Aegyptus Redacta: The Egyptian Obelisk in the Augustan Campus Martius

Abstract

The obelisk that stands today in the Piazza Montecitorio in Rome, placed there by Pope Pius VI in 1792, had two previous “lives.” Quarried in Aswan, Egypt, it was brought down the Nile and erected in Heliopolis by Psametik II (r. 594–589 BCE). Nearly six hundred years later, it was shipped to Rome and set in the Campus Martius in 10 BCE by Augustus. Each act of appropriation added another layer of meaning to the monument, and it is through awareness of these “first lives” that we arrive at a fuller understanding of its later reuse and display.

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Molly Swetnam-Burland

Molly Swetnam-Burland received her PhD in classical art and archaeology at the University of Michigan in December 2002 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Getty Research Institute in 2007–8. She is currently assistant professor of classical art and archaeology at the College of William and Mary [Department of Classical Studies, the College of William and Mary, PO Box 8795, Williamsburg, Va. 23187-8795, [email protected]].