![]() ![]() Thus, in the year AD 166, under the joint rule of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, a centurion named Titus Aurelius Restitutus dedicated a pair of obelisks in Aswan, at the southern frontier of Egypt. Some, of more reduced size than their royally ordered counterparts, were in fact commissioned by influential private citizens with sufficient financial means. It is perhaps less well known that the erection of obelisks in the Roman Empire did not occur exclusively at the behest of the emperor. 4 Egyptian hieroglyphs could therefore be used-albeit exceptionally-in official inscriptions ordered by imperial authority, as an alternative to the two mainstream scripts (and languages) in which official texts were normally issued across the Roman Empire: Latin and Greek. AD 117–38) and now located in the Monte Pincio gardens, with inscriptions focused on the life, death, and deification of his companion Antinous. AD 81–96) and now in Piazza Navona, with texts celebrating the emperor and the Flavian dynasty, and the Barberini obelisk, carved by order of Hadrian (r. Two such inscribed Roman obelisks are known today: 3 the Pamphili obelisk, erected by Domitian (r. 2 The other, and probably the most intriguing kind, comprises obelisks with hieroglyphic inscriptions expressly commissioned and dedicated by Roman emperors, sporting texts composed for the occasion in Middle Egyptian-that is, the archaic, classical phase of the Egyptian language, which had fallen out of common use already in the second millennium BC but was traditionally still employed in Egypt, on account of its historical prestige, for monumental hieroglyphic inscriptions. The first type consists of uninscribed obelisks, valued for their mass and devoid of any kind of hieroglyphic inscriptions, with the most renowned example being the Vatican obelisk, now standing at the center of Piazza San Pietro. 1 But besides these ancient monuments, obelisks of two other kinds were erected by Roman emperors. When we think of Egyptian obelisks and ancient Rome, what immediately comes to mind are the large monoliths, inscribed with hieroglyphs, that the Romans relocated from Egypt to their imperial capital city, monuments that were already ancient at the time of their removal, having originally been erected by Egyptian pharaohs in the second and first millennia BC. Sunt enim gemini obelisci beneventani magno in pretio habendi.
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