such a way that the length of the shadow at noon corresponded to the width of the pavement. This had been out of alignment for some thirty years, however, he adds. Further evidence has come to light with excavations undertaken between 1979 and 1981, though there is dispute over its interpreta- tion. A constellation of bronze markers indicated signs of the zodiac and other astrological features. These large inscriptions suggest an attempt, under the emperor Domitian, to restore accuracy to the Augustan monument, redeploying the Augustan letters.22 This obelisk is usually presented as one of a pair together with that now at the Piazza del Popolo, which Augustus had placed in the same year in the spina of the . This obelisk too was brought from Heliopolis, and was given the same inscription on its base. However, if we consider their origins this proves to be an older piece, erected by Sety I and further inscribed by his son Rameses II, both of the 19th Dynasty (13th century BCE). Though both obelisks are considerably damaged, Pliny appears to have mis- taken their relative heights (HN 36.71), for almost certainly the Circus

21 For the Middle Egyptian inscription, see Ciampini, Gli Obelischi 142-149. 22 On the obelisk now at Montecitorio, see further Iversen, Obelisks (1968) 142- 160. On the Horologium, see E. Buchner, Die Sonnenuhr des Augustus (Mainz 1982), with detailed criticism by M. Schütz, Gymnasium 97 (1990) 432-457; also S. Berti, Orologi publici nel mondo antico (1991) 83-87.

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obelisk was taller. This was destined to be one of the four obelisks re-erected by , who had it placed in the Piazza del Popolo in 1587. We can infer from the Einsiedeln itinerary that it was still standing in the eighth century. But around the time of the Norman invasion of 1084 it collapsed or was destroyed. On its early modern history we are much better informed. Antiquarians and scholars came upon its base in 1475 and the obelisk itself in 1502. The usual suspects took an interest: Sixtus V had some excavations done in 1587 and likewise the learned Jesuit Athanasius Kircher in 1654-1666. Yet it was not until 1748 that it was fully excavated, and erected in 1792 in its present location at the behest of pope Pius VI. Substantial parts of the shaft were replaced with blocks of granite taken from the column of . Most of the inscriptions have in fact been lost, so fragmentary is the lower section of its shaft. It under- went substantial renovations in the 1960s, when the 18th-century brickwork threatened to collapse as a result of corroded pins and water seepage.23 What do these two obelisks have to do with measuring, in the spatial and temporal senses of that term? In the city of Rome, they created or emphasised lines of sight within public spaces. Obelisks placed in the spina of a hippodrome or circus measured the centre of that space by demarcating the horses’ track. The circling of the horses suggested movement of the planets around the sun, and hence suggested solar cult, according to the hostile evidence of Tertullian (Spect. 8). The temporalities they marked out were complex. With the Cam- pus Martius obelisk Augustus not only denoted his birthday (and thus cyclical time) but also connoted Egypt’s deep antiquity (linear time), and with it Rome’s conquest over Egypt. In particular, it evoked the victory at Actium in 31 BCE, so central to Augustus’ self-presenta- tion.24 It connoted further, one might add, Rome’s control over its grain supply—the metropolis had long since outgrown the nutritive capacity of Italy. In both temporal and spatial respects Augustus’ use of obelisks deserves examination in light of his concern with

23 The life-history of the Piazza del Popolo obelisk is recounted in greater detail at Iversen, Obelisks (1968) 65-75. 24 P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor 1990) 144; more generally D. Favro, The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (Cambridge 1996) 252-270.

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calendrical reform, of which there is significant collateral evidence. It is ironic that, when Augustus and later emperors sought to present Rome as the centre of cosmos and imperium, they reached back to the earliest conceivable past. Obelisks could thus signify power over time: the eternity of Roman power, of imperium sine fine (Virgil, Aeneid 1.279), required the fusing of Egyptian antiquity and Roman modernity and in the process created a timeless Mediterranean-wide empire.25 The location of the Campus Martius obelisk in Augustus’ horologium marked the centre-point of a major public space in way that any contemporary visitor to Rome—or for that matter Paris—will read- ily grasp. Their distinctive verticality helps them articulate lines of sight, particularly when placed in the centre of a public square. Of course the Montecitorio obelisk, pointing to heavenly constellations, also articulated time in its capacity as a gnomon. This involved both the cyclical time of the calendar year but also, we may infer, the deep time of Egyptian antiquity. This idea of Egypt is in keeping with second book, and gives special place to monuments (though Herodotus himself does not mention obelisks). Certainly a sense of Egyptian antiquity is implicit when Pliny emphasises that the Egyptians were inventors of the obelisk form. There is a further sense of measuring, if we may extrapolate from his initial comment about “competition” between kings (36.64 quodam certamine). Measuring is thus linked to the one-upmanship of succes- sive emperors. For Pliny, they were closely tied up with the rhetoric of number, which was central to ancient and medieval articulations of Rome’s grandeur.26 Pliny’s passage shows us that obelisks bear comparison with regard to their size and the number of people needed to erect them. This is part of a much larger phenomenon. In the fourth century, the anonymous Curiosum Urbis Regionum quat- tuordecim mentions 6 obelisks—namely 2 in the Circus Maximus, 1 in the Vatican, 1 in the Campus Martius and 2 on the —8 bridges, 7 hills, 11 fora and so on. Here they add to a kind of admiration by internal comparison. Measuring is usually

25 On the cosmologic context of imperial ideology, P. Hardie, Virgil’s Aeneid: Cosmos and imperium (Oxford 1986). 26 N. Purcell. The city of Rome, in: R. Jenkyns (ed.), The Legacy of Rome (Oxford 1992) 421-453 esp. 422-426; C. Edwards, Writing Rome: textual approaches to the city (Cambridge 1996).

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considered geographically, but it is relevant also to monumentality: here we have to recognize that sheer size is part of Roman monu- mental thinking—at least in its realisation—this being in addition to its memorial function. For such considerations there are at least two possible comparanda, one each from the Old and New Worlds. The first is the obelisk that has stood since 1833 at the in Paris. This site, which as the Place de la Révolution had witnessed the executions of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and hundreds of others in 1793- 1794, underwent radical transformations thereafter. The erection there of an obelisk from the temple by King Louis-Philippe, donated in 1829 by the Egyptian viceroy Mehmet Ali, emphasised the change in the urban landscape. Carefully aligned with the city’s axe historique, it served to celebrate Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition, which exerted such an influence on French scholarship and art.27 Of particular relevance here is the fact that the base supporting the obelisk splendidly depicts the process by which it was brought from Egypt to France. The second comparandum is not even an ancient one: the small monolith standing at Macquarie Place in central Sydney, Australia (figs. 1 and 2). Yet, I would argue that modern obelisks articulate interpretations of their ancestors and can in that sense pose questions of them. It is a much smaller than the Paris obelisk, and it differs also in being dwarfed by the surrounding buildings. Nonetheless, since its erection in the early 19th century, the immediate purpose of measuring distance in the new colonial space—in what was known in Australia as terra nullius. With it, matters of land ownership and occupancy could be settled legally. The inscription on its base reads: “This obelisk was erected in Macquarie Place in AD 1818 to record that all public roads leading to the interior of the colony are measured from it. L. Macquarie Esq., Governor.” Lachlan Macquarie, gover- nor-general of New South Wales from 1810 to 1822, was an ardent reformer, roadbuilder and ktistês of towns.28 Such an interpretation raises particular points of comparison with Rome, and helps move the study of obelisks beyond antiquarianism. The important point to emerge here is that the practical purpose of measuring space

27 E.W. Said, Orientalism (London 1978) 80-88. 28 M. Clark, A Short History of Australia (4th revised edn., Camberwell, Victoria 1995) 36-53.

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Fig. 1. The small monolith standing at Macquarie Place in central Sydney, Australia.

and marking place is combined with the symbolic evocations of the state’s power. That power is itself mystified by allusion to Egypt’s antiquity. British imperialism apparently invites comparison with ’s power over even-more-: the obelisk serves as a reassuring sign of the colonial order.

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Fig. 2. The small monolith standing at Macquarie Place in central Sydney, Australia, inscription on the base.

Conclusion

I hope I have made a case for studying obelisks as signifiers: for posing questions about their social meaning without imposing meaning in the process. Indeed, I have in effect been arguing for a reception studies approach, one that urges us to inhabit the space between viewer/reader and creator/author rather than trying to overcome it, and to see that space as an object of interpretation rather than an obstacle to it. The post-antique lives of obelisks, no less than the creation of modern or postmodern “neo-obelisks”, can raise questions about ancient obelisks themselves, ones that the available evidence cannot always answer conclusively but are nonetheless good to consider. I hope also to have shown that obelisks in Roman eyes were linked to measuring in several ways—and I mean not only the measuring of obelisks but also the use of obelisks in order to measure

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space and time. Both of these senses of measuring point us towards the dynamics of power that are central to any understanding of their place in Roman antiquity. And this is where Aegypto capta, the slogan Octavian placed on some of his coins from 29 BCE, is significant for obelisks: the notion that their exotic, ancient Egyptian land of origin had been conquered was, I suspect, never far from the minds of their Roman viewers.

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