centre for the study of ancient documents

The Philae Obelisk Tales from Egypt, Dorset and Outer Space

Edited by Jane Masséglia

The Philae Obelisk Tales from Egypt, Dorset and Outer Space

Edited by Jane Masséglia The Philae Obelisk: Tales from Egypt, Dorset and Outer Space

Edited by Jane Masséglia

Published by: The Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents University of Oxford Ioannou Centre for Research in Classical and Byzantine Studies 66 St. Giles, Oxford OX1 3LU, UK

© The Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents

The authors and contributors have asserted their moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher

Design and layout by Maggy Sasanow Typset in Helvetica regular light

Printed by Holywell Press, Oxford UK

Front cover illustration: Kingston Lacy Manor and Obelisk © The National Trust

ISBN: 978-0-9576356-2-3

Preface

C O N T E N T S

Part I: The Obelisk in Antiquity:

1. The Power of Inscriptions in Ptolemaic Egypt 1 Prof. Alan Bowman 2. The Greek Pharaohs Behind the Obelisk 7 Dr Kyriakos Savvopoulos 3. The temple-complex at Philae and original location of the obelisk 13 Dr Jane Masséglia

Part II: The Obelisk in 19th Century:

4. William Bankes and the Voyage of the Philae Obelisk 19 Dr Patricia Usick 5. The Philae Obelisk and the Decipherment of Hieroglyphs 25 Dr Rachel Mairs

Part III: The Obelisk in 21st Century:

6. Shining New Light on the Philae Obelisk: New Research with RTI 29 Dr Lindsay MacDonald, Dr Charles Crowther and Benjamin Altshuler 7. Tales from the Scaffold: the RTI diaries 37 Sarah Norodom 8. 3D-Scanning the Philae Obelisk 41 Andrew Cuffley 9. New Translations of the Philae Obelisk Inscriptions 47 Dr Rachel Mairs and Prof. Alan Bowman 10. The Philae Lander of the Rosetta Cometary Mission 54 Prof. Ian Wright and Dr Judith Pillinger

Images Sources 60

Index 63

Part I: The Obelisk in Antiquity:

1

The Power of Inscriptions in Ptolemaic Egypt

Prof. Alan Bowman

On the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, his generals divided up his empire and Egypt was claimed by Ptolemy, son of Lagos, who took possession of Alexander’s corpse and nominally became the satrap or viceroy, first of Alexander’s half-brother Philip Arrhidaeus and then of the latter’s son Alexander IV. On 7th November 305 BC, Ptolemy officially and openly assumed an independent kingship as Ptolemy I Soter (‘Saviour’), inaugurating a ruling dynasty which controlled Egypt until the death of Cleopatra VII (12th August 30 BC) and the fall of Alexandria to the Roman general Octavian (later the emperor Augustus). The landscape of the kingdom which Ptolemy took over was dominated by great temples and monuments carved and inscribed in the traditional Egyptian pictographic language of hieroglyphics and its two cursive forms, the hieratic and the simpler demotic scripts’. The very few inscriptions in the Greek language from Egypt in the period before 332 BC are mostly related to the Greek trading post of Naukratis in the Delta, founded in the seventh century.

The Macedonian Greek dynasty was to rule and administer the kingdom in their own Greek language for some 300 years. Although the native Egyptian language was by no means eradicated, Greek became the official language of government and of the culture of the ruling elite, which it remained throughout the Roman period and until the Arab conquest in 642 CE. The Greeks also brought with them a tradition of inscribing official documents, religious texts and private dedications in their Greek alphabetic script and setting them up conspicuously in public buildings and communal spaces (figure1). The introduction and spread of this form of visual display was an important element of the new rulers’ control of the kingdom.

1

Figure 1: An inscribed block from a Greek monumental inscription containing the name ‘Alexandros’ found by Petrie in his excavations at Saqqara. Now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

2 Inscriptions and Language Under the Ptolemies

The landscape of written inscriptions in Egypt under the Ptolemies is impressive and multifaceted. The traditional Egyptian hieroglyphic reliefs, wall-decorations, stelae and other kinds of short texts continue to appear in abundance, especially in temples and tombs, illustrating in great detail the indigenous religious and funerary traditions in which there is a large range of regional variation across Egypt. The demotic script of the Egyptian language, introduced in the seventh century BC, is also a medium for monumental texts on stone. The dominant themes here are the divinely sanctioned power of the royal dynasties, the importance of the priests of native religious cults, and the relationships of institutions and individuals to the various major and minor deities. These traditions continue throughout the Ptolemaic period, when building activity to enhance the temples of the native Egyptian deities was vigorous and vibrant.

Figure 2: Greek decree for a gymnasiarch named Boidas. From Thebes (Luxor) or Ptolemais. 221/180 BC.

3 After Alexander’s death, Greek appears in a relatively small number of civic inscriptions (figure 2) and alongside them, a large number of royal decrees, edicts, letters and other administrative texts. Many of these are displayed on large monuments, and alongside them there are very many dedications to the royal dynasties and to gods, and funerary stelae commemorating individuals. Among these, a significant number are bilingual versions in both Greek and Egyptian (or trilingual if we count the demotic script of the Egyptian separately from the hieroglyphic). The Rosetta Stone is the most famous example with Greek, hieroglyphic and demotic versions of a decree issued on behalf of King Ptolemy V in 195 BC (figure 3)

Figure 3: The Rosetta Stone. The famous trilingual decree which led to the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphic script.

That this was the key to the decipherment of hieroglyphs in the early 19th century is well-known, but the inscription also has great political importance in revealing the royal dynasty’s need to shore-up support in the native population by extending various privileges to the local

4 temples and priesthoods. More generally, the bilingual texts – of which the Kingston Lacy obelisk is a prime example – show the Macedonian dynasty and the elite Greek immigrant population responding to the need to present themselves effectively in a bi-cultural society (figure 4). Conversely, there is ample evidence showing that native Egyptians with ambitions to join the ‘ruling elite’ readily acquired the use of Greek language and Greek cultural habits.

Figure 4: Decree of a synod of priests from 39 BC, honouring Callimachus, a Greek official. Texts in hieroglyphic (between the carved scenes at the top), demotic and Greek.

5 The Corpus of Ptolemaic Inscriptions (CPI)

The investigation of the Kingston Lacy obelisk is part of a project to produce a new and up-to-date scholarly edition of all the Greek and bilingual/trilingual inscriptions on stone from Egypt in the period between the conquest of Alexander and the death of Cleopatra (332 – 30 BC). The collection of this material, much of it originally found and published in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and now numbering about 600 items, is based on work begun by the late Peter Fraser FBA (1918-2007). Geographically, the Corpus covers the entire Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, from Alexandria and the Egyptian Delta, through Fayoum, along the Nile Valley, to Philae Island, Edfou, Kalabsha, and other areas of Upper Egypt. The Corpus contains a range of inscriptional evidence, both Greek and Greek-Egyptian, bilingual and trilingual texts, on a wide variety of materials such as architecture, statuary, stelae and other types of stone monuments, and reflects almost every aspect of public and private life. It includes civic, royal and priestly decrees, letters and petitions, as well as royal and private dedications to kings and deities and pilgrimage notices, hymns and funerary epigrams. As is shown below, the new editions can benefit significantly from the application of up-to-date imaging technology which can allow us to see and to decipher damaged sections of inscriptions whose texts and secrets have not hitherto been revealed or have been imperfectly understood.

Further Reading

An accessible general account of the period can be found in G. Hölbl, A History of the Ptolemaic Empire (London, 2001). There is a very clear explanation, analysis and translation of the Rosetta Stone in R.B. Parkinson, W. Diffie, M. Fischer, R.S. Simpson, Cracking Codes: the Rosetta Stone and Decipherment (University of California Press, 1999). N. Lewis, Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt. Case Studies in the Social History of the Hellenistic World (Oxford, 1986) offers some good illustrations of the interactions between native Egyptians and Greek immigrants in a bi-cultural society. On the spread of Greek literacy see D.J. Thompson, ‘Literacy and Power in Ptolemaic Egypt’, in A.K. Bowman and G.D. Woolf (eds), Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 67-83.

6 2

The Greek Pharaohs Behind the Obelisk

Dr Kyriakos Savvopoulos

Almost every approach to Ptolemaic history begins with the epic expedition of Alexander the Great in the East and the subsequent creation of an empire stretching from the Ionian Sea to the Indian River. Soon after his death in 323 BC this empire was dissolved into independent kingdoms founded by Alexander’s generals, including Ptolemy, forming the so-called Hellenistic world. Throughout this new world numerous Greek cities were founded, including the great metropolis of Alexandria on the Mediterranean shore of the Nile Delta, where Greek civilisation met local traditions, creating a new multicultural way of life.

Building the Ptolemaic Dynasty

Egypt was a country with deep roots in history which, after a long period of decline, would become re-established as a powerful kingdom with widespread influence in the hands of the Ptolemies. The model of Alexander the Great as Pharaoh-emancipator was not only successful, but essentially the only way of controlling the Land of the Nile, with its highly conservative local traditions and institutions. This emphasis on the Pharaonic qualities of the Greek-speaking kings of Egypt was already instigated at the time of Ptolemy I Soter’s satrapy (322-306 BC), so even before his official declaration as king of Egypt, and it was to continue, with even greater intensity, throughout the Ptolemaic period (306-30 BC).

A key aspect of Ptolemaic policy was the development of an extensive programme of sacred building throughout Egypt, in both new and old religious centres, which could only be compared to the intensity of construction at the height of the Pharaonic period of the 18th and 19th Dynasties (1543-1187 BC). This building activity was often accompanied by financial support, necessary not only for the prosperity of the temples but also for the revitalisation of the wider economy of the kingdom. It is in this context of sacred building that we should see the monumentalization of the island sanctuary of Philae, where our obelisk first stood.

7 Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II and his Two Queens

The dynasty founded by Ptolemy I Soter, son of Lagos (hence sometimes called ‘the Lagides’, as an alternative to ‘the Ptolemies’), is characterised by major royal figures, many of whom left an indelible mark onthe history of the Hellenistic world. This owes much to their great works, but also to their particular personalities which, to us, can seem strangely contradictory: they were ostentatious and visionary, but also realist; they were patrons of the arts and sciences, but also mighty warriors, often with self-destructive tendencies; they were worthy successors of Alexander but also of the ‘eternal’ Pharaonic tradition. And, as was equally the case for Alexander as for Cleopatra VII, the last of the dynasty, such a combination of characteristics pushed the reputation of the Ptolemies beyond the limits of historical reality, towards legend.

Figure 1: Gold ring, thought to depict Ptolemy VI Philometor wearing the Double Crown of Egypt. Now in the Louvre.

8 Figure 2: Colossal head of a Ptolemaic queen in Egyptianising style, possibly Cleoapatra II. Now in the Alexandria Graeco-Roman Museum.

For the House of Ptolemy, the years between 176 and 116 BC not only represented a long period of co-rulership but also one of devastating conflict between three royal siblings: Ptolemy VI Philometor (figure 1), Cleopatra II (figure 2) and Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II (also known irreverently as ‘Physkon’, meaning ‘Potbelly’ on account of his appearance, (figure 3), all children and heirs of Ptolemy V Epiphanes and Cleopatra I. Initially Ptolemy VI, the older brother, reigned alongside his sister Cleopatra II to whom he was also married. Later, in 170/169 BC, his young brother, Ptolemy VIII was declared co-king, though in 164/163 BC he was obliged to leave Alexandria and did not really return to the capital before his brother’s death in 145 BC. On his return, Ptolemy VIII then married and shared the throne with his sister, Cleopatra II, his elder brother’s widow. In 141/140 BC, he took the unusual step of additionally marrying Cleopatra III, the daughter of Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II and so his own niece, with whom he ruled until his death in 116 BC. Therefore, the priestly petition on the Philae obelisk, addressed to Ptolemy and his two wives, Cleopatra ‘the sister’ (II) and ‘Cleopatra ‘the wife’ (III), as well as the reply of the king, both date to the period after king’s marriage with Cleopatra III.

9 Figure 3: Diorite head of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II, wearing the Double Crown of Egypt. Now in Brussels, Musée Du Cinquantenaire.

Ptolemy ‘the Malefactor’

Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II’s behaviour earned him the informal title ‘Kagergetes’ (‘the Malefactor’) among the Alexandrians, who frequently showed their preference for his older brother, Ptolemy VI Philometor, and Cleopatra II. In 131 BC the royal palace was even set on fire, causing Euergetes II to seek refuge in Cyprus until 129 BC. Examples of his cruelty include his murder of two royal children: the youngest son of Philometor was murdered in the arms of his mother Cleopatra II during the celebrations of marriage between the latter and Ptolemy VIII in 145/4 BC; and the fourteen-year old Ptolemy Memphites, Ptolemy VIII’s own son by Cleopatra II, was killed during the king’s second exile in Cyprus. After his murder, Ptolemy VIII sent the child’s mutilated head, hands

10 and legs to his mother on her birthday in 131 BC. The persecution of scholars and scientists in the Alexandrian Library, including Aristarchos of Samothrace and Apollodoros of Athens is also attributed to Ptolemy VIII after his first return to the capital.

Such acts were part of the long-term ‘civil war’ in the House of Ptolemy, which caused instability and social unrest throughout the kingdom. Peace and normality was finally restored after the public reconciliation between Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra II in 124 BC, and then sealed with an amnesty decree, in 118 BC. But Ptolemy VIII remains forever associated with the ultimate decadence of the dynasty and its eventual subservience to the new Mediterranean superpower, Rome. The stocky Ptolemy VIII even became an object of mockery among the Roman ambassadors in the city, under Scipio Aimilianus. When seeing him approaching, Scipio ironically commented that the Alexandrians benefited from the arrival of the Romans because it was thanks to them that the Alexandrians could watch their king walking!

Further Reading

Those who are interested in the lives and deeds of the members of the Ptolemaic dynasty are encouraged to read the classic E. D. Bevan, The House of Ptolemy: a History of Egypt under the Ptolemaic Dynasty, (Argonaut, 1968. Reprint of the original 1927 edition). For an updated and coherent history of Ptolemaic Egypt, see G. Hölbl, History of the Ptolemaic Empire, (Routledge, 2001). It provides a detailed account of all major political developments with extensive references to ancient written sources, accompanied by the analysis of key socio-cultural parameters, such as the ideology of the Ptolemaic kingship. P. M. Fraser’s Ptolemaic Alexandria, (Oxford University Press, 1972) comprises the most comprehensive historical approach to the capital of the Ptolemaic kingdom. For a complete catalogue of Ptolemaic sacred building activity in Egyptian style, see D. Arnold, Temples of the Last Pharaohs. (Oxford University Press, 1999). Finally, J. Mckenzie in The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt. c. 300 B.C. to A.D. 700, (Yale University Press, 2007), provides an overview of both classical and Egyptian architecture in the Ptolemaic period, with special interest in phenomena of ‘Hellenistic baroque’ style.

11 12 3

The Island-Sanctuary of Philae

Dr. Jane Masséglia

The Egyptian island of Philae, from which our obelisk takes its name, lies near the First Cataract of the River Nile, in Upper (southern) Egypt (figure 1). Long and thin, it measures only around 450 metres along its long north-south axis, and 150 metres across, so that the monumental complex which stands there, dominate the whole island. Skirted by high protective walls, it would originally have greeted the ancient traveller, fresh from navigating the nearby rapids, as an imposing site.

Figure 1: The location of the island of Philae

But a twentieth-century visitor to Philae before 1972 may have been surprised to see only the top half this once great religious site protruding from flood waters (figure 2). The construction of the Aswan dam by the British in 1902, and the High Dam (the Saad-el-Aali) by the Egyptians,

13 completed in 1971, created an artificial lake, which left the island inundated, and the stones at risk of erosion from changing water levels. The solution was a radical one: the Egyptian Antiquity Authority and UNESCO oversaw the block-by-block transportation of Philae’s historic monuments to the nearby, and higher, island of Agilkia, where they were reconstructed. The first stone was laid in its new resting place on 29th March 1977, and the extraordinary salvage operation was completed in 1980.

Figure 2: The monumental remains of the sanctuary at Philae, under floodwaters

Today, when visitors go to the ruins of Philae, the monuments they see are ancient, but the location is new. When, in 2014, the European Space Agency chose the name for the proposed landing site of Philae spacecraft, it was with pleasing symmetry that, from all the suggestions submitted by the public, they decided on ‘Agilkia’ as the destination of their particular Philae’s relocation.

14 The Island Sanctuary

The sacred character of Philae has a long history. The earliest of the colossal ruins date back to the seventh century BC and the Pharaoh Nectanebo, but the majority of the temple complex was constructed from the fourth century BC onwards, under the Ptolemies, a Greek-speaking family descended from Ptolemy I, a companion of Alexander the Great. Pride of place on the island was the Temple of Isis, built in the third century BC and dedicated to the Egyptian goddess of fertility and wife of Osiris (figure 3).

Figure 3: Plan of the original sanctuary at Philae, before its move to Agilkia

The enduring popularity of the goddess Isis into the Roman period saw several imperial additions to the sanctuary, including a Temple of the Emperor Augustus in 9 BC, relief carving, inscriptions and architectural additions over several centuries from emperors such as Claudius, Trajan, Hadrian and Diocletian. And even when the worship of Isis finally fell from favour, the island’s sacred associations endured: Coptic churches were built and existing buildings refashioned to serve a resident community of Christians. Under Islam, the character of Philae was refashioned again, as it was woven into legend and identified with the fortress of Uns al-Wujud, the love-struck hero from the Arabian Nights. Each of these communities left their marks on the sanctuary, not least with inscriptions.

15 It was in 1799 that Napolean’s Egyptian expedition also passed through Philae, leaving its own inscriptions, and brought the island to the attention of European visitors at a time when the Grand Tour was first becoming fashionable. Through the nineteenth (figure 4), twentieth and now into the twenty-first century, the sanctuary that stood at Philae has exerted a powerful pull on travellers to the Nile.

Figure 4: ‘General View of the Island of Philae, Nubia’ by David Roberts (1838)

The Location of the Obelisk

It can be hard to imagine, when accustomed to sight of the single obelisk at Kingston Lacy, in all its glorious isolation, its original, and very different setting on Philae. Most importantly, the obelisk was one of a pair, of which the famous obelisk was the eastern twin. Less well-known is a small fragment of the second obelisk, which was acquired by Bankes in 1822 and eventually brought to Kingston Lacy in 1829, which now lies in the grass behind its more famous companion. The base of this lesser- known obelisk today marks their original location: rather than being set against the sky, they stood with their backs to the ornate walls of the First Great Pylon (gateway) of the temple complex, flanking its central doorway, beside a pair of later, Roman pink granite lions (figure 5).

16 Figure 5: The original base of the Philae obelisk at Kingston Lacy, stands to the left of the First Great Pylon. Its twin, which stood to the right, is much damaged.

We know now that the rather generic hieroglyphic inscription and the Greek on the base of the eastern obelisk do not correspond exactly to one another. But when William John Bankes, heir to the Kingston Lacy estate, saw the obelisk during his visit to Philae in 1815, there was no way he could know this. Hieroglyphs had not yet been deciphered, and he hoped the obelisk, with its bilingual inscriptions, might act as a key. In that, he was correct, but not in the way he hoped.

Further Reading

Those interested in the history and archaeology oh Philae are encouraged to seek out the excellent Island of Isis: Philae, Temple of the Nile by William MacQuitty, with evocative photography by Betty MacQuitty. Published in 1976, the volume is, unfortunately, no longer in print, but good-quality, and reasonably-priced second-hand copies can be found online. The extraordinary rescue operation which saw the sanctuary’s remains moved wholesale to Aigilkia is also covered by the MacQuitties, but something of the original excitement of the enterprise can be gleaned from the short pamphlet, Philae Resurrected, published by UNESCO, and written by the former Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum, I.E.S. Edwards and his colleagues, not long after the project was completed. UNESCO have made this freely available online as a PDF: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001493/149362eo.pdf

17 18 Part II: The Obelisk in 19th Century

4

William Bankes and the Voyage of the Philae Obelisk

Dr Patricia Usick

In 1813, aged 26, William Bankes abandoned a potential parliamentary career and a leisured lifestyle as the heir to the rich Dorset estates of Kingston Lacy, for what was to become eight years of continuous travel in the Near East (figure 1). As the brilliant leader of a Cambridge University set that included Lord Byron, a close friend whom he hoped would join him abroad, Bankes had excellent Greek and a connoisseur’s taste in fine art. He was also a talented amateur artist and architect, redesigning Kingston Lacy in the Italian style with Charles Barry. Bankes’s passion for travel and exploration, often verging on recklessness, was matched by constant recording and speculation on everything he saw, from natural phenomena to ancient and modern sites.

Figure 1: Miniature of William John Bankes (1886-1855), by George Sandars, 1812.

19 The Napoleonic wars preventing a Grand Tour of Italy, Bankes visited Spain and Portugal in the train of the Duke of Wellington’s army, moving on to Egypt, where only a brief visit to the pyramids was planned. However, meeting the explorer Johann-Ludwig Burckhardt in Cairo inspired him to travel up the Nile into Nubia, then virtually unknown, aiming to discover the lost city of Meroe. Few European travellers had passed south of the First Cataract, the rocky barrier on the Nile and the gateway to Nubia.

A first Nile voyage in 1815, alone but for servants and his guide Giovanni Finati, took him as far as Wady Halfa, and Bankes made plans, views, and descriptions of the ancient monuments. Arriving at Abu Simbel just two years after its discovery by Burckhardt, he speculated on the colossal, half-buried statues, writing jokingly that he travelled with a retinue of servants in case ‘I choose to remove a Pyramid or the statue of Memnon’. He failed to remove ‘Memnon’, the colossal fallen bust of Ramesses II, despite having ‘brought with him a proper rope with pullies and machinery, for the purpose’, but it was on this voyage that Bankes noted a fallen inscribed obelisk at the beautiful island temple of Philae.

He then travelled to Jerusalem and began a long journey, criss-crossing the area now Israel, Syria and Jordan, then through Greece, sometimes alone, sometimes with like-minded companions. Returning to Egypt in 1818, he made up a travelling party with Henry Salt, the British Consul General, accompanied by a team of artists and draughtsman who would record hundreds of ground-plans, views, and inscriptions on the Nile voyage towards Meroe.

Figure 2: A view of Philae temple, by Linant de Bellefonds

20 Hieroglyphs were not yet deciphered but intense study, under Jean- François Champollion in France and Thomas Young in England, was beginning to decode the script and language. Young asked Bankes to make accurate copies of hieroglyphic inscriptions and to search for the broken sections of the Rosetta Stone, a stela which carried the same inscription in three scripts, one of which, Greek, could be read. Equally exciting new discoveries were being made in Egypt by the theatrical strongman turned excavator, Giovanni Belzoni, including the magnificently decorated tomb of Seti I. Bankes now hired Belzoni to remove the Philae obelisk, whose ownership was also claimed by Salt’s rival in collecting antiquities, the French Consul Drovetti (figure 2). Unfortunately, despite Belzoni’s expertise, the obelisk proved too heavy for the pier built in order to load it onto its boat, and Finati recorded that ‘the pier, with the obelisk, and some of the men, took a slow movement, and majestically descended into the river’. Belzoni wrote that Bankes, who was not present, ‘said that such things would happen sometimes; but I saw he was not in a careful humour himself.’ Finati put it more bluntly: ‘Mr Bankes said little, but was evidently disgusted by the accident’. Fortunately, it was eventually re-floated and began its long journey back to Kingston Lacy, although its pedestal became stranded in the middle of a cataract until it was rescued some four years later.

Bankes’s party never reached Meroe. They were forced to turn back at Sai Island when their camels were stolen, the local ruler refused help, and Salt became ill. Returning home in 1819, now celebrated as ‘the Nubian explorer’ whom Byron described as having ‘done miracles of research and enterprize’, Bankes commissioned his artists, Linant de Bellefonds and Alessandro Ricci, to make that voyage in his absence. Linant reached Meroe and beyond, and a vast portfolio of drawings from Sinai, Siwa Oasis, and his Nubian voyage were brought to Kingston Lacy.

The obelisk, fêted by The Times as the ‘first ever brought to England’, arrived in London in September 1821, having been shipped from Alexandria (figure 3). The Duke of Wellington arranged for it to travel to Dorset on a converted gun carriage. Bankes was ecstatic: ‘I believe that I never can consent to remove so fine a monument out of the sight of the House’. Although Egyptian antiquities were then viewed as curiosities rather than fine art, obelisks had aesthetic prestige, having been incorporated into the art and architecture of ancient Rome. Bankes fastidiously experimented with a thirty-eight-foot fir-trunk to find the most

21 effective position for it in the grounds (figure 4). The Duke of Wellington laid the foundation stone in 1827, but it was not finally placed on its pedestal with a base of granite steps brought from Maharraqa, Egypt, until 1830.

Figure 3: A measured drawing Figure 4: Bankes’s designs for of the four sides of the obelisk, the ornamentation of his obelisk by George Scharf, 1821 Bankes’s own plans to publish his travels and his discoveries were put off while he rebuilt Kingston Lacy and filled it with fine art, was re-elected to Parliament, and generally enjoyed his high social position. He wrote to Byron of publishing that ‘I am always thinking of it & from a strange mixture of indolence and industry always deferring it’. This did not prevent his irritation as his former travel companions produced their own books. Instead he edited his dragoman Finati’s travels (thereby also his own) and privately circulated lithographs of his obelisk and its inscriptions, entitled ‘Geometrical Elevation of an Obelisk from the Island of Philae’.

As in many of his discoveries, Bankes’s recognition of the name Cleopatra in hieroglyphs on his obelisk owed more to his careful observation and inspired deduction than hard study. Bankes found the name of Cleopatra twice in Greek on the base of his obelisk and compared the hieroglyphic version correctly with the name of Cleopatra preceding King Ptolemy in

22 both Greek and hieroglyphs on the temple at Qus. He was then furious to think that Champollion had, without permission, used his annotation about this on one of the lithographs to identify the name Cleopatra. Bankes never made a serious linguistic study of the subject himself, but hoped that his inscriptions would uncover the history and chronology of Egypt. Despite removing the fallen obelisk, he spoke out against damaging intact monuments, and his collection of antiquities is important, but small. In 1833 Bankes was accused of consorting with a soldier in a public convenience for immoral purposes. There was a trial and Bankes, supported by the Great and the Good, was acquitted. But when in 1841 he was arrested by a policeman in compromising circumstances with a guardsman in Green Park, his lawyers advised that he immediately flee Britain. With sodomy a capital offence, Bankes was officially outlawed and lived out the rest of his days in exile, based in Venice. From there until his death in 1855, aged 69, he continued to acquire and commission exquisite paintings, sculpture, and furnishings to embellish a house which he himself could no longer enjoy.

Figure 5: The south front of Kingston Lacy with the Philae obelisk on the lawn

23 His remarkable record of monuments and sites, later damaged or lost, was forgotten by succeeding generations, so that for many years, the obelisk, standing proudly on the lawns, may have been the sole visible reminder of its owner’s obsession with exploration and discovery, and his passion for ancient Egypt (figure 5).

Further Reading

Readers wishing to find out more about William Bankes’s life and travels can read P. Usick, Adventures in Egypt and Nubia. The Travels of William John Bankes (1786-1855), (The British Museum Press, 2002, out of print but available online). For more information on the creation of Kingston Lacy and Bankes as art collector, read A. Sebba, The Exiled Collector, (John Murray, 2004).

24 5

The Philae Obelisk and the Decipherment of Hieroglyphs

Dr Rachel Mairs

In 1815, when William John Bankes acquired the obelisk from Philae, Egyptian hieroglyphs had not yet been fully deciphered. Since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, in 1799 - with its trilingual text in Greek (which scholars could read) and Demotic and Hieroglyphic Egyptian (which they could not) - an international team of scholars had been at work on cracking the code of ancient Egyptian writing systems. These savants worked sometimes in collaboration, sometimes in rivalry, with each other. The most important early discovery came in recognising that the signs within oval ‘cartouches’ in the hieroglyphic text of the Rosetta Stone corresponded to the names of kings in the Greek text.

‘Cartouches’ and the Search for Names

On 10 February 1818, the English polymath Thomas Young (figure 1) wrote to Bankes, who was then travelling in Egypt, via his father, asking him to inquire after missing fragments of the Rosetta Stone. Although he did not know how the language sounded, Young was able to give Bankes the meaning of some important signs to look out for in hieroglyphic inscriptions: ‘The names of the deities are generally distinguished by a hunched or a sitting figure which follows them; those of the kings universally by an oval ring which surrounds them, preceded by a reed and a bee’. At the foot of the page, he drew several cartouches with royal names which he had already identified: Ptolemy, Berenice, Amenophis, and others. The bee and reed sign which Young identifies as the word ‘King’ is now read by Egyptologists as ‘nesu-bity’, the term for the King of Upper and Lower Egypt. (The letter from Young is now in the archives of the British Museum.)

25 Figure 1: Thomas Young (1773–1829), etching after an earlier portrait by Thomas Lawrence in the National Portrait Gallery

Champollion’s New Approach

Young was on the right track, but the real breakthrough came in 1822, with the publication by the French scholar Jean-François Champollion (figure 2) of his Lettre à M. Dacier in which he outlined his system for reading hieroglyphs. Champollion had recognised that the script did not just communicate meaning – as Young had proposed – but also represented the sounds of an ancient Egyptian language, a descendant of which was still used by members of the Egyptian Coptic church. Looking at a cartouche containing the name Ptolemy (‘Ptolemaios’ in Greek) on the Rosetta Stone, gave him the Egyptian signs which corresponded to the Greek letters and their sounds. The Rosetta Stone, however, only had one such name – Ptolemaios - preserved. The Philae obelisk had another name – Cleopatra – which gave Champollion sound values for several more hieroglyphs.

26 Figure 2: Jean-François Champollion, 1790-1832. Portrait by Léon Cogniet, now in the Louvre.

Collaboration and Controversy

The following year, in 1823, Young published his own Account of Some Recent Discoveries in Hieroglyphical Literature, starting a controversy over which scholar (and country) should be given credit for the decipherment – the English Young, or the French Champollion - which continues to the present day. Young pointed out that Champollion’s observations on the names on the Philae obelisk developed from preliminary steps taken by him and others. Although Bankes did not publish his own studies of Egyptian hieroglyphs, Young makes it clear that he has benefitted greatly from access to the texts collected by Bankes in Egypt, and by his discussions with Bankes. Bankes had circulated lithographs of the obelisk among his friends, and in the margins of some of these he had marked his reading of the name ‘Cleopatra’. It is impossible to tell if one of these reached Champollion and influenced his own reading – but

27 some, including the British Consul-General in Cairo, Henry Salt, claimed that it had, and that Champollion was guilty of stealing Bankes’ idea and claiming it as his own.

The decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs was a collaborative venture – whether those engaged in it wished to collaborate or not. Although Champollion and the Rosetta Stone deservedly gain the credit for the most important breakthrough, contributions were also made by Thomas Young, William Bankes – and the Philae Obelisk.

Further Reading

For a lively and readable account of the process by which hieroglyphs were deciphered, see Lesley and Roy Adkins The Keys of Egypt: The Race to Read the Hieroglyphs (London, 2001). Andrew Robinson has written biographies of both Young and Champollion, to which readers can turn to explore the rivalry between the two scholars: The Last Man Who Knew Everything: Thomas Young, the Anonymous Polymath Who Proved Newton Wrong, Explained How We See, Cured the Sick and Deciphered the Rosetta Stone (London, 2007) and Cracking the Egyptian Code: The Revolutionary Life of Jean-Francois Champollion (Oxford 2012).

28 Part III: The Obelisk in the 21st Century

6

Shining New Light on the Philae Obelisk: New Research with RTI

Dr Lindsay MacDonald, Dr Charles Crowther and Benjamin Altshuler

The Philae obelisk, with its Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions, has stood in the grounds of Kingston Lacy estate since the 1830s, exposed to the Dorset elements. By 1887, a German visitor to Kingston Lacy, Ulrich Wilcken, noted regretfully that the painted Greek inscriptions on the upper register of the obelisk plinth were no longer visible and had evidently fallen victim to the rigours of the English climate. The coincidence in 2014 of a renewed interest in the inscriptions and the anticipated landing of the ESA Philae spacecraft on Comet 67P/ Churyumov–Gerasimenko encouraged us to re-examine the obelisk and its inscriptions in the hope of recovering traces of the lost texts, which Bankes had originally deciphered ‘by different lights, mirrors, and also by the light of torches’, using two new technologies, Reflectance Transformation Imaging and optical 3D scanning (described by Andrew Cuffley in ch. 7), which would at the same time create digital models of the obelisk for future preservation.

Reflectance Transformation Imaging

The main imaging technique that we used was Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI). RTI combines multiple still images, captured from a fixed camera position with a moving light source, to construct a digital model of surface details which can be manipulated on the computer screen to reveal difficult-to-read features.

29 In anticipation of the landing on the comet on 12th November, 2014, the National Trust constructed a scaffold platform around the obelisk in late September (figure 1). The team from the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents (CSAD), in Oxford, carried out the photography over a two- week period running into early October. Because the structural supports of the scaffolding obscured the side of the obelisk plinth on which the Greek texts were inscribed, the team had to return to Kingston Lacy in April, 2015, to complete photography of all the inscriptions.

Figure 1: Scaffold platform enclosing the obelisk.

We photographed each of the faces of the obelisk shaft in a series of overlapping vertical sections, with three image levels for each platform stage of the scaffolding, using a high-resolution digital SLR camera fitted with a 50 mm macro lens. The camera was mounted on the scaffolding supports with a field of view of c.110 cm, spanning the full width of the obelisk (figure 2). We captured a set of approximately 50 images at

30 each fixed camera position, illuminating the obelisk with a camera flash operated through a remote trigger, moved systematically in a series of arcs one metre from the surface of the obelisk.

Figure 2: Photographic team (Sarah Norodom, Ben Altshuler) at work, with the camera clamped onto a scaffolding pole.

The camera sensitivity was kept constant (ISO 125 and the lens aperture at f/11), and most of the imaging was done at night. Due to time constraints and weather conditions, however, some imaging had to be done during the day, and dark tarpaulins were fastened around the sides of the scaffolding to block out direct light. We placed reflective spheres (black billiard balls!) on either side of the obelisk to record the angle of the flashlight for each shot. The image sets were then processed with dedicated image builder software, which combined the images, calculating the direction and intensity of each light source, to allow the results to be viewed interactively on screen (figure 3). The team could then study the inscriptions by moving an artificial ‘sun’ into any position over the obelisk. In this way, the optimum light and shadow conditions could be created to reveal even the shallowest surface details.

31

Figure 3: Screen shot of RTI viewer, showing the obelisk’s cartouche of ‘Cleopatra’.

Refining the Results

With so many images taken from different positions and in changing conditions, it was a challenge to ensure that they were all aligned precisely to create a seamless whole that could be studied by the team. The surface orientation of each point in the image was calculated by a ‘shape from shading’ technique, which uses the intensity gradations in images corresponding to several lights from known positions to infer the surface profile. With red indicating the horizontal, green the vertical and blue the depth, surface orientations were encoded in characteristic ‘false colours’ (figure 4). This information was combined with the surface orientations of the points from the 3D scanner (see p.??), and lined up with the two parallel channels which the ancient sculptors had carved along the vertical length of the obelisk to frame the hieroglyphic cartouches, giving a high degree of accuracy, at a resolution of 5 pixels/mm.

32

Figure 4: Surface orientations, encoded in false colour, showing the two conspicuous vertical channels flanking the central cartouches.

The power of the technique can be clearly seen by comparing three views of the same detail, all rendered by the RTI viewer software (figure 5). With the light source directly above the surface, the details appear very flat and lacking in contrast. When it is moved to the upper left, illuminating the surface at a raking angle, however, the contours and incisions of the granite surface become clearly defined. The effect can be further exaggerated in the ‘specular enhancement’ mode, removing the mottled colour of the granite and giving the impression of a coating of gloss varnish.

Figure 5: Three views of a detail on the east face of the obelisk, showing: (left) illumination from viewing direction; (centre) illumination from upper left; (right) specular enhancement mode.

33 New Light on the Inscriptions

RTI photography of the obelisk has enabled the CSAD team to verify previous readings of the hieroglyphic text and of the Greek inscription on the lower register of the plinth the letter addressed by the priests of Isis to Ptolemy and the two Cleopatras (see p??). No photograph of the Greek inscription has previously been published, and the best record of the Greek texts until now has been a drawing by the great German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius, based on Bankes’ own copy and a personal collation in 1839 (see figure on page 51). We found Lepsius’ copy of the inscription on the lower register to be as accurate as we had expected, although we were able to correct two minor details of reading in the Greek text.

Recovering the two texts on the upper register of the plinth, which record letters of Ptolemy and the Cleopatras to the priests at Philae and to a royal officer named Lochos, has proved more difficult. These texts appear to have been painted on the surface of the granite in red lettering rather than fully incised. Bankes presumed that the red paint acted as a base layer for a finish in gilt lettering. By the time of Wilcken’s visit, the paint on the upper register had entirely vanished. Even so, we hoped to detect traces of at least lightly incised outlines for the lettering on the RTI scans. In this we have been partly successful. The RTI picked up probable traces of lettering in at least one area, on the lower left of the upper register, where the outline of an ‘Ε’ (epsilon) appears to be followed after an interval appropriate for one letter space by a ‘Ρ’ (rho); the concatenation of these traces suggests that they are not random surface abrasions (figure 6). They might correspond to the first and third letters of the farewell formula (in Greek, ΕΡΡΩΣΟ) in the last line of the Ptolemies’ letter to Lochos (text B). With further analysis of the scans we hope to be able to recover more of the original text.

34

Figure 6: possible traces of lettering on the upper register of the base

Further Reading

The multi-light imaging technique, known as reflectance transformation imaging (RTI), was first developed in 2001 by Tom Malzbender, a researcher at Hewlett-Packard in California, and has become widely used in the cultural heritage community for visualisation of objects with surface relief. A helpful publication is available for download from English Heritage: https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/ multi-light-imaging-heritage-applications Richard Lepsius presented his research on the Philae obelisk at a meeting of the Royal Society of Literature in London in 1839, an account of which was published, with Bankes’ translations of the Greek inscriptions, in The Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres on 4th May and can be downloaded from: http://www.csad.ox.ac.uk/CPI/Lepsius.pdf. Ulrich Wilcken described his visit to Kingston Lacy, where he was hospitably received by Ralph Bankes, in a paper published in the Leipzig journal Hermes. Zeitschrift für Klassische Philologie in 1887. Winter visitors to Kingston Lacy may sympathise with his account of the weather conditions in which he examined the obelisk (‘in heftigen Sturm und Regen’).

35 36 7

Tales from the Scaffold: the RTI diaries

Excerpts from the site diary of Sarah Norodom, a member of the Oxford University team who scaled the seven-metre obelisk to capture its inscriptions

Day 1: Monday 29th September 2014

Our first day at the obelisk has certainly been filled with surprises – some more welcome than others. While the team in charge of the scaffolding had done an admirable job of making a sturdy, reliable construction, we’ve realized that we need to dismantle some of the scaffolding directly encircling the obelisk, otherwise it will appear in our shots. One of our first team expeditions has been a trip to the Lewes hardware shop, which proves that, sometimes, a high-tech project needs low-tech equipment!

It was decided that imaging at night would get us the best results. Driving into Kingston Lacy tonight was quite the experience. Apart from the light coming from the night guardian’s room in the house’s upper stories, it was a bit darker than we were entirely comfortable with as we crossed

37 the (carefully landscaped) woods to reach the obelisk. But we had a great view of the house from the obelisk, seeing Kingston Lacy in the moonlight.

We also discovered that the product used to clean the obelisk seems to attract strange winged insects to its surface, which also posed a problem for our RTI captures. A broom was also added to our growing collection of low-tech instruments, and doubled as a measuring stick - which shows that for RTI in the field, no tool is too humble.

Day 2: Tuesday 30th September 2014

An early start at the obelisk today. We attracted curious looks, marching towards the obelisk armed with Ben’s special RTI suitcase on wheels, tripods, handfuls of wrenches, and a broom.

It also turns out that, just next to the Obelisk, another team is also trying to uncover part of Kingston Lacy’s history – albeit in a more traditional way - looking for 17th-century garden tools. It’s wonderful to think our work is divided by thousands of years, but only a few metres.

38 Day 3: Friday 3rd October 2014

We discovered today that morning lie-ins and late starts do not go unpunished by the RTI gods. The midday sun began to cause problems, introducing too much light into our captures. After some creative “sowing” (read “duct-tape”), we managed to piece together two black tarps, just large enough to block out the worst of the light. Now we have to constantly rearrange them as the sun moves!

Day 4: Tuesday 7th October 2014

Our very last day at the obelisk. A return to real life, where we don’t roam the grounds of a stately home at night. We say our goodbyes to the grounds staff, who are probably relieved to get some of their wrenches back, and to the fearsome Kingston Lacy guard dog that loves biscuits and tummy rubs. Next time we come back, it’ll be to celebrate the launch of the Philae Lander.

The Oxford-UCL RTI team comprised Ben Altshuler, Sarah Norodom, Uxue Rambla Eguilaz, Dr Charles Crowther and Dr Lindsay MacDonald.

39 40 8

3D-Scanning the Philae Obelisk

Andrew Cuffley

The use of full field 3D Metrology is widespread in industry because it can provide a complete digital representation of an object, which can then be used for quality control purposes, or to preserve its details in a storage archive. It was the desire to preserve the details of the Philae obelisk in digital form that brought together the GOM UK team with a joint Oxford-UCL team, each using different imaging techniques to capture and enhance the surface details of the monument.

Selecting the Equipment

The 3D scanning process used by GOM UK requires the camera sensor to be presented to the object in a controlled way, and the careful preparation of the object and the environment in which it will be scanned is vital. In the case of the Philae obelisk, where scanning was conducted on an outdoor scaffold in the British climate, it was inevitable that the results were not going to be as precise as those possible with this technology in ideal conditions. But they would be well within the requirements of the brief – to capture and preserve the surface details of the obelisk especially its hieroglyphic and Greek inscriptions.

The equipment chosen was the ATOS Compact Scan 5M. The sensor was mounted on a photography tripod to allow for good portability. This sensor has a pair of 5 megapixel cameras, and a high-power projector, selected for ease of manipulation on the scaffolding platform and for working at height.

Reference markers are small reflective dots that help the system identify measurement positions in space, and match up scans with adjacent ones. As the ‘interesting area’ of the obelisk (the inscribed sections) needed to be kept free from reference markers, they could only be placed on the

41 smooth outer sides. Fortunately, during an earlier site visit, it had been judged that the depth and distinctive markings of the hieroglyphs could be clearly captured.

Up the Scaffold

This type of scanning is usually done with two people, but due to the time restraints (including how long the scaffold could remain in place), it became a one-man operation. There was a series of small logistical challenges: the grounds of a stately home do not lend themselves well to the handling of sensitive metrology equipment. We were unable to get close to unload, and the sheer openness of the obelisk exposed the equipment to conditions that are unusual – the majority of applications are carried out in temperature-controlled laboratories or clean rooms. Since it was late September 2014 before we were able to start on the project, we were subject to the vagaries of Autumnal weather, and it was only in October that we were able to begin scanning.

Having determined the final approach, the sensor, laptop and stand were manhandled up to the higher reaches of the obelisk, to begin working from the top-down. It was a bright day, and so even using the most powerful projector available, we could not compete with the sun on the near-vertical surfaces at the top. To compensate, we had to start on the lower levels, using the scaffold to shield the sunlight. It took around 30 minutes to place the reference markers, by hand, over the whole length of all four sides. The scaffold position was not strictly centred, and so it was often quite a stretch to reach over to the obelisk. The sensor, too, needed to be recalibrated – doubtless due to being bundled up the platforms by ladder. A photograph taken of the final set-up shows the rose granite of the obelisk, the ATOS sensor pointing its blue light across the stone, with the marker points just visible and, in the background, the processing laptop and a corner of Kingston Lacy itself (figure 1).

Each stage required a number of different views to get the required overlap between scans, as well as the vertical transitions between floors. In a controlled environment it is easy to periodically check the completeness of the data, but when out in the field, it is often best to over-measure. The GOM ATOS V8 software package we used has been especially designed to cope with this kind of surplus imaging, without damaging the quality of the final result.

42 Figure 1: The ATOS Sensor capturing a segment of the obelisk

Coping with the Weather

In general, the weather held until, from absolutely nowhere, the heavens opened (figure 2).

The rain and wind presented various problems, but the sensor was deliberately left on, to reduce risk of damp build-up, and efforts were concentrated on providing as much shelter as possible to the exposed electrics. Tests performed ahead of the project to check that reference markers would adhere in wet conditions, suggested that they would be unaffected – and this proved to be the case, for when it became possible to continue measurement, there were no misalignment issues.

43

Figure 2: The English weather draws in

As we headed into the gloom of early evening, the moment came to look at the very top of the obelisk. Again, the scaffold placement made it quite awkward to find good positions for the sensor. But it was important that the high quality of the scans was maintained. There are settings that can be adjusted to ‘assist’ in challenging environments, but the risk of picking up a flawed scan, and not finding out until later, was considered unacceptable.

Working with the Scans

At the final count, the individual scans numbered in excess of 400. Bearing in mind that each scan potentially carried 5 million measurement points, the computer did very well to complete the initial processing. After briefly checking to ensure that everything had been acquired, the equipment was packed up and taken back to our headquarters in Coventry. The data was further processed to remove any irrelevant information, and then reduced to give a dataset that fully preserved the obelisk’s form (figure 3) while still being small enough to be properly manipulated on a standard computer.

44 The scans of the obelisk were aligned using key measurements from the plinth, and presented to the team at UCL using GOM Inspect (a free viewing package to allow users to view and manipulate scan data). An example, from the main shaft of the obelisk, shows the cartouche containing the hieroglyphs for the royal name ‘Cleopatra’ (figure 4).

Figure 3: A complete Figure 4: Snapshot of the captured 3D point cloud, data shown in ATOS software showing the main shaft of the obelisk

45 Success – and a return visit

The 3D-scanning of the Philae obelisk is quite some way from the usual high-end metrology for which the ATOS equipment is designed. The exercise proved, however, to be well within its capabilities, delivering a high-quality measurement of a complex object in testing conditions in a remarkably short time. Unfortunately, the inscription of the plinth could not be captured during the first imaging campaign since one of the lower scaffold platforms had been mounted directly in front of it. It was captured later, in March 2015, giving a permanent record of the Greek text (figure 5).

Figure 5: A complete 3D scan of the Greek text

46 9

New Translations of the Philae Obelisk Inscriptions

Dr Rachel Mairs & Prof. Alan Bowman

The imaging of the Philae obelisk at Kingston Lacy is part of a bigger research project at the Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents at Oxford University. The Corpus of Ptolemaic Inscriptions (CPI), aims to catalogue and translate all inscriptions containing Greek, from Egypt dating to the ‘Ptolemaic period’ (see p. ??). Here the CPI team presents new translations of both the hieroglyphic and the Greek texts inscribed on the Philae obelisk, based on readings made possible by Reflectance Transformation Imaging (see p. ??).

The Hieroglyphic Texts

‘Horus: the youth whose life on the throne of his father is pleasing, who succeeds in his acts, who is distinguished by birth because he appears with the living Apis. Two Ladies: who pleases the heart of the Two Lands. King of Upper and Lower Egypt: son of the Manifest Gods, whom Ptah has chosen, who brings forth the order of Re, living image of Amun, the beneficent god.

Great Isis, mother of the god, giver of life, lady of the sacred island, lady of Philae, lady of the lands of the south, ruler of the north, gathering tribute from the steps of Ra. The (two) sibling gods, the beneficent gods, the gods who love their father, the manifest gods, giving life, all strength, all health, all gladness of heart, like Ra, for ever and ever.

Golden Horus: whose might is great, Lord of the years of the Jubilee like Ptah-Tennen, King like Ra. Son of Ra: Ptolemy, living forever, beloved of Ptah, with his wife, the ruler, lady of the Two Lands, Cleopatra, the beneficent gods, with the crowns of Osiris Wennefer, true of voice, great god, lord of Philae, king of the gods, foremost of the sacred island, beautiful ruler in the towns and nomes, his father is the god Tatennen, beloved of the goddess Mut, all life, stability and strength, like Ra, forever and ever.

47 Horus, the youth whose life on the throne of his father is pleasing, the holy image of the King of the Gods, whom Atum himself has chosen. King of Upper and Lower Egypt: son of the Manifest Gods, whom Ptah has chosen, who brings forth the order of Re, living image of Amun. The beneficent gods, Amun-Ra, Osiris, king of he gods, lord of the thrones of the two lands, foremost of Iput, who causes to prosper what is in the lands of Horus, beautiful image in the two sanctuaries of the great Aten crossing the sky, earth, the underworld, the water, the mountains, judging those therein, great god, lord of the sacred island, giver of victory, lord of all strength, on the throne of Horus, at the head of the living, forever.

Horus: The youth, overlord of the nine peoples, son of Osiris, born of Isis, who has received the kingdom of Re form the hand of his father. Son of Ra: Ptolemy living forever, beloved of Ptah, the beneficent god, set up two obelisks to his mother Isis, giver of life, lady of Philae, the holy place, on the sacred island in this place, which is beautiful through her. May her heart be pleased with what he has done.’

Unlike the Rosetta Stone, where the Greek, Demotic and Hieroglyphic texts are translations of one another, the two inscriptions on the Philae obelisk do not say the same thing. The hieroglyphic inscription, as befits the obelisk’s place in an Egyptian temple, depicts Ptolemy VIII as pharaoh, with titles and epithets which had been used to describe Egyptian kings for thousands of years.

Divine Honours

The full Egyptian royal titulary consists of five parts: the Horus name; Two Ladies (named after two patron goddesses); Golden Horus; the throne name; and the personal name. These elements appear in different combinations on the Philae Obelisk. On one face, Ptolemy VIII is named ‘Horus: the youth whose life on the throne of his father is pleasing, who succeeds in his acts, who is distinguished by birth because he appears with the living Apis. Two Ladies: who pleases the heart of the Two Lands. King of Upper and Lower Egypt: son of the Manifest Gods, whom Ptah has chosen, who brings forth the order of Re, living image of Amun, the beneficent god.’

48 There is little in these titles that would have been surprising to Egyptians of earlier periods, and Ptolemy’s depiction as a traditional Egyptian pharaoh is typical of the representation of Greek and later Roman rulers in formal hieroglyphic inscriptions. The only elements which betray the fact that this is a Greek, not an Egyptian, king and his consort are the Greek names ‘Ptolemaios’ and ‘Cleopatra’, spelt out phonetically in hieroglyphs, and the references to ‘the sibling gods, the beneficent gods, the gods who love their father, the manifest gods’, who are the ancestors of the royal couple. The majority of the hieroglyphic inscription consists of royal titles and the names and epithets of Egyptian gods. It concludes: ‘Ptolemy living forever, beloved of Ptah, the beneficent god, has set up two obelisks to his mother Isis, giver of life, lady of Philae. ... May her heart be pleased with what he has done.’

Looking the Part

The Kingston Lacy obelisk, and its twin, made a strong visual statement of Ptolemaic authority and respect for the gods. The hieroglyphic inscription complements this. Few people, however, would have been able to read it, even at the time when it was first erected. The hieroglyphic script had long been reserved solely for grand, official contexts. When Egyptian- speakers wished to write for everyday purposes (and only a very small percentage of people could read and write in the ancient world), they used cursive scripts: Hieratic and Demotic. Egyptian private and official documents of the period of the Philae obelisk were written in the Demotic script, which reflected a form of the language close to what people would actually have spoken, or in Greek. The Egyptian written in hieroglyphs, however, was a Classical stage of the language, very different to what contemporary Egyptians spoke and wrote. The composer of the text on the Philae obelisk sometimes forgets himself, and more modern touches creep in. Here and there he uses the definite article – the word ‘the’ – which Classical Egyptian does not have, but which the Egyptian spoken in the second century BC did.

Although the hieroglyphs were mute to most ancient and modern observers, the presence of this visually-striking script, with its royal and divine resonances, contributed to the grand statement Ptolemy and Cleopatra wished to make at Philae.

49 The Greek Texts

‘King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra his sister and Queen Cleopatra his wife, the Benefactor gods, to the priests of Isis, greatest goddess, in the Abaton and in Philae and of the Sibling Gods and the Benefactor Gods, and the Father-loving gods, and the gods Manifest, and the god Eupator and the god Philometor and the gods Euergetai, greetings. We have appended a copy of the letter we wrote to Lochos the Kinsman and strategos. We also grant you permission to carry out the erection of the stela which you have requested. Farewell. Year …, Panemos 2 (which is) Pachon 22.

King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra his sister and Queen Cleopatra his wife, to Lochos their brother, greetings. We have appended for you a copy of the petition given to us by the priests of Isis in the Abaton and in Philae.You will do well if you instruct that no-one burden them in respect of each of the matters about which they make representation, just as they ask. Farewell.

The priests of Isis, greatest goddess, in the Abaton and in Philae to King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra his sister and Queen Cleopatra his wife, the Benefactor gods, greetings. Since those who visit Philae, the strategoi and the superintendents and the thebarchs and the royal scribes and and the chiefs of police and the other officials and the accompanying functionaries and the rest of their entourage compel us to provide entertainment for them against our will and the consequence of such behaviour is to weaken the temple and to put us in danger of not having the appropriate resources to carry out the sacrifices and libations on behalf of you and your children, we ask you, greatest gods, if you approve, to instruct Noumenios the Kinsman and secretary to write to Lochos, the Kinsman and strategos of the Thebaid not to burden us with these things and to order that no-one else does the same, and to give us the appropriate decisions concerning these matters, including permission to erect a stela on which we will inscribe the beneficence you have shown us concerning these matters in order that your generosity to her will ever be remembered for all time in her [sc. Isis’] domain and if this comes to pass we and the Temple of Isis will be benefitted in these matters. May you have good fortune.’

50 A transcription of the Greek text, made at the time the obelisk was transported to Kingston Lacy, by Karl Richard Lepsius, a pioneering Prussian Egyptologist

51 There are three legible Greek texts, with a total of 42 lines, on the base on which the obelisk stands. The lowest one, containing a petition from the priests of Isis is carefully carved in fine large capitals. The two above it are painted, first the response of the monarchs to the priests’ petition and below that the rescript of the monarchs to the governor of the region in which Philae was located. It is especially interesting that the Greek texts on the obelisk are of a very different character from the hieroglyphs in tone, presentation and content, with a substantial emphasis on the practical administrative matters relating to the Temple of Isis and its priests at Philae.

First of all, the monarchs are presented in terms which are very different from the traditional pharaonic modes of representation. From the start the Ptolemies had developed in Egypt a dynastic system which emphasised the closeness of the royal court and family, on the one hand preserving some of the characteristics of Greek/Macedonian monarchy from which it sprang, on the other adapting the titles and court structure to underpin its stability and coherence in the context of the indigenous Egyptian population which it ruled. So, like the pharaohs, the monarchs were ‘gods’, but also in the case of Ptolemy VIII (and his ancestor Ptolemy III) ‘Euergetai’ (‘Benefactors’) of the people. The coherence of the family was clearly signalled too. There were two Queens in this period (between 124 and 116 BCE), both named Cleopatra, Ptolemy VIII’s sister-wife and his neice-wife. The cult of the royal house was embedded in the priestly establishment at the Temple of Iisis at Philae, so the priests were not only priests of Isis but also of the divine monarchs, who carried the epithets Adelphoi (‘Brother-Sister [gods]’), Euergetai (‘Benefactors’), ‘Philopatores’ and ‘Philometores’ (‘Father-’ and ‘Mother- loving’), ‘Epiphaneis’ (‘Manifest’). These, and similar elements, continued to appear in the royal titles until the very end of the Ptolemaic dynasty with the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BCE.

A second significant feature is the profile of the high- and middle-ranking local administrative officers who appear in the Greek inscriptions: there are strategoi (literally ‘generals’ but with civil, not military, functions), epistatai (quasi-chiefs of police), thebarchs (regional governors) and royal scribes. These would have been people of high status, mostly of Greek ancestry but sometimes upwardly mobile indigenous Egyptian elites or products of mixed marriages. The person to whom the monarchs were asked to address their orders is Noumenios, the epistolographos

52 (royal secretary) and he in turn communicated with a man named Lochos, the strategos of the Theban area; both of them have the court title of ‘Syngenes’ (‘Kinsman’), one of a hierarchy of such titles, unique to Ptolemaic Egypt, which were invented also to emphasise the integrity of the Greek ruling elite in the royal house.

Third, the point of the Greek dossier, in contrast to the Egyptian text, is practical as well as publicly symbolic. There are three separate documents inscribed here. First in chronological sequence, though at the bottom of the inscribed surface, is the request from the priests to the monarchs asking for protection for their temple against financial burdens placed on it by the various administrators and officials in the region, deploying the common and expected argument that these practices damage the temple’s capacity to celebrate the appropriate rites for the gods and the royal house. At the head of the inscription is the response from the monarchs agreeing to the priests’ request and to the publication of their decision in the form of the erection of a stela (i.e. this obelisk) with the words: ‘We grant you the right to set up the stela, as you request …’. This is followed by a copy of the royal letter directly to the strategos, Lochos, instructing him to implement their decision: ‘You will do well therefore to order, just as they request, that no-one vexatiously burden them …’.

The importance of the Kingston Lacy obelisk and the messages it conveys both in monumental and in written form is very great: as representation of the character of the Greek-Macedonian monarchy in the Egyptian tradition and as a statement about the political importance of protecting the Egyptian cults, particularly that of Isis; and as a demonstration of the ways in which different messages are conveyed in different languages and images in a bi-cultural society.

Further Reading

On the languages and scripts of Ptolemaic Egypt, see R. B. Parkinson Cracking Codes: The Rosetta Stone and Decipherment (Berkeley, 1999).

53 54 10

The Philae lander of the Rosetta Cometary Mission

Prof. Ian Wright and Dr Judith Pillinger

Comets

Comets, or rather their ‘tails’, are the largest features of the Solar System that can be observed by the naked eye. It seems inevitable, therefore, that ever since humans were sentient enough to contemplate the natural world around them, they will have witnessed cometary apparitions in the night sky. In more recent times comets have become the subject of scientific enquiry, although there is still much to be learned about their make-up. Whilst observations by the ancients and medieval astronomers often amounted to little more than guesswork, the use of telescopes equipped with spectroscopic equipment has enabled study at different wavelengths, which has improved the level of knowledge and continues to provide new data and insights.

In detail, a comet’s tail is, in fact, a very diffuse collection of molecules and particles. The body that actually produces the tail can never be observed from Earth because it is too small (a few kilometres in size, compared to the millions of km of the tail). To study the cometary ‘nucleus’ it is necessary to go into space and travel right up to it. This was the incentive for the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission. In March 2004, a rocket blasted off from the spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, carrying the spacecraft destined for an encounter with a comet. The spacecraft was named by scientists to reflect their aspirations that the mission would unlock the secrets of the Solar System just as the Rosetta Stone led to our understanding of hieroglyphics. Rosetta was heading for comet 67P/Churyumov – Gerasimenko, named after the astronomers who first observed it. The spacecraft would catch up with the comet

55 and travel in orbit around the body as it hurtled towards the Sun allowing detailed analyses of the nature and activity of the comet. Attached to the outside of Rosetta (figure 1) was a washing machine-sized landing module which would be released from the mother spacecraft and sent down to the surface of the comet to carry out in situ analyses. The lander was named Philae.

Figure 1: Artist’s impression of the Rosetta orbiter deploying the Philae lander to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

Journey to the Comet

Just as the Philae obelisk survived a tortuous journey from the Temple of Isis in the Nile, the Philae lander on the Rosetta spacecraft had to take a roundabout route as the Ariane 5 launcher did not have the capability to send the three-tonne Rosetta directly to the comet. So Rosetta spent ten years travelling around the inner Solar System, circling the Sun four times, entering the asteroid belt twice and gaining the necessary momentum from gravitational pushes provided by flying close to Earth three times, and once to Mars (figure 2). Finally, it went into a deep-space hibernation for two and a half years as it ultimately moved away from the Sun.

56 Figure 2: A self-portrait of Rosetta, with one its 14 m-long solar wings set against the northern hemisphere of Mars

Landing of Philae on the Comet

In 2014, as the spacecraft started its journey back towards the Sun, its internal alarm clock forced it to wake up and it then went on to rendezvous with the comet. At this point, instruments on board Rosetta imaged potential landing sites on the unknown surface. Closer images of the comet showed it to be an irregular and intriguing shape (figure 3), now thought to be the result of two comets colliding at low speed early in the history of the Solar System. On 12th November 2014, Philae was released from Rosetta and slowly fell down to the surface of the comet (figure 4). After some seven hours, it was confirmed that the lander had touched down on the chosen site, appropriately named Agilkia. Failure of the various mechanisms to anchor the lander to the nucleus, however, resulted in Philae bouncing around in the extremely low gravity, touching

57 down three times before coming to rest in a rather unsuitable, shaded, region. Despite being in a less-than-favourable location, where the solar panels were unable to gather sufficient charge, instruments on board Philae were able to work for the initial planned sequences.

Figure 3: Figure 4: Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Image of the Philae leaving Rosetta on taken on 7th December 2015. 12th November 2015, showing details of the lander, including the deployment of the three legs and of the antennas.

What Philae Has Told Us About Comets

One of the ten instruments on Philae that were provided by European institutions was designed and built by the Open University (figure 5). The instrument was named Ptolemy, after the king identified in cartouches found on both the Rosetta Stone and the Philae obelisk, and which proved vital in the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Further recognition was given to Thomas Young’s contribution to understanding the Rosetta Stone by naming the experimental procedure after the elastic property for which the polymath is remembered: MODULUS. Although Philae’s drilling mechanism was unable to collect material directly from the surface, the energy of the impact at Agilkia was sufficient to kick up dust from depth. Some of this entered the instrument and was serendipitously analysed. Ptolemy was also able to sniff the gases being released by the natural processes of comet evolution, as had been planned all along.

58 Figure 5: The Ptolemy Instrument

End of the Mission

In September 2016, the Rosetta spacecraft will join its lander on the surface of the comet as the mission will end with a recently agreed touchdown on the surface. This will yield yet more exciting data as Rosetta moves closer and closer to its target. But in addition, it is hoped that Rosetta will have a really close up look at the Philae landing sites and, with luck, may take one more image of the lander itself.

Further Reading

The European Space Agency (ESA), has produced a brochure on the Rosetta Mission and an animation of its journey to the comet. Both are freely available online: http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/ publications/BR-321/ http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2013/10/Rosetta_s_twelve- year_journey_in_space

59 Image Sources

The Power of Inscriptions in Ptolemaic Egypt Prof. Alan Bowman All figures © The Corpus of Ptolemaic Inscriptions, CSAD, University of Oxford

The Greek Pharaohs Behind the Obelisk Dr Kyriakos Savvopoulos Figure 1: Wikimedia Commons Figure 2: © Kyriakos Savvopoulos Figure 3: © DEA / S. VANNINI/De Agostini/Getty Images 182132424

The Island-Sanctuary of Philae Dr Jane Masséglia Figure 1: © Jane Masséglia Figure 2: © alamy.com 24724157 Figure 3: After A. Roccati, I templi di File (Rome, 2005), fig. 6 Figure 4: Wikimedia Commons Figure 5: © Kyriakos Savvopoulos

William Bankes and the Voyage of the Philae Obelisk Dr Patricia Usick Figure 1: © National Trust Photographic Library/Derrick E. Witty Figure 2: © National Trust Photographic Library/Richard Pink (or is it rather from here: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O146287/ile-de- philoe-island-of-watercolour-linant-de-bellefonds/) Figure 3: © National Trust - NT/D/BKL V.A.14 FIgure 4: © National Trust - NT/D/BKL (XXI.F.37] Figure 5: © National Trust - NT/D/BKL (V.B.2)]

The Philae Obelisk and the Decipherment of Hieroglyphs Dr Rachel Mairs All figures via Wikimedia Commons

60 Shining New Light on the Philae Obelisk: New Research with RTI Dr Lindsay MacDonald, Dr Charles Crowther and Benjamin Altshuler Figure 1: © Lindsay MacDonald Figure 2: © Lindsay MacDonald Figure 3: © Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents Figure 4: © Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents Figure 5: © Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents

Tales from the Scaffold: the RTI diaries Sarah Norodom Figure 1: © Lindsay MacDonald Figure 2: © Lindsay MacDonald Figure 3: © Charles Crowther

3D-Scanning the Philae Obelisk Andrew Cuffley All figures © Andy Cuffley and GOM UK

New Translations of the Philae Obelisk Inscriptions Dr Rachel Mairs & Prof. Alan Bowman Transcription of Greek text by Lepsius: from Lepsius, R. Denkmäler aus Agypten und Athiopen. Geneva

The Philae Lander of the Rosetta Cometary Mission Prof. Ian Wright and Dr Judith Pillinger Figure 1: © ESA–C. Carreau/ATG medialab Figure 2: © ESA/Rosetta/Philae/CIVA Figure 3: © ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 Figure 4: © ESA/Rosetta/MPS for OSIRIS Team PS/UPD/LAM/IAA/SSO/ INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA Figure 5: © Simon Sheridan

61 62 Index

Alexander the Great Bankes, William John Belzoni, Giovanni Byron, Lord Cleopatra II Cleopatra III Champollion, Jean-François Comet Corpus of Ptolemaic Inscriptions (CPI) Demotic script Egyptian language Egyptian royal titles European Space Agency Hieroglyphic script Isis Island of Philae Lander Sanctuary Spacecraft Linant de Bellefonds, Louis Maurice Adolphe Obelisk: original location; transportation; installation at Kingston Lacy Philae: island; lander Ptolemy I Soter Ptolemy VII Ptolemy VIII Priests Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI Ricci, Dr Alessandro Salt, Henry Young, Thomas

63

The Philae obelisk, which today stands in the grounds of Kingston Lacy in Dorset, once stood in a small island sanctuary on the Nile. It was a key piece of evidence in the decipherment of hieroglyphs in the nineteenth century, and more recently inspired the naming of the European Space Agency’s Philae Lander, on its Rosetta Cometary mission. In 2014, a team of researchers from the University of Oxford, University College London and GOM UK came to Dorset with the ambitious plan to study the seven- metre obelisk from base to tip, using new technology to capture, preserve and read the inscriptions anew.

This book brings together historians and scientists to tell the story of the obelisk’s remarkable past, and reveal the results of this exciting new research.

space for bar code and ISBN