The Piazza Navona Obelisk

04 Parker.QXD 27/1/04 12:01 PM Page 193 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 transmuta- tions of context and audience in time and space. The social processes within which they have been impli- cated suggest reconsideration of the nature, and indeed direction, of biographic narrative. To what extent can narrative, in this biographic form, adequately represent monumentality? in such a life-story by critically examining its Introduction workings and assumptions. One issue that the The obelisk now standing at the center of obelisk brings to the forefront is that of mon- Piazza Navona in Rome (Figure 1) has had an umentality: If we make the working assump- eventful life: quarried in Egypt, inscribed and tion that this is a monument, what are the shipped to the heart of Rome in the first cen- distinctive features of a monument? What are tury AD; moved to a new location outside the we to make of the fact that this obelisk has city walls some two centuries later; excavated, occupied different locations in the city of repaired from its broken state and magnifi- Rome and elsewhere? In our consideration of cently reinstalled in the mid-17th century; this obelisk, what is the relation between its studied for its hieroglyphic inscription from mobility and its monumental qualities? These that point up to the decipherment in the are questions that will be addressed in the dif- early 19th century and beyond. These are ferent social contexts that emerge in the life some of the points that occur in any rendition of this obelisk. of its life story. To these ends, we will begin by recounting It is one thing to rehearse this life-story in the life of the obelisk and then step back from its own right, following the lead of several that biography to a more abstract considera- earlier scholars of Roman topography (e.g. tion of the issues raised in that account. To Platner and Ashby 1929: 368-70; Nash 1968: ensure that the initial biography retains an II, 159; Richardson 1992: 275; Steinby 1997: episodic quality (thus making a virtue out of 355-59) or of Egyptian obelisks (e.g. Maruc- necessity), and with a view to these later con- chi 1917: 125-31; Iversen 1968: 76-92; siderations, this biography will proceed not in Habachi 1978: 141-44; D’Onofrio 1992: 288- the usual chronological order, but in reverse. 301). It is another to question what is at stake In this way we shall begin in the present time © The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003. 04 Parker.QXD 27/1/04 12:01 PM Page 194 194 Parker Figure 1. Engraving of the Fountain of Four Rivers, Piazza Navona, Rome (Falda 1665). and venture ever further, in unequal measure, 2001: 416). If, within Italy, Rome is a major into the past. attraction, then Piazza Navona is certainly a major landmark for visitors. While detailed Part 1: Scenes from a Life statistics are hard to come by, there can be no doubt that the square is one of Rome’s public Tourist at a Landmark (2003) spaces par excellence. The same square that is Italy, as a country, was the world’s fourth most now such a tourist attraction once housed a popular tourist destination in 2000, attracting stadium built by the emperor Domitian; in 41.2 million overseas visitors; only France, the between it has had various roles, whether for US and Spain surpassed it (World Tourism public spectacles or for regular markets. This Organization statistics, quoted in Wright single place contains a thick texture of mem- © The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003. 04 Parker.QXD 27/1/04 12:01 PM Page 195 Narrating Monumentality 195 ory, evoking different periods of modern and Among the many scholars who had studied premodern history. Egyptian writing, it was the work of Jean- A contemporary tourist will be drawn, at François Champollion (1790–1832) that some point during a visit to the square, to proved decisive. Following Napoleon’s expedi- inspect the obelisk standing at its center. tion there was a profusion of scholarship on Poised miraculously at a height of some six Egypt within the borders of France and meters above the ground, the obelisk itself is beyond; this included the detailed study of the 16.54 m tall. It has inscriptions in hieroglyph- Egyptian languages (Said 1978: 80-88). Fore- ics on all four sides. In this respect it differs most among the scholars, from the point of from the taller obelisk at the center of the Vat- view of hieroglyphics, was Sylvestre de Sacy ican’s Piazza San Pietro, which is part of (1758–1838), professor of Oriental languages another major landmark. It stands on a rectan- in Paris at the time of the Revolution. Sacy’s gular base, which is inscribed in Latin on two work, together with that of the Swede J.D. of its sides. Åkerblad and the Englishman Thomas Young, The obelisk and the fountain stand in the went a long way towards questioning the then middle of the square, dominating the sur- still widespread notion that hieroglyphs repre- rounding space. It forms an axis together with sented a ‘natural’ language, based purely on two smaller fountains. The fountain support- ideograms. Champollion’s contribution was to ing the obelisk features four world rivers, rep- develop this hypothesis further, culminating resented by their male personifications, with the decipherment (Pope 1999: 68-84). In namely the Plata, Ganges, Nile and Danube. this process, as we shall see, the Piazza Navona Details about its construction by Bernini played a small but discernible part. around 1650, as well as information about its Growing up in Figeac in southern France, pre-modern pasts, both Roman and medieval, Jean-François took early to the study of west- are available in the Blue Guide to Rome and ern Asian languages, having mastered Greek other guidebooks—guidebooks that may be and Latin at a young age. His early work concerned with monuments and the past, or on Egypt received detailed expression in his more concerned with the culinary, shopping L’Egypte sous les Pharaons (1814). Though this and entertainment offerings of the piazza and reveals nothing of the linguistic insights that its surrounds (e.g. Fodor’s or the Rough Guide), later led to the decipherment, it did indicate or many that aim at single-volume utility. his general mastery of Egyptian antiquities. The work is a detailed topography of Egypt, in Champollion and the Decipherment (1821–24) which he links contemporary sites and their Not even the Blue Guide provides a transla- Arabic names with those in ancient Greek, tion of the hieroglyphic inscription (for Latin and Coptic texts. which, see Erman 1917: 4-10, 18-28). It was Champollion’s subsequent researches on the only after 1822 that the obelisk became read- Egyptian languages were sustained by the able in the modern sense, during the deci- stream of epigraphic texts, copies of which pherment of hieroglyphics. For the first time were still coming to France from Egypt in the it became clear that the inscriptions on its aftermath of Napoleon’s invasion. He paid par- flanks date back to the reign of the emperor ticular attention to texts written in different Domitian (81–96 AD) and no further. This scripts, but which contained identical illustra- episode in the life of the obelisk applies to the tions—suggesting that they were in fact the study of the object rather than to a change of same text in different scripts. Close compari- its physical status. son led him to the conclusion that ancient © The Fund for Mediterranean Archaeology/Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2003. 04 Parker.QXD 27/1/04 12:01 PM Page 196 196 Parker Egyptian epigraphy produced as many as four Vespasian’ and ‘his brother Titus’—the posses- different systems of writing: hieroglyphics sive adjectives adding important evidence, as proper, cursive or linear hieroglyphics, hieratic Champollion shows in the fourth chapter of and demotic. Initially, Champollion believed his Précis (1827–28: 78). The use of this that the hieratic and demotic scripts were inscription by Champollion reflects not so ideographic (1821–22), but later he changed much the nature of the obelisk but the his view. At the same time, he worked on the scarcity of texts, certainly up to the time of premise that the hieroglyphic script is pho- Napoleon’s expedition and even after. netic in character rather than ideographic. He When Champollion died in 1832 at the age concluded, after several years’ study of putative of 42, his grave in the Père-Lachaise Ceme- homophones, that the phonetic character of tery, Paris, was marked by a tombstone in the hieroglyphics was not ancillary but central. His shape of an obelisk. This is in a sense unre- examination of Roman and Greek proper markable, given the frequent use of obelisks to names showed that phonetic and ideographic mark graves in the 19th century and before.

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