Obelisk of Theodosius

The Obelisk of Theodosius in Istanbul's Sultanahmet district is a 3,400-year-old Egyptian pink granite monument originally erected by Pharaoh Thutmose III around 1450 BC. Transported from Egypt and re-erected by Roman Emperor Theodosius I in 390 AD, the surviving 19-meter column features hieroglyphs celebrating Egyptian military victories and a base with conflicting Latin and Greek inscriptions detailing its challenging setup.

Istanbul · from the walk “Sultans, Spices & Hidden Streets” · audio ~3 min · Generated

Dikilitaş, At Meydanı Cd., Sultanahmet, Fatih, İstanbul

How did the ancient Egyptian Obelisk of Theodosius end up in Istanbul?

You are standing before one of the oldest objects in all of Istanbul... and one of the most traveled monuments on Earth.......... This needle of pink granite was carved from the quarries of Aswan in Upper Egypt over three thousand four hundred years ago. Pharaoh Thut-mose the Third erected it during the eighteenth dynasty, around fourteen fifty BC, at the great temple of Karnak. Each of its four faces carries a single column of hieroglyphs, celebrating Thut-mose's crushing victory over the Mitanni kingdom on the banks of the Euphrates River.......... Now, here's where the story gets wild. This obelisk originally stood about thirty meters tall... but look at it now. The lower portion was damaged, probably during transport, and today only about nineteen meters of the original stone remain. You're looking at roughly two thirds of a pharaoh's trophy.......... So how did a monument from ancient Thebes end up here in Sultanahmet? It took Centuries and multiple emperors just to get it across the Mediterranean. Emperor Constantius the Second first had it dragged down the Nile to Alexandria in three fifty seven AD, to celebrate twenty years on the throne. But then it sat abandoned at the docks... for over Thirty Years, because no one could figure out how to raise it. Emperor Julian even wrote a letter ordering the people of Alexandria to make sure it would still be shipped to Constantinople. It never happened in his lifetime.......... Finally, in three ninety AD, Emperor Theodosius the First accomplished what his predecessors could not. The first attempt to erect the obelisk actually Failed, which may explain why the Latin inscription on the base describes the task as... difficult.......... And here's a detail most visitors walk right past. The base carries inscriptions in Both Latin and Greek... and they don't quite agree! The Latin text claims it took thirty days to raise the obelisk, while the Greek inscription says thirty Two. Nobody knows which is true. The Latin side faced the emperor's box, while the Greek side faced the common spectators... each audience apparently got its own version of history.......... But the most dramatic secret is hidden in the stone itself. The name Proclus, the city prefect who supervised the erection, was actually Chiseled Off the base... then later restored. In three ninety two, Proclus fell from Theodosius's favor and was executed. His name was excised from the obelisk in an act of Damnatio Memoriae... but after Theodosius himself died, Proclus's reputation was restored, and his name was carved back in. If you look closely at the inscription, you can still see traces of where the letters were erased and recut.......... So this monument has been commissioned by a pharaoh, abandoned by Romans, broken, shipped across a sea, dropped, raised, politically censored, and then uncensored... and it is Still standing. Three and a half thousand years, and counting.

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