OBELISK AT LUXOR, 
The Temple of Luxor, which was originally raised by Amunoph III. B.c. 1507, appears 
to have consisted of a hall of enormous columns, a quadrangle, and the original Sanctuary 
in the rear. Fifty years later, and after two intervening reigns, Remeses the Great 
made those striking additions — the great court, the propyla, the obelisks, and the colossal 
statues — which now collectively present one of the finest examples "of the best age of 
Egyptian architecture. 
Two stately Obelisks of red granite, profusely covered with hieroglyphics, admirably 
cut, and to a depth in many cases exceeding two inches, once stood before the sitting 
colossi which flanked the great entrance to the Temple; but the one on the right of 
the entrance has been removed by the French, and is now in the Place de la Concorde 
at Paris. “Being at Luxor,” says Wilkinson, “when it was taken down, I observed 
beneath the lower end, on which it had stood, the nomen and prenomen of Remeses 
II., and a slight fissure extending some distance up it; and, what is very remarkable, 
the Obelisk was cracked previous to its erection, and was secured by two wooden 
dove-tailed cramps: these, however, were destroyed by the moisture of the ground 
in which the base had become accidentally buried.” 
The four sides of the Obelisks are covered with a profusion of hieroglyphics, 
commemorating, by grandiloquent inscriptions, this work of Remeses the Great. Of 
one of these Champollion has given the following abbreviated translation: —“ The 
Lord of the world, Sun, guardian of truth, approved by Phra, has caused this edifice 
to be built in honour of his father, Amun-Ra; and has also erected these two great 
Obelisks of granite before the Ramseseion of the city of Amun.” 
The horizontal section of these Obelisks is not rectangular, their faces having a 
slight convexity: the object of this was probably to render the front inscriptions 
more distinctly legible, for, as these face the north-east they would, without this pre¬ 
caution, have been in shadow most of the day. If this were the motive, it shows the 
attention of the Egyptian Artists to local circumstances. M. Hittorf has supposed that 
the apices of the Obelisks were usually gilt: that they were gilt, or painted, or 
covered with metal, seems not improbable, for in ancient drawings on papyri the 
apex is distinguished by being black, while the side of the Obelisk is merely in 
outline. 
The Obelisk which has been removed required .a series of operations which employed 
five years, from July 1831 to October 1836, between its disturbance at Luxor and 
its erection in the Place de la Concorde at Paris; where it became the sixth object 
that has occupied or been prepared for the same spot within fifty years. A statue 
of Louis XV. was there during the old regime; a statue of Liberty (with the guillotine 
