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Uif$pcfmjtl$boe$uif$dsptt After a lapse of 150 years, obelisks made a comeback within Christianity when Constantine (274–337 AD) attempted to erect an obelisk, originally belonging to Tuthmosis III, in his new capital, Constantinople. However, the obelisk (Figure 2:13), which was taken from its location in Karnak to Alexandria on the orders of Constantine in preparation for its transport to Constantinople, was not in fact erected in the emerging centre of Christendom until the reign of Thodosius I (346–396).

Uninscribed obelisk in Piazza dell’Esquilino, Rome, Italy. 75 m (© Suzie Imperialist Appropriations of Egyptian Obelisks Figure 2:21 Uninscribed obelisk in Piazza del Quirinale, Rome, Italy. 64 m, 43 tonnes (© Suzie Maeder). 43 Figure 2:22 Uninscribed obelisk of Augustus, re-erected by Pope Sixtus V in 1586, in Piazza di San Pietro, Rome, Italy. edu). 44 Fekri A. Hassan Imperialist Appropriations of Egyptian Obelisks 45 Figure 2:23 Obelisk now in Piazza Navona, Rome, originally quarried from Aswan by order of Domitian, and hieroglyphs inscribed in Rome, Italy.

These have been possible largely because, with their emphasis on the ‘special’ character of Egypt, they have allowed little popular perception of the full interaction between the Nile Valley and other eastern Mediterranean societies during the Bronze and Iron Ages, or for that matter in Hellenistic and later times (Matthews and Roemer 2003). Such arguments, based on judgments about race (which few scientists would now recognize as any basis for identification), lead directly from traditional (most would agree outmoded) views about an Ancient Egyptian ‘race’, with its extended idea of the Nile Valley itself being colonized by a Mesopotamian ‘Master race’.