Luxor Obelisk

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   Luxor Obelisk
in Place de la Concorde

The Obelisk of Luxor is 23.50 meters high, approximately 230-ton monolith of granite . The Egyptian obelisk was built in the 13th century BC. At the time of Ramses II and was in the temple of Luxor until 1831 . It has stood on the Place de la Concorde in Paris since 1836 and is one of the monuments on the Ax historique between the Louvre and the Grande Arche .

history

Ramses II had it originally built in Thebes , where it flanked the passage of the pylon in the Luxor Temple with its counterpart . The counterpart is still in its original location on the east side of the passage. The obelisk was a gift from the Viceroy of Egypt , Muhammad Ali Pasha, who ruled from 1805 to 1848, to the French King Louis Philippe .

The transport from Egypt to France took three years and was the responsibility of Jean-François Champollion . The boat Luxor under the captain Raymond de Verninac Saint-Maur left Toulon in April 1831, sailed up the Nile in August 1831 , took the obelisk on board in December 1831 and went back down the Nile in December 1832. With this cargo it reached Toulon again in May 1833, and after traveling up the Seine the city of Paris (on the Cours Albert 1er / Cours-la-Reine ) in August 1834.

The Parisian architect Jakob Ignaz Hittorff from Cologne created a five-meter-high base for the obelisk. On October 25, 1836, the obelisk was erected on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Since April 13, 1937 , it has been classified as a Monument historique . The oldest monument in Paris received a 3.60 meter high pyramidion made of gilded bronze on May 14, 1998 , donated by Pierre Bergé .

nature

There is a 23.50 meter high and about 230 tonnes of heavy granite - Monolith (from syenite ) from the 13th century BC . The hieroglyphs attached around 1600 proclaim the glorious deeds of Ramses II.

literature

  • Todd Porterfield: The Obelisk on the Place de la Concorde. Post-Revolutionary Politics and Egyptian Culture . In: Wilfried Seipel (Ed.): Ägyptomanie. European imagination of Egypt from antiquity to today (= writings of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. Volume 3). Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna 2000, ISBN 3-85497-016-1 , pp. 62–82.
  • Labīb Ḥabašī: The immortal obelisks of Egypt. Revised and expanded new edition by Carola Vogel, von Zabern, Mainz 2000, ISBN 3-8053-2658-0 , p. 89ff.

Web links

Commons : Obelisk of Luxor  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ L'obélisque de la Concorde . On: egyptos.net ; last accessed on July 5, 2017
  2. ↑ Entry No. PA00088875 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French).
  3. ↑ Le mécénat - Art ( Memento of January 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), Fondation Pierre Bergé - Yves Saint Laurent

Coordinates: 48 ° 51 ′ 56 ″  N , 2 ° 19 ′ 16 ″  E