The Philae Obelisk Tales from Egypt, Dorset and Outer Space
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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.