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Construction
Construction of Sallustian obelisk
obelisk in Rome
- 1st century – 1st century CE
- Europe
Construction
obelisk in Rome
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
The Sallustiano obelisk (Italian: Obelisco Sallustiano) is an obelisk installed at the top of the Spanish Steps, outside the Trinità dei Monti, in Rome, Italy, in the District of the Campus of Mars. Historically, it was believed to be related to the Moon and its worship, giving it an alternative name, the Lunar Obelisk. It was erected in its present location in the 1780s by Pope Pius VI. It is one of the 18 (previously 19) obelisks, 12 of which date to antiquity, which presently stand in the City of Rome.
The Obelisk itself is a (now broken and reconstructed) monolith of Red Aswan Granite. It was intended to appear that this obelisk was dedicated to the 19th Dynasty Pharaohs Seti I and Rameses II who lived in the late 1200s-early 1300s BCE. It bears their Cartouches. Ammianus Marcellinus believed that the obelisk was imported to Rome after the reign of Augustus, though he does not specify the exact period. Others, however, suspect that Aurelian may have commissioned its carving in Aswan during the 3rd century and had it transported to Rome before the inscriptions were added. However, examination of the hieroglyphic writings on the faces of the obelisk indicate that it is an inaccurate Roman copy, although smaller, of the Flaminio Obelisk constructed for Rameses II now standing in the Piazza del Popolo. This is because the hieroglyphs were copied from the Flaminio Obelisk, but the glyphs are sometimes backward, upside-down or incorrectly copied in some other manner, suggesting it was Italian Craftsmen in Rome, who could not read hieroglyphs, who performed the copy.
The obelisk enters recorded history when it was erected in the Gardens of Sallust on the Pincian Hill, where it likely adorned the spina (central barrier) of the Circus Sallustianus, a private circus within the imperial gardens there. This is where it stood until the Sack of Rome in 410CE during the fall of the Western Roman Empire. It was toppled at some point and broken into three pieces (including its base) and remained discarded in the ruins of the house of Sallust, later a cane field, for several hundred years. It came into the possession of the Ludovisi family, in 1621, when the area where the Gardens of Sallust had stood were purchased by Ludovico Ludovisi. It was during this period that Athanasius Kircher noted the similarity between it and the Flaminian Obelisk, and suggested to Pope Alexander VII that it be re-erected.
In 1722, the family donated the broken monument to Clement XII, who restored and reunited the two pieces of the Obelisk's shaft, and ordered it moved to the Scala Sancta in the Piazza di San Giovanni in Laterano in 1734. It was kept horizontal, until it was re-erected in 1789 by Pope Pius VI by the architect Giovanni Antinori in its present location, and dedicated to the Holy Trinity.
The Monument was capped with a top-element in bronze, featuring a Latin cross, a star-burst, and a small pine cone. The Cross is reported to contain a fragment of the True Cross, and relics of Saint Joseph, Saint Francis of Paola, Saint Pius V, and the apostles Peter and Paul. These three elements are in turn mounted upon a Fleur-de-Lys, the heraldic symbol of the French King, as the monument and the church before which it now stands were funded by the Kingdom of France.
The Obelisk's original, monolithic, pedestal was rediscovered in 1843. It was in the Gardens of Sallust, where it had been buried, and was uncovered while removing a tree-stump. It was moved to the Villa Ludovisi and put away. Mussolini decided to make use of it in 1926 in order to construct a monument, an Altar, to those who had died during the 1922 March on Rome. It was named the Ara dei Caduti Fascisti and stood on the Capitoline Hill, between the Pallazzo Senatorio (Rome's City Hall) and the Church of Santa Maria in Ara Coeli. It was topped with a marble installation an engraved with a dedication. After the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy it was stripped of its marble decorations, inverted, and moved into a corner of the Campidoglio with its inscription facing against a Roman wall, in order to obscure the memory of its use as a Fascist memorial.
Translations of the rest of the Hieroglyphic text on the obelisk is a pastiche of the text engraved upon the Flaminio Obelisk.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Sallustiano obelisk”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.