7. “To Isis the Great, Lady of Benevento”: Privately Dedicated Egyptian Obelisks in Imperial Rome and the Twin Obelisks of Benevento Reedited
- Luigi Prada
Assistant Professor of Egyptology, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University - with an appendix by Paul D. Wordsworth
Associate Lecturer in Islamic Archaeology, University College London
[…] sunt enim gemini obelisci beneventani […] magno in pretio habendi.
—Luigi Maria Ungarelli, 1842
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.1 But besides these ancient monuments, obelisks of two other kinds were erected by Roman emperors. 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.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. Two such inscribed Roman obelisks are known today:3 the Pamphili obelisk, erected by Domitian (r. 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. AD 117–38) and now located in the Monte Pincio gardens, with inscriptions focused on the life, death, and deification of his companion Antinous.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.5
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. Some, of more reduced size than their royally ordered counterparts, were in fact commissioned by influential private citizens with sufficient financial means. 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.6 Neither of them survives, hence we do not know what these obelisks looked like and whether they were uninscribed or displayed any hieroglyphic texts.7 Nevertheless, the Latin inscription carved on the base of one of the two—which is all that survives of these monuments—makes it clear that these two obelisks (oboliscos duos, l. 4) were erected by Restitutus to Jupiter and at least another deity (the text is lacunose, but this must have been either Juno—as is most likely—or Isis) “[for] the health and victory of our emperors” ([pro] salute et victoria imp(eratorum) n(ostrorum), l. 2), seemingly a reference to their recent victory in the Parthian war.8
Luckily, there are also cases in which privately commissioned obelisks, and not just their pedestals, have survived into our times. In some instances they could be decorated with so-called pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions. Examples include a small obelisk now in Florence,9 which carries an incomprehensible text formed by a patchwork of phrases and individual hieroglyphic signs in most cases inspired by genuine earlier Egyptian inscriptions, and a fragment of another obelisk, this time in Benevento,10 in which the carvings intended to represent hieroglyphs are purely fanciful signs, having no actual direct resemblance or connection to the ancient Egyptian script.11 Less frequently, however, these private obelisks could also be decorated with meaningful hieroglyphic inscriptions, bearing texts expressly commissioned for the occasion, as a nonroyal counterpart to imperial commissions such as the Pamphili and Barberini obelisks cited above. The fragmentary Borgia and Albani obelisks and the much better preserved twin obelisks of Benevento belong to this remarkable category, and it is on these monuments that the present paper will focus.12 Before delving into a closer analysis of these monuments, however, a methodological issue needs to be addressed.
When it comes to ancient Rome’s interest in all things Egyptian, modern scholarship has typically traced a clear line between actual “Egyptian” antiquities that the Romans imported from Egypt (be they statues, reliefs, obelisks, or other artifacts) and “Egyptianizing” objects produced in Italy to emulate Egyptian products. Running in parallel to this classification, a similar distinction has also been drawn between those monuments that bear legible, meaningful hieroglyphic inscriptions and those that sport illegible pseudo-hieroglyphs. This is a classification imposed by modern scholars upon the ancient evidence, however, and would not have been necessarily valid in the eyes of the Romans. Recently Molly Swetnam-Burland has convincingly argued that such a rigid taxonomy can actually be misleading when trying to understand Roman interest in and approaches to ancient Egyptian culture and its artistic production, since it risks uprooting the objects from their historical context and therefore fails to grasp their cultural biographies.13 Thus, when dealing with Roman obelisks, we should not necessarily assume that monuments inscribed with legible hieroglyphic texts such as those of Benevento appeared intrinsically more Egyptian to a Roman audience than those covered in pseudo-hieroglyphs, like the Florentine specimen. No Roman citizen—and very few native Egyptians, to be sure—would have been able to read a hieroglyphic inscription, be it genuine or “gibberish,” and thus its value would have been primarily symbolic, through the connection that (pseudo-)hieroglyphs established with ancient Egypt and its traditions, real or perceived. It is therefore only apt that, when referring to a hieroglyphic text written on a papyrus scroll, Apuleius should use the phrase litterae ignorabiles, or “unknown characters,” in his novel of Isiac salvation.14
While accepting this framework, I would, however, argue that Roman obelisks inscribed with legible hieroglyphic texts—be they imperial or private commissions—still occupy a distinct place in the study of Roman aegyptiaca.15 Indeed, they invite us to push our criticism even further and to question the common equivalences often implicitly traced in modern scholarship between: (a) original Egyptian imports = legible hieroglyphs and (b) Egyptianizing monuments = pseudo-hieroglyphs. Since they were commissioned by Roman patrons and, at least in some cases, were carved in Italy (likely examples include the Borgia and Albani obelisks, discussed below, but also Domitian’s Pamphili obelisk),16 they have generally been regarded as Egyptianizing artifacts. Yet, rather than being covered in pseudo-hieroglyphs, they make a creative use of the ancient Egyptian language and script and thus attest to the evolution of Roman as much as of Egyptian royal ideology and religious thought: for the Roman emperor was ultimately also Egypt’s pharaoh, and the only individuals able to produce hieroglyphic inscriptions at the time were members of the Egyptian priesthood. These monuments thus operated simultaneously on two levels. Surely they held an immediate symbolic function associating them with Egypt and the perceived lore of its ancient traditions, as did any other Egyptianizing artifact. But on top of this they also communicated a specific, programmatic message in their inscriptions. In them, to quote Swetnam-Burland, there is no dichotomy between an Egyptian “creation” and a Roman “reuse”; nor is there a competition between a “symbolic” and a “literal” meaning: for their creation was simultaneously Egyptian and Roman, and their meaning was intended from the start to work on both a symbolic and a literal level.17
We must also remember that these obelisks’ inscriptions were not written purely according to the whimsy of Egyptian priests. Far from it, they were prepared following the instructions of their powerful dedicators, based at least in part on original drafts in Greek or Latin, and their preparation surely must have entailed a serious investment of money and time, which was bound to be much bigger than anything required for comparable aegyptiaca that were instead covered in gibberish inscriptions. Necessarily, the Roman sponsors of such inscribed monuments were therefore fully conscious of the specific meaning of the hieroglyphic carvings incorporated into their dedications and would have had an interest in advertising it. In fact, I even wonder whether the hieroglyphic inscriptions of these novel obelisks would have been made accessible to the Roman public, at least in some cases, by means of Latin translations. These need not necessarily have been published as accompanying epigraphs to the obelisks—something of which we have no evidence—but could have been easily circulated in other, more perishable forms, perhaps as opuscula. To be sure, we do know that at least one Greek version of the hieroglyphic inscriptions of an Egyptian obelisk dating to pharaonic antiquity and reerected in Rome by Augustus (r. 27 BC–AD 14)—the Flaminio obelisk—existed and was read in antiquity.18 If translations of the inscriptions of ancient pharaonic obelisks reerected in Roman Italy could be published and disseminated, mostly as an erudite curiosity, would it not make all the more sense to suppose that something alike was done for obelisks containing custom-made inscriptions immortalizing living figures—be they the reigning emperor and/or a private dedicator—who had an active interest in having the details of their Egyptian architectural feats known? After all, modesty and subtlety were not virtues in which the Romans of the imperial age excelled.
All of the above is what makes these artifacts both Roman and Egyptian from the very moment of their conception and thus objects worthy of investigation for the Roman historian and the Egyptologist alike. It is thus no surprise that inscribed Roman obelisks should attract special attention among scholars and that the detailed study of their inscriptions and the information carried therein should be a key component in their historical assessment. This is why I feel justified in singling out these artifacts as pertaining to a specific and indeed important class among aegyptiaca and in devoting a study to a particular subgroup among them—that of inscribed Roman obelisks dedicated by private individuals. So let us now discuss the actual specimens of this corpus, that is, the Borgia, Albani, and, in special detail, Benevento obelisks.
The Borgia and Albani Obelisks
These two red granite obelisks, of which only fragments survive, are preserved in museum collections in Palestrina and Naples (Borgia)19 and in Munich (Albani).20 According to their inscriptions—which, as expected, were drawn up in Middle Egyptian—they were both dedicated by the same individual, a Titus Sextius Africanus,21 but the badly damaged state in which they survive means that we can hardly say anything more about them, apart from the fact that they were probably erected in the first century AD in honor of an emperor whose name and titles partly survive in fragmentary cartouches. Scholars normally recognize this emperor as Claudius (r. AD 41–54), but this remains uncertain, as can immediately be seen from the transliterations and translations of the inscriptions.22
Borgia Obelisk
(Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Palestrina and Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli)23
Figure 7.1
Figure 7.2
Figure 7.4| Transliteration | Translation |
|---|---|
| [. . .] ˹nb˺ tA.wy sA nTr ˹QI˺[. . .] %bsts QA˹R˺[. . .] &its ˹%qs˺[ts] AprqAns saHa=f <sw> | […] the Lord of the Two Lands, the Son of the God, … […] the Augustus, … […]. (As for) Titus Sex[tius] Africanus, he erected <it> (sc., this obelisk).24 |
Albani Obelisk
(Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Munich)
Figure 7.5
Figure 7.7| Transliteration | Translation |
|---|---|
| [. . . K]˹Y%˺R% %bsts &its %qsts AprqAns sxn.n{.t}=f s(w) r [. . .] | [… C]aesar, the Augustus. (As for) Titus Sextius Africanus, he dedicated it (sc., this obelisk)25 … […] |
The name of Claudius has been reconstructed from the Borgia fragments, which bear at the beginning of their second cartouche the signs 
QA˹R˺[. . .]. In modern studies, these have typically been interpreted as Q˹L˺A[. . .] (the sign of the recumbent lion 
having both the phonetic value r and l), hence Claudius.26 In parallel, scholars have read in the Borgia fragments’ first cartouche only the sign 
i, typically understanding this ˹I˺[. . .] to be the beginning of the title autokrator (i.e., emperor).27
It was only recently that Elisa Valeria Bove highlighted that the top part of a 
q seemingly also survives in the first cartouche, which she thus read ˹QI˺[. . .] and considered to be a writing of Caius (hence assigning the obelisks to the reign of Caligula—r. AD 37–41—rather than Claudius) or, alternatively, of the generic imperial title Caesar.28 As for the second cartouche, she understood QA˹R˺[. . .] as A<W&>Q˹R˺[&R], that is, as part of a defective writing for autokrator.29 Indeed, Bove’s new epigraphic record of the Borgia fragments held in Palestrina is correct: as a new inspection of the section has confirmed, the reading ˹QI˺[. . .] in the first cartouche is indisputable.30 Nevertheless, I find Bove’s understanding of QA˹R˺[. . .] as a heavily defective writing of autokrator to be deeply unlikely. For all we know, and on account of the peculiar forms that Egyptian royal titularies can take in Roman inscriptions such as this, QA˹R˺[. . .] might, in fact, even pertain to an unusual writing of the title Germanicus.31 Overall, I think it is impossible to state with any degree of certainty which emperor was originally named in these cartouches, which is why I leave their content unread in my translation.
Similar uncertainty has also affected the understanding of the private dedicator’s name. Most interpreters agree on seeing in the inscriptions’ &its %qsts AprqAns a rendering of Latin Titus Sextius Africanus,32 but others have suggested transliterating the cognomen as PAlAqns and reading in it Palicanus, a name already attested in the epigraphy of Palestrina.33 Nevertheless, based on the order in which the signs most frequently occur on both the Borgia and the Albani obelisks, I am of the opinion that Africanus remains the preferable reading.34
Perhaps more remarkably, the very relationship between the two obelisks is uncertain. They were undoubtedly commissioned by the same patron (whose name appears, identically, on both monoliths) and carved in the same workshop (their epigraphy is the same). Since the fragments of the Borgia obelisk were unearthed in Palestrina (ancient Praeneste), however, while the Albani obelisk section is thought to originate from Rome, it has generally been assumed that they were not twin obelisks erected at the same site.35 This may well be the case, but I believe it is also possible that both were originally a pair in Palestrina and that one of the two was moved, in antiquity or later, to nearby Rome.36
The discovery of the Palestrina fragments in the area of the sanctuary to Fortuna Primigenia (and the known assimilation between this goddess and Isis) has also led a number of scholars to suggest a connection between these two obelisks and the cult of Isis.37 As attractive and plausible as this view is, it must remain, however, only a hypothesis, for sadly no mention of any Egyptian deity, let alone of Isis, survives in either of the obelisks’ inscriptions.
To complete this brief overview of the Borgia and Albani obelisks, a few words ought to be devoted to the nature of their hieroglyphic inscriptions. From an epigraphic viewpoint, they present a number of idiosyncrasies (recurrent inversions of signs and awkwardly shaped hieroglyphs—note especially the unusual width of the 
t sign in most of its occurrences) that are generally believed to be diagnostic of hieroglyphic inscriptions carved in Italy rather than in Egypt, by craftsmen who were not conversant with the traditional proportions of the signs that they were reproducing.38 Also remarkable are some peculiarities in the text of the inscriptions, like the choice of the unusual phrase sA nTr “the Son of the God” in lieu of the traditional pharaonic epithets used to introduce the cartouches,39 and some apparent syntactic oddities, such as the name of the dedicator being anticipated before a verb in the suffix-conjugation and (in the case of the Borgia obelisk) the absence of a direct object referring to the obelisk. In consideration of the poor condition in which both obelisks and their texts survive, it is hard to pass a firm judgment, and surely the perplexities of scholars who saw in these inscriptions a corrupt use of Middle Egyptian, influenced by the rules of Latin syntax, are in part justifiable. As I argued before, however, I do not share these perplexities,40 and I still believe that the texts of both obelisks can be explained in terms of standard Egyptian grammar (even despite the seeming omission of the direct object in the Borgia obelisk). Whatever our judgment of the linguistic quality of these inscriptions, their texts must have been composed by an Egyptian priest, after some general instructions in Latin or Greek prepared according to Africanus’s wishes. Said priest would have been the only available professional figure with a knowledge of Middle Egyptian, the archaic language phase traditionally used for such monumental inscriptions, and of the hieroglyphic script.41 I would therefore be inclined to ascribe any issues found in the inscriptions to the Roman carver(s) and their potential misunderstandings (and/or omissions) of the signs that they were meant to reproduce on the stone rather than to the Egyptian priest’s linguistic competence.
When it comes to the content of the texts of these obelisks, two defining elements stand out, despite their fragmentary condition. The first is the mention of the emperor, which almost certainly occurred in the context of a celebration of the reigning monarch.42 The second is the identity of the private patron who dedicated the obelisks, that is, Titus Sextius Africanus. As we will see shortly, these two elements are essential components in the inscriptions of privately dedicated inscribed Roman obelisks, and they both feature prominently also in the more complex texts of the twin obelisks of Benevento.
The Benevento Obelisks
These red granite twin obelisks probably stood in front of the Iseum of Benevento.43 Compared to the sorry state of the Borgia and Albani obelisks, they are substantially better preserved. One of them, traditionally labeled obelisk A, survives almost in its entirety, missing only its pyramidion, and now stands in a public square of Benevento, Piazza Papiniano. Its full shaft has been reassembled from five fragments,44 for a combined height of 4.12 meters; once its ancient stepped plinth (which is 0.77 meter high) and the modern pyramidion (0.5 meter) are also included, the total is 5.39 meters.45 Its twin, obelisk B, lacks the upper third of its shaft, including its pyramidion. The remainder has been reassembled from two fragments, reaching a combined height of 2.8 meters or, with the inclusion of its ancient plinth (which is 0.7 meter high), of 3.5 meters.46 It is now preserved in Benevento’s Museo del Sannio (inv. 1916).47 Since the original bases of both obelisks are preserved, it is interesting to note that neither shows any kind of inscribed dedication in Latin (or Greek).48 This is unlike the case of the Aswan obelisks dedicated by Titus Aurelius Restitutus, at least one of which bore a Latin inscription on its plinth, elucidating the reason for their dedication and the identity of their commissioner. The bases of the Borgia and Albani obelisks are not extant; hence we do not know how they would have compared.
Figure 7.8
Figure 7.9From their Middle Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions, we learn that the Benevento obelisks were erected as part of the construction of the city’s Iseum by a local notable, whose name was Rutilius Lupus,49 in the eighth year of the reign of Emperor Domitian, that is, in AD 88/89.50 They were dedicated to Isis in celebration of the emperor, seemingly to commemorate his successful return from a military expedition, if we understand the text correctly (more on this in the following commentary, note 10 to side 2).
These twin obelisks, or fragments thereof, have been known to scholars since the early days of Egyptology.51 The first full scientific treatment appeared shortly after the discovery, in 1892, of the top section of obelisk A, which finally restored this obelisk’s inscription to its original length and provided a complete text for these twin monuments. Thus, in 1893 Adolf Erman and Ernesto Schiaparelli independently published two studies of the inscriptions.52 The latter was unfortunately laden with mistakes both in the copying of the hieroglyphs and in the text’s translation—as pointed out by Erman in a later, expanded study of the obelisks—and is hence completely superseded.53 Instead Erman’s work—especially his second study, from 1896—is still consulted with profit to this day and in fact remains the only full philological treatment of the inscriptions of both obelisks available to date. Other complete translations of the obelisks’ texts have appeared since Erman’s, but in these cases scholars have generally preferred simply to translate the complete inscriptions of obelisk A, noting the few passages that diverge from those of B.54 Such translations have been produced by various authors, including Hans W. Müller,55 Michel Malaise,56 Erik Iversen,57 Ethelbert Stauffer,58 Vito A. Sirago,59 Rosanna Pirelli,60 Marina R. Torelli,61 Laurent Bricault,62 Kristine Bülow Clausen,63 and the present writer.64 In many cases, however, these and other authors—a number of whom were not Egyptologists but ancient historians—were unable or unwilling to engage directly with the original hieroglyphic texts and thus reproduced more or less verbatim earlier translations, relying mainly on those by Erman, Müller, Malaise, and Iversen, with varying degrees of success.65 The resulting situation, with multiple and significantly divergent published translations, many of which depend on secondary literature, has—understandably—engendered confusion and many a misconception as to the exact content of the inscriptions, contributing to the problems that we are still facing in making sense of them.
Perhaps the clearest example of such a potential for confusion concerns a problematic phrase found in the inscriptions, 
wDA ini, the interpretation of which can radically change our understanding of the text.66 Whereas Erman, Müller, and Malaise understand it as an allusion to the safe return of Domitian from a military expedition, Iversen instead sees in it a title of the obelisk’s dedicator, namely, an Egyptian rendering of the Latin word legatus. The two interpretations are mutually exclusive. Yet they can be found merged as if mutually compatible in later studies that depend on these scholars’ publications, which results in a complete misrepresentation of the ancient evidence.67 Nor is this the only problematic and disputed passage in the inscriptions: divergent readings, for instance, also impact the name of the dedicator, as we will see in the commentary below.
It is on account of such difficulties with the text and of the increasing interest that aegyptiaca (and Isiaca) like these obelisks are enjoying in present scholarship—among Egyptologists and scholars of the classical world alike—that I think it not only worthwhile but also necessary to offer a reedition of the inscriptions of these obelisks.68 This reedition provides a new standardized copy of the hieroglyphic text, a new translation, and, for the first time, also a transliteration of the Egyptian original (for the reader’s convenience, the transliteration and translation are offered again, as a continuous text, in appendix A). It draws together more than a century of relevant scholarship and its often wildly divergent interpretations of the inscriptions, sieves through these different layers of understandings (and misunderstandings), and offers a commentary that intends to be relevant and accessible to scholars from both academic backgrounds—Egyptology and ancient history—trying to make crucial issues of Egyptian language and epigraphy that directly impinge on the meaning of the text understandable also to nonspecialists.69 My ultimate aim is that such a study will clear the slate from a series of misconceptions about these monuments, present (and justify) the best possible readings, and clarify what we can understand for sure from the inscriptions and what instead remains problematic or hypothetical. Thus, it will hopefully become a platform for colleagues to engage with and from which to develop further studies on these unique obelisks.
Another contribution of this study is a new, improved epigraphic copy of the obelisks’ inscriptions, combined with detailed photographic documentation (for which, see appendix C). Originally my research took as a starting point Erman’s published facsimiles, which were derived from squeezes (paper molds) taken from the originals and had consequently always been assumed to be reliable epigraphic records.70 Indeed, none of the intervening studies since Erman’s time have ever looked again at the original epigraphy. In a good number of instances, however, it became apparent to me that his copies—albeit admirable for the time and circumstances in which they had been created—are inexact, something that I could definitively confirm when I inspected the obelisks in person. Thus, I have provided a new facsimile of the inscriptions (as an edited version of Erman’s), following a study of newly captured digital images and, most importantly, a collation with the originals. Specifically, I inspected both obelisks during a visit to Benevento in July 2020, having previously already examined obelisk B in August 2018, on the occasion of the exhibition Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.
While highlighting issues with Erman’s copy, this new epigraphic study has simultaneously confirmed, however, how valuable his and other historic documentation of these obelisks remain. First, it revealed that some of the details inaccurately reproduced in Erman’s facsimile—concerning both the inscriptions and the position of the fractures between the different obelisks’ fragments—are instead correctly registered in a much earlier copy, the first modern epigraphic record of the Benevento obelisks, which was published in 1842 by Luigi Ungarelli.71 Though itself not exempt from mistakes, this earlier record turns out to be at times more faithful to the original and possibly also to preserve details of the inscriptions that had become damaged or lost half a century later, in Erman’s time. Albeit long forgotten, Ungarelli’s copy is therefore still worth consulting.72 Second, this new epigraphic survey has also shown that both obelisks suffered considerable damage sometime during the twentieth century, I believe during World War II (through the heavy bombings to which Benevento was subjected and/or the occupation of the city by the Allies in 1943). Especially in the lower section of obelisk B (which, at the time, was standing outdoors in Piazza Papiniano, wrongly combined with the upper fragments of obelisk A), several and substantial parts of the inscriptions that were still extant in Erman’s time are, sadly, now lost.73 Nineteenth-century copies like Ungarelli’s and Erman’s therefore remain an irreplaceable asset to modern scholars.
To conclude, I offer here a few practical notes about the following reedition. Any particularly significant difference between Ungarelli’s and Erman’s copies and, more importantly, between Erman’s facsimile and my own will be discussed individually in the textual commentary. The reader will also find a systematic overview of such differences in appendix B, which, on the one hand, compares Ungarelli’s and Erman’s copies and, on the other, highlights the points of Erman’s facsimile that I was able to correct or improve upon. I made the conscious choice not to mark in my new facsimile damage that has occurred since the time of Erman, for this would have entailed the obliteration of a significant amount of epigraphic information, especially for obelisk B. My copy is therefore not a facsimile of the monuments in their present condition but rather a corrected and enhanced copy of Erman’s, closely documenting these artifacts in their end-of-nineteenth-century state. Any modern damage, however, is fully recorded and can be observed in the photographic documentation published here, which was taken at the Getty in 2017 (obelisk B) and in Benevento in 2020 (obelisk A). Such damage is also flagged, whenever appropriate, in the textual commentary.
My standardized copy of the hieroglyphic texts is the first published since Erman’s 1896 study. To assist the reader and intuitively show my interpretation of the inscription, the mutual positioning of some signs has been reordered, in those cases in which inversions or odd arrangements occur in the original. Whenever my standardized hieroglyphic transcription significantly disagrees with Erman’s, this is flagged in the commentary.
This reedition follows the traditional order in which the inscriptions have been numbered since Erman’s first study, moving clockwise around the obelisks beginning from the side containing the royal titulary of Domitian.74 This face is generally considered to come first, since its inscriptions are the only ones mirroring each other in terms of the orientation of their hieroglyphs, with obelisk A’s signs facing right and B’s signs facing left.75 All other sides have their inscriptions facing right, according to the preferred direction of Egyptian indigenous scripts. Indeed, I believe we can suggest a further, in this case ideological, reason why side 1 must have taken pride of place and faced the visitors who approached the temple: for it is the only face of the monoliths that names and celebrates exclusively the emperor, Domitian, while making no mention of the private dedicator, whose name instead appears, repeatedly but less prominently, on the other three sides of each obelisk.
Finally, while obelisk B is located in a museum and its sides are therefore not permanently related to the cardinal points, it is worth recording the approximate orientation of the faces of obelisk A, in its current setting in Piazza Papiniano. This is as follows: 1 = south side; 2 = west side; 3 = north side; 4 = east side.
Commented reedition of the inscriptions on the Benevento obelisks
Side 1
Summary
The focus is on the celebration of Emperor Domitian. It includes his full royal titulary in traditional Egyptian style, that is, his five names,76 followed by a reference to his military might as displayed by the tributes gathered in Rome from all over the empire and even from beyond its borders. The mention of his military feats may be either generic praise or a precise allusion to the emperor’s return from his Dacian and Germanic campaigns in AD 89.
Figure 7.10
Figure 7.11
Figure 7.12
Figure 7.13| Obelisk A (Piazza Papiniano)77 | Obelisk B (Museo del Sannio) |
|---|---|
| ↓→ @r Hwn n<x>t(?) <nb.ty> iTi ˹m sxm˺ bik nbw ˹wsr rnp.w(t)˺ aA nxt <nsw.t bi.ty> ˹AW˺&QR&R K%R% nsw.t bi.ty &˹M˺[&]IN% anx D.t xbi in(.w) m tA.wy xAs.wt m ntyy.w r iy.t=f n.t Xnw [!r]˹m˺ | ←↓ [. . .] ˹bik˺ nbw wsr rnp.w(t) aA nxt nsw.t bi.ty AW&QR&[R] K˹Y%˺R% sA Ra &M&IN% anx D.t xbi in(.w) m tA.wy xAs.wt m nDy.w r iy.t=f n.t Xnw !rm |
| The Horus “Str<o>ng(?) Youth,” <the Two Ladies> “He Who Conquers through Might,” the Golden Falcon “Powerful of Years and Great of Triumph,” <the King of Upper and Lower Egypt> Emperor Caesar, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Domi[t]ian, ever-living, he who collects tribute from the Two Lands and the subjugated foreign countries to his sanctuary(?) of the capital city, [Ro]me. | […] the Golden Falcon “Powerful of Years and Great of Triumph,” the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Empero[r] Caesar, the Son of Re Domitian, ever-living, he who collects tribute from the Two Lands and the subjugated foreign countries to his sanctuary(?) of the capital city, Rome. |
Notes
(1) n<x>t(?): The text has nt, which makes no sense. As Domitian’s Horus name appears in his Pamphili obelisk, side 1, as 
Hwn qn “Valorous Youth,”78 most interpreters have quite radically emended our inscription’s nt 
into qn 
,79 a reading that has the additional advantage of connecting Domitian’s Horus name with that of earlier Ptolemaic rulers, confirming a link observed elsewhere in his titulary.80 Overall, the royal titulary of Domitian as it appears in the Pamphili and Benevento obelisks is, however, significantly different; hence there is no reason to consider the Pamphili obelisk’s version as a necessary parallel here. Neither is yet another variant to this Horus name, Hwn nfr “Perfect Youth” (found in Domitian’s titulary in the temple of Dush), particularly helpful.81 Another reading proposed in earlier scholarship suggests understanding our nt as a writing of nt(r) < nTry “Divine,” but this must certainly be excluded on account of phonetic reasons and of the determinatives accompanying this word, 
, which clearly describe an adjective connected with the ideas of strength/conflict.82 I therefore prefer tentatively to read these signs as n<x>t, for this has the advantage of being a substantially less invasive emendation than qn, while still matching the concept expressed in the determinatives (qn and nxt are, in fact, virtual synonyms).83 Note that elsewhere in these inscriptions, nxt appears in the shorter writings 
(below in both A/1 and B/1) and (A/3).
To be sure, yet another reading could alternatively be proposed: tn (< Tni), meaning “Distinguished/Honored (Youth).” This suggestion has the advantage of requiring hardly any emendation to the original text: the mutual position of the two signs would simply be inverted, nt in lieu of tn, and such accidental inversions can occur in these obelisks’ inscriptions. The verb Tni is not normally associated with the determinatives found here in our inscription, however, which is why I ultimately consider this interpretation unlikely.84
(2) <nb.ty>: An accidental omission in A, contra Jürgen von Beckerath, who considers the following iTi m sxm as still part of Domitian’s Horus name, thus implying that his Two Ladies name was completely omitted from the inscription.85
(3) iTi ˹m sxm˺: This phrase, “He Who Conquers through Might” (despite the damage, m sxm is clearly recognizable in the writing 
), is already found in the titulary of earlier sovereigns, both Ptolemaic (as in the Two Ladies name of Ptolemy I Soter and the Horus name of Ptolemy X Alexander) and Dynastic (as in the Golden Falcon name of Amenhotep II).86 In Roman times the preparation of the royal titulary of the ruling pharaoh would still have been the prerogative of members of the Egyptian priesthood.87 It is thus unsurprising that its authors would often take inspiration from—or even reproduce—earlier titularies, be they of Ptolemaic or even Dynastic date (see also note 4 to this side below).
(4) wsr rnp.w(t): Though damaged in A, the phrase is preserved in B, with a fuller writing of wsr. The same Golden Falcon name is attested for Ramesses II (wsr rnp.wt aA nxt.w).88
Note that a clear crack affects this section of obelisk A on all its four inscribed sides. This was left virtually unmarked in Erman’s copy, no doubt due to an accidental omission, which also led him to erroneously state that obelisk A was broken into four, rather than the actual five, fragments.89 The same crack is instead clearly marked in Ungarelli’s earlier copy, though for only three out of the four sides, namely, A/2–4. This is the reason why his copy inaccurately renders wsr rnp.w(t) here in A/1 as if intact: surely this was not the case, as confirmed by Georg Zoëga’s earlier copy, the first one ever published of the Benevento inscriptions, in 1797.
(5) <nsw.t bi.ty>: Another accidental omission in A (but correctly present in B). Certainly no text was lost in the lacuna caused by the crack affecting the obelisk at this point,90 since the top curve of the cartouche is still preserved just above the crack itself, underneath the arm-with-stick determinative (as is partly visible in Erman’s drawing and, much more clearly, on the original).
(6) K˹Y%˺R%: While obelisk A writes K%R%, obelisk B must have used the alternative spelling KY%R%, as can be reconstructed despite the lacuna. Indeed B shows the bottom end of three vertical strokes here, on the lower edge of the crack. In Erman’s facsimile only one such stroke is recorded, and there are none in Ungarelli’s earlier copy. All three are certainly original and not the result of later damage, however, for they were already marked in Zoëga’s copy. These three lines can only be the remainders of two reeds and a tall s, to the left of which would have stood the now missing final r of the preceding title AW&QR&[R], probably as a mouth-seen-sideways sign or even as a small standard mouth, thus: 
or 
(in context: 
or 
). Given the space available in the crack, which is quite limited, the signs in this sequence ys must have been carved rather small and compact (similar but even somewhat smaller than they are in the writings of the name Rwtl(y)ys in A/2–3 and B/4). Curiously, apart from omitting the traces of the three vertical strokes, Ungarelli’s copy shows this title as if still fully preserved in his time, in the writing 
K%R%. Clearly this cannot have been the case, and Ungarelli must have restored this passage based on A’s version. This suspicion is confirmed by a number of other inaccuracies that affect his copy in this area; see, for example, the excessive width of k and the presence, above it, of the second r of AW&QR&R, which are both contradicted by the original.
(7) nsw.t bi.ty: Obelisk A wrongly inserts this phrase before Domitian’s birth name, in lieu of the expected sA Ra, which is instead correctly given by B. Note also the modern damage to the t underneath the bee sign (absent from and likely postdating Erman’s copy).
(8) &˹M˺[&]IN%: Judging from the size of the lacuna in A, the lost sign was a flat one, namely 
di/ti (as in A/3–4 and B/4). The child sign 
was clearly absent, as suggested both by the lacuna’s size, which is too small to accommodate it and, more importantly, by the fact that this is the sole occurrence in both obelisks in which n and s appear together in the cartouche as 
. In all other writings of Domitian’s name in these obelisks, only one or the other sign appears in this plain form, and it does so always in combination with the child sign, that is, as 
or 
.
The hieroglyphic rendering of Domitian’s name as it appears in the Benevento obelisks is unparalleled.91 The first part, &mti, is unproblematic: it uses signs with values commonly attested in Ptolemaic and Roman times. As for the second half, the child sign is used interchangeably, with the phonetic value n (in A/4 and B/1–2) or s (in A/2–3, B/3 [with 
above it lost in lacuna], and B/4), both of which are commonly attested for this sign.92 Finally, the moon crescent sign 
has troubled a number of interpreters of this writing of Domitian’s name. Erman already considered it to stand for i,93 which is indeed the correct reading (through association with Greco-Roman writings of the name for the lunar god Thoth as i, for example, 
).94
(9) xbi in(.w): Both the translations “he who collects” and “he who collected tribute” are possible. This phrase was misunderstood by the early editors of these obelisks; its correct reading was established only in later studies.95
(10) tA.wy: Written as two small squares in A, 
, the reading is elucidated by the clearer writing in B, 
. Iversen understands ns.ty “the two thrones,”96 but this reading is to be excluded, also on account of another occurrence of these square signs here in A/1, in the noun Xnw (written with the place name ITi-tA.wy: see note 13 to this side below).97
As observed in previous scholarship,98 the mention of the Two Lands, a traditional name for Egypt in pharaonic inscriptions, can here be understood to designate not simply Egypt but also—from a Roman Weltanschauung—the entirety of the empire.
(11) m ntyy.w/nDy.w: Literally, “as subjects.” The standard spelling is nDy, but A shows a slightly different phonetic writing for it, ntyy, as well as an odd layout of the signs, with n placed at the end, rather than at the beginning, of the word (the word is much clearer in B, but problems with its writing clearly occurred here too, since the preposition follows the noun: literally, nDy.w m). This is a well-attested phrase, particularly in connection with xAs.wt, as in our obelisks.99
Traditionally designating the foreign, desert lands outside the Nile Valley—as opposed to tA.wy—in our case the subjugated xAs.wt can be reconceptualized as the territories beyond the Roman Empire’s borders. A number of interpreters understand this mention of gathering tribute from the empire and the enemy territories outside it not as a generic formula celebrating Domitian but as a specific reference to his return from his Dacian and Germanic campaigns in his eighth year, the same year when the obelisks were dedicated.100 As Frédéric Colin remarks, however, this must remain only a hypothesis, for this phrase concerning the gathering of tribute and the subjugation of foreign lands is a standard topos of pharaonic propaganda, which need not necessarily be tied to specific historical events.101
(12) iy.t: A problematic word, written consistently in both obelisks as 
, which past interpreters have either left untranslated102 or generally understood as designating Domitian’s imperial palace in Rome, mainly on account of the house determinative 
and of the use of the possessive “his.”103 In fact, a word iy.t is known from other sources to indicate not the royal residence but a sanctuary in the Egyptian city of Letopolis.104 This sanctuary included a cult of Osiris-Apis, and its priesthood might have enjoyed close connections with that of the Serapeum in Memphis.105 If this is the word intended in our obelisks, iy.t should therefore refer to a sanctuary here too, with the inscription perhaps alluding to a temple built or expanded by Domitian in Rome. It is tempting—but perhaps too far-fetched—to think of this sanctuary as the Iseum Campense, which in the ancient sources is associated with a Serapeum (it is simply labeled so, for example, in the Forma Urbis Romae) and which Domitian reconstructed following a fire in the year AD 80.106
Alternatively, if iy.t does not refer to a temple, one may understand it as an aberrant writing of either: (a) the noun iw(y).t/iwA(y).t “house, city quarter” (also “sanctuary,” as the dwelling of a god), typically characterized by the house determinative both in hieroglyphs and in Demotic,107 which could fit here if understood as a reference to Rome’s imperial quarter, that is, Domitian’s palace; or (b) the noun iA.t “mound, place,” though the meaning would instead point, in this case, to a funerary context (hardly fitting here), and the use of the house determinative with this word would also be unexpected, hence making this second option highly unlikely.108
Finally, note that Pirelli translates this passage as “fino al ritorno nella città di Roma.”109 She must therefore understand iy.t as the infinitive of the verb “to come (back),” but such a translation does not account for the house determinative, ignores the possessive =f, and does not explain the following genitival preposition n.t. Thus it should be rejected.
(13) Xnw: Taken sign by sign, the reading of this group should be ITi-tA.wy, with tA.wy written again with two small squares in A, 
(see note 10 to this side above), and, in a clearer writing, with two scarab beetles in obelisk B, 
. ITi-tA.wy literally means “The Conqueror of the Two Lands”110 and was originally the name of the Middle Kingdom royal residence established by Amenemhat I (12th Dynasty, twentieth century BC), probably near el-Lisht.111 Its name became synonymous with capital city (Egyptian Xnw), so that, in later and, most typically, Greco-Roman times, it could aptly be used to designate any royal residence, as is the case here, where it specifically refers to Rome. As a consequence, the hieroglyphic group used to write ITi-tA.wy can itself be a sportive writing for the word Xnw112 and thus be translated simply as “royal residence, capital city.”113 Normally, when this sign group has such a value, its elements are encased by a wall, as in 
. Yet, even in the absence of a wall element around the signs, as in the case of our obelisks’ inscriptions, the reading Xnw and the translation “capital city” (rather than the specific toponym ITi-tA.wy) are not in doubt.114
It is worth noting that the use of this hieroglyphic group in our obelisks also allows for a visual play linking Domitian and Rome, the emperor and his capital, under the shared concept of might. This is achieved by means of the hieroglyph 
, iTi “to seize, to conquer,” which appears in a ring composition of sorts both in the emperor’s Two Ladies name at the start of this side’s inscription (iTi m sxm) and, though not to be read phonetically, in the designation of the capital city here at its end (Xnw < ITi-tA.wy).
In theory, to think of all possibilities, one could alternatively here understand Xnw as an abridged writing of the preposition m-Xnw “in.” If so, the preceding n.t would not be a genitival preposition, but a writing of the relative converter nt(y). In this case, the whole phrase would translate somewhat differently, namely: “to his sanctuary(?), which is in Rome.”
(14) [!r]˹m˺: In A, only the very top part of an m in its 
shape and two t’s originally associated with the foreign-land determinative (
) survive, with the former sign being barely discernible and absent from Ungarelli’s copy. The original form and arrangement of the signs, given the size of the lacuna, was possibly 
. As is the case with Benevento’s name (see note 9 to side 2), that of Rome is also followed by the foreign-land determinative, since the Egyptian author of the inscription—irrespective of where he was actually based, in Italy or Egypt—conceptualized both cities as foreign, un-Egyptian places.
Concerning the writing of the name of Rome in hieroglyphs, a recent study has remarked on the presence of initial h in the Benevento obelisks and other Roman hieroglyphic inscription as if an oddity.115 Far from it, this h is in fact a regular and integral element in any Egyptian transcription of Rome’s name, which is typically attested in either a shorter or a fuller writing (respectively, !rm, as in our obelisks, or !rmA and comparable spellings).116 Its presence is not intrusive but is surely derived from a precise transliteration into Egyptian of the name of Rome in Greek (which, of course, would have been the first language through which knowledge of Rome would have come to Egypt). Specifically, it is the way in which Egyptian must have noted the aspiration attached to the letter rho, which, when in the word-initial position, has a rough breathing, appearing as ῥ: indeed, the Greek name of Rome is Ῥώμη.
Note that in B the bottom right half of the inscription (the section containing the name of Rome), which was intact at the time of Erman, is now severely damaged.
Side 2
Summary
Following a celebration of Isis, the text records the erection of the obelisks in honor of her and of the gods of Benevento by a private dedicator, Rutilius Lupus. A passage, the interpretation of which remains controversial (and which appears also in the texts of sides 3 and 4), potentially identifies the occasion for the obelisks’ dedication as the return of Domitian from his Dacian and Germanic campaigns. Good wishes, probably referring to the dedicator, conclude this side.
Figure 7.14
Figure 7.15
Figure 7.16
Figure 7.17| Obelisk A (Piazza Papiniano) | Obelisk B (Museo del Sannio) |
|---|---|
| ↓→ As(.t) wr(.t) mw.t nT(r) %pd.t HqA.t anx.w nb(.t) p(.t) tA dwA.t saHa=f n=˹s˺ txn n inr mAT Hna nTr.w niw.t=f Bnmts (w)DA ini n nb tA.wy &M&IN% anx D.t rn=f nfr R˹wt˺l˹y˺ys Lpws di n=f aHaw qAi m nDm-ib | ↓→ [. . .] ˹txn˺ m inr mAT Hna nTr.w niw(.t)=f Bnmts ˹wDA ini˺ n nb tA.wy &M&IN% anx D.t rn=f nfr Rwtlys Lpws di n=f aHaw qAi |
| Isis the Great, the God’s Mother, Sothis, Queen of the Stars, Lady of the Sky, the Earth, and the Netherworld: he erected an obelisk of granite stone to her and the gods of his city, Benevento, so that the return of the Lord of the Two Lands Domitian, ever-living, might be prosperous. His good name is Rutilius Lupus. May a long lifetime in joy be granted to him. | […] an obelisk of granite stone […] and the gods of his city, Benevento, so that the return of the Lord of the Two Lands Domitian, ever-living, might be prosperous. His good name is Rutilius Lupus. May a long lifetime be granted to him. |
Notes
(1) nT(r): Note the phonetic writing, 
, which is found again in A/4 (and see also note 4 to side 3). As already pointed out by Colin, the word is used here in the singular, as normally expected in this common epithet of Isis referring to her son Horus as “the god.”117 A translation in the plural (“la mère des dieux”), given by Malaise and since repeated by various authors,118 is incorrect.
(2) %pd.t HqA.t: Based on its position between the two words, the feminine ending 
t can be considered to be in zeugma, as applying to both. The HqA sign, 
, is reproduced as damaged in Erman’s copy but is in fact fully preserved.
(3) HqA.t anx.w: Or, perhaps, to be transliterated with another word for “star,” for example, HqA.t sbA.w? The logographic writing, 
, leaves both options open, and while the star sign is used with the value anx in B/2–3, this is in the phrase anx D.t, in which the word’s meaning is a different one, “to live.” Svenja Nagel transliterates here nb.t sbA.w/sw.w, choosing sbA or, rather, the rendering of its contemporary pronunciation sw (compare Demotic sw and Coptic ⲥⲓⲟⲩ “star”);119 her nb.t in lieu of the expected HqA.t is certainly only an oversight, in that the reading of the crook sign is indisputable. Nonetheless, I believe the reading anx.w to be preferable, on account of parallels for this title of Isis/Isis-Sothis, in which the word is phonetically spelled out as such.120
Several other interpreters have read this phrase quite differently, namely, as HqA.t nTr.w “Queen of the Gods.”121 This is, in theory, a possible reading, and such a title is indeed attested for Isis.122 The epithet “Queen of the Stars” applied to Isis in her identification with the star Sothis is not only more fitting, however, but is also confirmed by parallels.123 It should therefore be favored.
(4) nb(.t): It is unclear why Iversen oddly translates the male “Lord,” rather than “Lady,” since this epithet refers to Isis (same in his translation of A/4).124
Erman wonders if nb may in fact stand for nb(.w) and refer not to Isis but to the previous word (which he reads as nTr.w), thus understanding the whole as “Queen of the Gods, the Lords of the Sky, the Earth, and the Netherworld.”125 This, however, is surely not the case: the title still belongs to the list of epithets of Isis that opens the inscription on this side.
(5) n=˹s˺: The suffix pronoun, written with a small 
, is marked as lost in Erman’s copy, but in fact largely survives, just on the edge of the lacuna.
(6) ˹txn˺: At the beginning of the surviving text in B, there is a damaged obelisk sign for txn and, to its left, the remainders of another sign (marked as undistinguished damage in Ungarelli’s copy), the nature of which is unclear. Its traces could match the shape of a granite bowl, 
, perhaps used as an ad hoc determinative for the word txn “obelisk.” Note, however, that in A (as well as in B/3) txn has no determinative and, if a determinative were present after it, one would typically expect the plain stone sign, 
. Alternatively, the traces could perhaps belong to a nw pot sign: if so, this section of the text should be transcribed in a slightly different order than I have, as 
, and transliterated as ˹txn n˺ inr m mAT (with m being the genitival n, transformed through anticipatory assimilation to the following mAT). The translation (literally, “an obelisk of stone of granite”) would remain largely unaffected.
(7) n/m inr mAT: The first stone sign in this passage is a logogram for inr “stone,” while the second is a determinative for mAT “granite”;126 the signs are to be read, right to left, in this order: 
(A; the granite vase and the second stone signs are inverted in the original) and 
(B; this is according to my proposed reading, but see an alternative interpretation in note 6 to this side). In A, the writing of the preposition m as n is a late feature (compare Demotic m > n); B uses instead the expected Middle Egyptian writing, m. Note also that, in B/3, we read 
txn mAT, with neither an intervening preposition nor the word inr, probably on account of the lack of space (alternatively—but less plausibly—one could read it as txn inr mAT, by positing an inversion of the last two signs, with the stone block for inr and the vase sign, with no determinative, for mAT). As already pointed out by Erman,127 Domitian’s Pamphili obelisk in Rome is also described in its own inscriptions as made of the same material: it is another 
txn m in(r) mAt “obelisk of granite stone.”128 Note also that, in his translation of the Benevento inscriptions, Erman freely renders the original text as “red granite,” since this is the stone of which the obelisks are made,129 and this mention of “red granite” is still repeated in modern studies that closely depend on his translation.130 Yet mAT does not indicate exclusively “red” granite, nor is such an adjective or explicit characterization of the stone’s color originally present in the inscriptions—neither here nor in B/3.
(8) Hna nTr.w niw.t=f: In A, note the inverted arrangement of the signs, with nTr.w coming before Hna, with another inversion affecting the niw.t sign and its t ending.
Mention of other, unspecified deities sharing with Isis the dedication of the obelisks (and of the Beneventan Iseum itself) appears again in A/4 and B/4 (both have “the gods of his [sc., the dedicator’s] city, Benevento,” as here on side 2) as well as in A/3 (recording “her [sc., Isis’s] Ennead”).131 The identity of these theoi synnaoi of Isis in Benevento remains unknown, though it is possible—or even likely—that they would have included other gods of Egyptian origin.132
(9) Bnmts: Despite the crack in A and the damage recorded in Erman’s copy, the final s 
is, in fact, fully preserved. The writing of the city’s name in Egyptian hieroglyphs is predictably a hapax, found only on these monuments. It is written consistently Bnmts (or the phonetic equivalent BnmTs) in both obelisks, except for A/3, where it appears in a fuller writing, as Bnmnts (this side is also notable for its more diversified choice of hieroglyphs, with A/3 having 
for s, and B/3 using 
for b).133 In theory, a transliteration Bnbts/BnbTs/Bnbnts might also be possible, as the interchange of m(n) and b is attested in texts from the time.134
The fact that the Egyptian rendering of the city’s name ends with the letter s points to an original Greek draft, rather than Latin, on the basis of which the Middle Egyptian text was composed.135 Indeed, while the city is known in Latin only as Beneventum,136 in Greek it is attested both as Βενεουεντόν/Βενεουέντον and as Βενεβεντός/Βενεουεντός, with final sigma.137 The latter writing is clearly at the origin of the Egyptian rendition (compare especially the orthography Βενεβεντός with the full hieroglyphic writing of A/3, Bnmnts/Bnbnts). It should also be noted that the existence of a Greek and of a Latin draft are not mutually exclusive. Guidelines for the inscriptions may first have been prepared in Latin following the instructions of the Beneventan dedicator, then translated into Greek as an intermediary passage, and thence used as a draft outline for the final Middle Egyptian version. It should come as no surprise that an Egyptian priest (the only person able to compose a hieroglyphic Middle Egyptian text in the first century AD) would have been more familiar with Greek, the lingua franca of the Roman East, than with Latin.138 Note also how the name of Benevento is consistently followed by a foreign-land determinative 
(in association with a throw-stick sign, which also indicates foreignness, in B/3: 
), as was the case with the name of Rome on side 1 (see note 14 to that side).
(10) wDA ini: This phrase, which appears in the middle of the inscription on sides 2 and 4 and at the end of side 3 in both obelisks, constitutes a major problem in the interpretation of the text. Two radically different translations have been suggested to date. The first was proposed by Erman,139 who understands the phrase as meaning “for the well-being and return” (of the emperor), with the two verbs used as nominalized infinitives, and sees in it a rendering of the Latin expression pro salute et reditu: “he erected an obelisk … for the well-being and return of the Lord of the Two Lands.” The obelisks would thus have been erected on the occasion of Domitian’s return to Rome after a military expedition. This interpretation has the advantage of connecting the date of the obelisks’ dedication (AD 88/89, based on the text of side 3) with that of Domitian’s Dacian and Germanic campaigns—that is, respectively, the war against Decebalus and the revolt of Saturninus—and his following return to Rome in AD 89 (see note 11 to side 1 above).
At least two serious problems affect this translation, however. First, the verb ini does not mean “to come (back)” but “to bring (back).” Erman’s proposed solution to this issue is far from convincing. He considers ini to be a very literal translation from Greek κομίζειν, active voice “to bring” / κομίζεσθαι, passive voice “to return,”140 but the lexicon used throughout these inscriptions is overall the expected and correct Middle Egyptian vocabulary, and such an unidiomatic use of the Egyptian language at a crucial passage would be most surprising. Second, in none of its six occurrences is the phrase wDA ini introduced by a preposition (the expected equivalent of Latin pro). This consistent absence of a preposition is all the more conspicuous when compared with the otherwise regular presence of the genitival preposition n after this phrase (in virtually all cases, wDA ini n nb tA.wy “the wDA ini of the Lord of the Two Lands” / wDA ini n sA Ra “the wDA ini of the Son of Re,” with the sole exception of A/4), especially when considering that the genitival n is otherwise one of the most commonly omitted prepositions in Egyptian texts as a whole. For his part, Erman remarks that the omission of a preposition before wDA ini is no big issue. In his support, he points out that the datival preposition n (the one which, in his opinion, he would expect before wDA ini) is generally omitted in the Benevento inscriptions.141 Close scrutiny proves him wrong, however, showing that in both obelisks the datival preposition is correctly employed and written eight times, and only once (in B/3, before As.t) is it omitted. Erman’s interpretation and his proposed solutions to the issues that it raises thus fall short of convincing.
A second and entirely different interpretation of the phrase was offered by Iversen.142 His premise is the same as Erman’s, for Iversen also thinks that wDA ini must be the rendering of a Latin expression. In his case, however, he considers it an Egyptian neologism translating the Latin title legatus (Augusti). To justify his proposal, he understands wDA not as the verb “to be well, prosperous,” but as the verb “to proceed, to travel,” notwithstanding the lack of the walking-legs determinative 
that one would typically expect after this verb (though such an omission might perhaps be justified on account of the walking legs already present within the following sign, ini). He thus translates wDA ini as “the one who travels and brings (back)” > “the legate” (or even, still according to Iversen, “he who goes forth and returns,” supposing that ini may here be an—unparalleled—writing of an “to return”). The chief advantage of his solution is that wDA ini would thus fit perfectly in the syntax of the text, being another reference to the grammatical subject of the sentence, the monument’s dedicator: “he erected an obelisk …, (namely) the legate of the Lord of the Two Lands …, whose good name is …” Further, prosopographical evidence would also seem to invite such a translation, as we know of the existence of an individual of Beneventan origin, Marcus Rutilius Lupus (for more on the dedicator’s name, see notes 14 and 15 to this side below), who indeed bore the title of legatus Augusti.143
Even with Iversen’s proposal, however, there are serious issues. One is the unexpected presence of a unique neologism in a text that otherwise uses standard Middle Egyptian lexicon (except, of course, for rendering Roman personal and geographic names). The other is the lack of any determinative following this phrase to help the reader (including the ancient reader, given the supposed neologism!) understand its meaning. After wDA ini, one would at least have expected a seated-man determinative, 
, ideally even combined with a foreign-land determinative, 
or 
(as is the case with the personal name of the dedicator—see notes 14 and 15 to this side).
Despite the interest of Iversen’s proposal and the obvious advantage that it does not require any emendation or supplement to the ancient text, his suggestion remains too far-fetched. Between the two, Erman’s view remains preferable,144 though—as we saw already—it is still not convincing. Let us examine again its two main weaknesses. One concerns the verb ini. Erman believes that this transitive verb, normally meaning “to bring (back),” is here used in lieu of an expected intransitive verb “to come (back),” owing to a slavishly literal translation of a Greek draft, but such an explanation is quite implausible. In my view, a simpler reason can be found for the use of ini, one that explains the choice of this verb as deliberate, far from an accident of translation, and its meaning as straightforward. The implied logical subject of ini would, in this case, be Isis, to whom the obelisks are dedicated for taking care of “the well-being and the bringing back” (i.e., the restitution, the return—but, nota bene, a “return” intended in a transitive meaning!) of the emperor. So much for the meaning of ini. The other issue with Erman’s interpretation concerns the lack of a preposition before wDA ini, but this is a problem that, unlike the former, I do not think can be overcome. Whether we conceive this missing preposition as a datival n, as did Erman (which I think anyway unlikely, for the obelisks are dedicated to Isis and not to an event), or as a preposition expressing causality, such as Hr (with the obelisks being dedicated to Isis “on account of the well-being and return of the Lord of the Two Lands,” i.e., in celebration and thanksgiving for the event), the total and consistent lack of any written preposition before the key phrase wDA ini cannot be credibly justified.
We must therefore look beyond both Iversen and Erman’s suggestions and try to come up with a new understanding of this phrase. Undoubtedly the best solution would be to make sense of the text as it is, without supplying or emending it (versus Erman), but also to understand it in the context of a normal use of hieroglyphic orthography and Middle Egyptian vocabulary (versus Iversen). And indeed, once we abandon the postulate that this problematic phrase should be the rendering of a Latin expression (be that pro salute et reditu or legatus), the text can make sense and be understood as plain Middle Egyptian, without any need to edit it. I propose here two options:
(a) to transliterate 
as wDA ini.n and understand wDA “to be well, prosperous” as an optative and ini.n “to bring (back)” as a perfect relative form functioning as its subject, in turn followed by Domitian’s titles and name as its own subject: “may what the Lord of the Two Lands … brought (back) be prosperous”; note that wDA could equally begin a new main clause, as translated above, or be understood as a subjunctive expressing purpose within a subordinate clause: “(he erected an obelisk …) so that what the Lord of the Two Lands … brought (back) might be prosperous”; or
(b) to maintain the transliteration wDA ini n and understand wDA as an optative, while still considering ini n as a nominalized infinitive (“the bringing back > the return,” here operating as the subject of wDA) followed by the genitival preposition: “may the return of the Lord of the Two Lands … be prosperous” (with wDA as a main clause optative), or “(he erected an obelisk …) so that the return of the Lord of the Two Lands … might be prosperous” (with wDA as a subjunctive introducing a subordinate clause expressing purpose).
A number of arguments can be produced in favor of either of the above options. Eventually, however, it seems to me that the overall meaning of the sentence is here the decisive factor and that this speaks in favor of the second proposal. In the case of (a), at the center of the wish would be “what the Lord of the Two Lands … brought,” that is, Domitian’s war booty. Now it is unclear what one should understand by means of a wish for prosperity for a booty. Much more straightforward is the understanding of option (b), in which the stress is placed directly on the emperor’s return (again, “return” in the sense of “restitution” by Isis) and on its happy outcome. Indeed, the reference to a prosperous return would be particularly fitting to describe the celebrations of an imperial triumph, which it is understood Domitian was granted upon his return to Rome in AD 89.145 This is therefore how I suggest this troublesome passage of the inscriptions be understood and how I offer it above, in my main translation.
If this section indeed contains a reference to Domitian’s return from his military campaigns, it should be noted that such a celebration of a specific martial enterprise of the king in an obelisk’s inscription could be understood as a Roman innovation, dictated by the way in which the Romans reconceptualized such Egyptian monuments. Indeed, the inscriptions of earlier pharaonic obelisks did not typically memorialize particular events but celebrated the king in more general, universal terms.146 References to the king’s military might would have appeared as part of standard formulas but not in connection with specific campaigns or battles.147 A classical writer like Strabo, however, who visited Egypt at the beginning of Roman rule, mistakenly believed that the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the pharaonic obelisks that he saw in Thebes focused primarily on the celebration of past kings’ “dominion […], the amounts of tributes they received, and the size of the army they had” (τὴν ἐπικράτειαν […] καὶ φόρων πλῆθος καὶ στρατιᾶς),148 that is, that the Egyptian obelisks’ main aim was the celebration of the pharaoh’s martial achievements.
An understanding of Egyptian obelisks as also—but not exclusively—celebratory monuments for military triumph is further reflected in the text of the Latin inscriptions on the bases of the Flaminio and Montecitorio obelisks in Rome (respectively, 19th and 26th Dynasty, thirteenth and sixth century BC), which were dedicated to the Sun god (Latin Sol) in 10 BC by Augustus. Here the occasion for which the obelisks were relocated and reerected in Rome is identified in a specific military victory, namely, the takeover of the Ptolemaic kingdom—in the inscriptions’ words, “Egypt having been placed under the power of the Roman people” (Aegupto in potestatem populi Romani redacta).149 And, as we saw at the start of this article when presenting the Aswan obelisks erected in the late second century AD by Aurelius Restitutus, those privately dedicated monuments too had been offered “[for] the health and victory” of the emperors—hence, again, with a distinctive martial theme in mind, probably the Roman victory over the Parthians in AD 166. Seen in this context, the possible reference to Domitian’s campaigns in the Benevento obelisks would therefore make perfect sense from the point of view of the Roman reinterpretation of the functions of Egyptian obelisks.
(11) n nb tA.wy: In Erman’s copy of A, the crack in the obelisk is misplaced: inspection of the original—as well as Ungarelli’s copy—shows that this runs not after nb but between the determinative of tA.wy and the following cartouche. As for B, note that the genitival n is fully preserved, contra both Erman’s copy, which gives it as damaged, and Ungarelli’s, which completely omits it (due, in this case, to an accidental mix-up between different sections of the obelisk).150
(12) anx D.t: In B, note the precious choice of writing anx with the star sign 
(only here and in B/3), rather than with the standard 
that follows Domitian’s cartouche on all other sides.
In modern times the left-hand side of the obelisk has suffered serious damage in this area, which appears still intact in Erman’s copy.
(13) rn=f nfr: This phrase surely alludes to the dedicator’s name, and not to the emperor’s, as instead proposed by Iversen (“the augustus with the beautiful name of immortal Domitian”):151 the possessive =f refers back to the subject of the sentence (saHa=f), namely, the individual who commissioned the obelisk (“he erected an obelisk … his good name …”). Yet, though the overall sense of this passage is clear, its grammar and precise meaning have puzzled interpreters past and present. Here I will therefore justify my translation choice.
To begin with, one can definitely exclude that rn=f nfr is either a rendering of a Latin title or an idiom for “the (individual) named” (let alone “the aforementioned”), as instead supposed by a large number of interpreters. This phrase is well attested in the Egyptian language, and there is no need to turn to Latin to explain it; nor should any translation leave the adjective nfr “good, perfect” unaccounted for.152 Even more baseless is Edda Bresciani’s claim that this is a special phrase purposefully used in Roman times to introduce the name of notable Roman citizens in hieroglyphic texts.153
Confusion among scholars has been augmented by the different uses in which the phrase rn=f nfr “his good name” (and its female counterpart rn=s nfr “her good name”) is attested over the long history of the Egyptian language. Particularly in the Old Kingdom, and then again during the Third Intermediate and Late Periods (respectively, ca. twenty-seventh to twenty-second century BC and eleventh to fourth century BC), rn=f nfr was specifically used as a technical expression to introduce a man’s second or nickname (PN2) after his main name (PN1), following the format PN1 rn=f nfr PN2 “PN1 (with) his good name PN2.”154 But this is clearly not the idiom in question here, since only one name is given for the obelisks’ dedicator, and this is evidently his actual Latin name, the only one available, and not some sort of nickname.155 Alternatively, rn=f nfr can also be found in Egyptian texts used independently, that is, not necessarily to introduce a personal name, but in its literal meaning of someone’s “good/perfect name,” to positively qualify one’s name and therefore identity.156 Such a plain use of this phrase is attested diachronically, but it became particularly common in Ptolemaic and Roman times, not so much in hieroglyphic Middle Egyptian texts but in Demotic and specifically in ritual graffiti. To be sure, such graffiti typically employ the wording (pA) rn nfr (n) PN “(the) good name of PN,” without the suffix pronoun =f “his,” which we instead see in our obelisks. Whenever the suffix pronoun is used in such graffiti, the formula typically runs only as rn=f . . . PN “his name … (namely) PN,” omitting the adjective nfr: the two—suffix pronoun and adjective—appear to be mutually exclusive.157 There are, however, exceptions, in which the suffix pronoun and the adjective appear in combination.158 And even when we leave aside graffiti and Demotic, and look back at formal texts in Middle Egyptian hieroglyphs from the Ptolemaic period, the phrase rn=f nfr can again be observed in a number of inscriptions, sometimes on its own (as in earlier, Dynastic material)159 and sometimes specifically introducing the beneficiary’s name (as in the Benevento obelisks).160
In view of all the above, it seems best to me to understand the use of rn=f nfr in our inscriptions in the same way, that is, as a straightforward phrase that positively characterizes the dedicator’s name (and hence the dedicator himself). Its inclusion in the text of our obelisks is dictated primarily not by urgent onomastic or religious reasons but by the inscription’s syntax, in order to reestablish a connection with the grammatical subject (saHa=f “he erected”) that occurs before the lengthy clause beginning with wDA ini and continuing with Domitian’s titles and cartouche: “he erected an obelisk … (he) whose good name is PN,” or, less cumbersomely in English, “he erected an obelisk … his good name is PN.”161 This is the case on side 4 too, where the syntax is the same and the dedicator’s name is also introduced by rn=f nfr. On side 3, in contrast, the structure of the sentence is completely different and, rather tellingly, rn=f nfr does not feature before the name of the dedicator, for it is not syntactically necessary (see note 13 to side 3 below). Overall, though the flow of the sentence here on side 2 (and side 4) may appear somewhat convoluted and interpreters have widely disagreed in translating it, I still do not see in it so serious an issue as to blame the inscriptions’ translator of incompetence in his use of Middle Egyptian.162
As a curiosity, note that the phrase rn=f nfr makes another appearance in a much later set of twin “Roman” obelisks, in whose inscriptions it is also employed to refer to the name of the private dedicator. In this case the obelisk pair is a nineteenth-century product of early European Egyptomania: the obelisks erected in honor of Camillo Borghese, sixth Prince of Sulmona, in the park of his famous Roman mansion, Villa Borghese. Their inscriptions were composed in 1827 by the English antiquarian Sir William Gell, who, for this purpose, relied on the studies of contemporary pioneers of Egyptology, first and foremost Jean-François Champollion, with whom he was personally acquainted. Undoubtedly he included in his text the expression rn=f nfr based on the example of the Benevento obelisks, of which he even reproduced the exact spelling, 
.163
(14) R˹wt˺l˹y˺ys/Rwtlys: Alongside the phrase wDA ini, the reading of the name (compounded by nomen and cognomen) of the obelisk’s dedicator is the other major problem in our understanding of these inscriptions. At least since the time of Erman, the text has repeatedly been accused of rendering the nomen inconsistently in hieroglyphs, with at least three different spellings, namely: 
Rwtlys (A/3–4 and B/3), 
Rwtyls (B/2), and 
Rwtylys (A/2 and B/4).164 In fact, I think it is both possible and preferable to understand its spelling as quite uniform, simply as Rwtlys, with the occasional minor graphic variant Rwtlyys. Indeed, the group 
(as it appears in the original inscriptions of A/2, B/2, and B/4) is best read not as yl, but as ly (the y does not precede the l, being above it, but follows it, being further to the left). Thus, the writing of B/2 should be transcribed as 
Rwtlys (note also how this is the only writing of the name using 
instead of 
for s, a preference for short signs that also justifies the absence of 
in it), being identical in spelling to A/3–4 and B/3. And the writings of A/2 and B/4 should both be understood as 
Rwtlyys (for another word showing this 
yy sequence, compare 
ntyy.w for 
nDy.w in A/1).
Moving past the order of the hieroglyphic signs, note how in all its occurrences on both obelisks the nomen of the dedicator (as well as his cognomen) is followed by a foreign-land determinative, 
(usually paired with a seated-man determinative, 
, except in A/4 and B/3), to denote explicitly that this is the Egyptian rendering of a foreign—that is, non-Egyptian—name. But what is this name? Traditionally scholars have understood it in one of two ways. Some saw in it a supposed rendering of the Latin name Lucilius and thus offered a rather different transliteration from that given above, namely, Lwglys (transliterating the initial liquid 
as l, rather than r).165 Others proposed instead the same reading as the one above, Rwtlys, to be understood as a hieroglyphic transliteration for the Latin name Rutilius.166 The supporters of Lucilius base their argument on the presence in the name of a hieroglyphic sign, 
, which closely resembles the common monoliteral sign for the guttural g, 
. The proposers of the reading Rutilius generally assume, however, that the use of this g sign is an oddity (or a plain mistake) imputable to the obelisks’ carver(s), who used it in lieu of the expected 
t.167 Furthermore, they highlight that a gens Rutilia is well attested and prominent in Roman Benevento and that it would thus make perfect sense to see its name recorded in such peculiar and high-profile monuments as these obelisks.168
In fact, an additional—and conclusive—argument in support of the reading Rutilius can be given even from an epigraphic viewpoint, when we look back at the Borgia and Albani obelisks discussed earlier in this paper. There, the praenomen of the dedicator, Titus, appears in the writings 
&its and 
&tis.169 As can be seen, one of its t’s was spelled not with the expected sign alone but in association with exactly the same g-like sign found in the Benevento obelisks: 
. The only explanation for this shared epigraphic oddity, in my opinion, is that both in the Borgia and Albani and in the Benevento obelisks we must understand this sign as a most peculiar execution of the kiln sign 
t(A), above which the carver of the Borgia and Albani obelisks also added, for clarity, as a phonetic complement.170 It is difficult to say how the exchange of (originally, a variant of ) for came about. One possibility is that it may have arisen from a misunderstanding of a draft hieratic version of the inscription: for the hieratic writings of the and signs are very similar indeed 
and 
, respectively), their main difference being the presence of one extra vertical stroke in g.171 My suggestion postulates that the inscription’s Middle Egyptian version was first written in the hieratic script on a papyrus and only later transcribed into hieroglyphs to be carved on the obelisks. This might well have been the usual procedure and undoubtedly can be proven to have been the case for other Roman monuments inscribed with hieroglyphs. The best such example is Hadrian’s Barberini obelisk, some of whose signs were accidentally carved on the monolith itself in their hieratic form and not, as expected, in their hieroglyphic counterpart.172 Be that as it may, I trust that the reading of the Beneventan dedicator’s name with t (hence, Rutilius) is incontrovertible, while a reading with g (Lucilius) must, once and for all, be dismissed.
For the sake of completeness, I should mention that a third interpretation of the dedicator’s name was offered by Bresciani, who read in this passage both a praenomen and a nomen, namely & Ywlys for T(itus) Iulius.173 Her suggestion is completely untenable, however, for both paleographic reasons (her view that the r is not the name’s first letter, but a phonetic complement of the preceding nfr, is unsustainable, especially when looking at the obelisks’ side 3, where nfr does not occur, and yet this r is still very much present) and prosopographical evidence.174
(15) Lpws: Even more problematic is the reading of the dedicator’s cognomen, to the point that no conclusive solution has yet been reached by scholars as to what Latin writing the hieroglyphic text is meant to reflect. Its hieroglyphic spelling seems to vary widely, if we are to read the signs mechanically in the order in which they appear, as indeed past interpreters tended to do:175 
Lpwps (A/2, B/2, and B/4),176 
Lpywps (A/3),177 
Lpys (A/4), 
Lpps (B/3).
As in the case of the nomen Rutilius, however, our writings are in fact much more consistent than they may seem at first sight, especially with regard to the use of the letter p. Indeed, we should understand the group 
(B/3) not as pp but as a sportive writing for a single p, a writing obtained from the phonetic value of the word that those two signs can write together—that is, p(.t) “sky” (Coptic ⲡⲉ).178 With this in mind, all other spellings of this name also fall in line, as indicating the same, single consonant—in this case, with the addition of one or two signs to mark semivocalic additions, probably to reflect the original Latin vocalization. We can thus read 
pw (A/2, B/2, and B/4) and pyw 
(A/3), both of which are phonetically equivalent to the straightforward writing py 
of A/4.179 The writings of the cognomen on the obelisks must therefore be transliterated as simply Lps (), Lpws (), Lpys (), and Lpyws (), all intended to express a Latin name—as we will see shortly—whose consonants were just L-p-s.
When it comes to identifying what Latin name hides underneath these hieroglyphic renditions, Egyptologists have, here too, largely been in disagreement. Early scholars read in these writings the name Rufus.180 As for Erman, he proposed the odd Mpups (vel sim.) as the likely transliteration intended by the author of the Egyptian inscription, but he was understandably at a loss when having to suggest what Latin name may be behind such a peculiar-looking Egyptian rendering and thus refrained from offering any proposal.181 Another suggestion was finally made by Müller, who thought the first sign could possibly be read as l and wondered whether the obelisks’ dedicator might have been a Rutilius Lupus.182 His proposal has since been favored by most scholars,183 and I also espouse it.184
Admittedly, there is still one issue with this proposal, and it lies in the first sign, the striding lion 
. Unlike its recumbent counterpart, 
, for which the basic reading is r(w) or l (as found in the l of Rutilius), the striding lion would typically read m in hieroglyphs (hence Erman’s reading Mpups), and not r/l. This impasse, however, is hardly a major one, and I offer here a couple of suggestions to overcome it.185 Perhaps, since the striding lion sign can have the logographic value rw for the word “lion,”186 we might have here a thus far unparalleled use of it not as a logogram but as a phonogram with the value r/l. Admittedly, this would be quite unusual, and one would have to ascribe such a peculiar use of this sign to the whimsy of our scribe. Another possible explanation, in fact a rather more straightforward one, is to consider this use of with the value r/l (a value typically pertaining to ) as a case of a hieroglyphic sign being replaced by a different one (striding instead of recumbent pose), which still belongs, however, to the same category (lions). Such swaps are a well-known phenomenon in Greco-Roman hieroglyphic texts.187 We may therefore have here an otherwise unparalleled application of this principle to these two lion signs.
Further to all these epigraphic and linguistic observations, the reading Lupus for our dedicator’s cognomen can also be supported by external evidence, namely, by the fact that several members of the gens Rutilia named Rutilius Lupus are attested by Roman sources in connection with Benevento.188 In conclusion, despite the initial difficulties involved in the hieroglyphic writings discussed above, I therefore believe that the reading of the name of the obelisks’ dedicator as Rutilius Lupus is quite certain.
For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that yet another proposal for the dedicator’s cognomen was advanced by Auguste Baillet, welcomed by Orazio Marucchi, and revived by Tadeusz Zawadzki, namely, that this should be transliterated as Lbywns (reading 
as b and 
as n), an Egyptian rendering for Labienus.189 This suggestion, however, should be rejected, on account both of its lack of onomastic and prosopographical links with other Beneventan material and of the highly dubious nature of its hieroglyphic transliteration.190
(16) di n=f: It is not clear who the beneficiary of this final wish is. Due to the immediately preceding mention of the dedicator’s name, it seems reasonable that the wish of a long life should refer to him, as understood by the majority of modern interpreters.191 A similar wish is inscribed at the end of side 4, where it also includes the common formula 
anx (w)DA s(nb) “life, prosperity, health.” Iversen considers this formula to be a prerogative of royalty, however, and thus understands the wishes of sides 2 and 4 as both addressed to Domitian.192 Though it is true that the phrase anx wDA snb is best known for following the name of the pharaoh, this is not its exclusive use. It can equally be found in nonroyal contexts, for example, as an auspicious interjection or as a wish. For instance, it is particularly recurrent in epistolography, specifically in letters sent by subordinates to superiors.193 But mention of the gift of “life, prosperity, health” also occurs in (nonroyal) votive inscriptions, which bear texts of a religious nature, closer in nature to those of our obelisks.194 On account of the above, I am of the opinion that Iversen’s objection can be dismissed and that the wishes found here and on side 4 of our obelisks both refer, most likely, to Rutilius Lupus.
This being said, I appreciate why Iversen doubted that the final wishes on sides 2 and 4 could refer to the private dedicator. Indeed, the erection of a monument such as an obelisk, which is quintessentially associated with pharaonic kingship (and indeed features the emperor’s name on all its sides), may understandably suggest the idea that all auspicious wishes expressed in it should be for the good of the king. Reasons of both cultic and political propriety would also seem to point in this direction. We ought to remember that the type of monument with which we are dealing here is essentially a private dedication, however, not a royal one, and it thus makes perfect sense that it should also include good wishes for the benefit of its own sponsor, Rutilius Lupus.
(17) aHaw qAi m nDm-ib: In B, there is not enough space to restore the phrase m nDm-ib, which is instead found at the end of A. As confirmed by Ungarelli’s copy (and as already suspected by Erman),195 the text of B must have stopped with qAi, due to lack of space. Note also that, counter to what is suggested in Erman’s copy, the hieroglyphs at the bottom of B are fully preserved in their lower part, although modern damage—which clearly postdates Erman’s facsimile—now affects other areas of this lower section of obelisk B.
Side 3
Summary
This side records the date when major works were carried out at the Iseum of Benevento, the eighth regnal year of Domitian (AD 88/89). The texts of the two obelisks diverge slightly: A assigns to Rutilius Lupus the building of the sanctuary for Isis and her theoi synnaoi, while B records both the building of the sanctuary and the erection of the obelisks for Isis alone, no other gods being mentioned. It is unclear whether the construction of the entire temple or of just part of it ought to be ascribed to Rutilius Lupus, besides the erection of the two obelisks. The reason for these building works is again given as the return of Domitian from his campaigns (that is, if I understand the disputed passage correctly).
Figure 7.18
Figure 7.19
Figure 7.20
Figure 7.21| Obelisk A (Piazza Papiniano) | Obelisk B (Museo del Sannio) |
|---|---|
| ↓→ rnp(.t)-sp xmn.t xr Hm @r kA nxt nsw.t bi.ty nb tA.[wy] N*R %A N*R MR(Y) N*R.W NB(.W) ˹sA˺ Ra nb xa.w &M&˹I˺N˹%˺ anx D.t xwsi aH.t Sps(.t) n As.t wr.t nb(.t) Bnmnts ˹H˺na PsD.t=s in Rwtlys Lpyws wDA ini n ˹nb tA.wy˺ | ↓→ [. . .] ˹N*R˺ %A [N*R] MR(Y) N*R(.W) NB(.W) sA Ra nb xa.w &M&˹I˺[N]˹%˺ anx D.t xwsi aH(.t) Sps(.t) <n> As.t wr(.t) nb(.t) Bnmts saHa txn mAT in Rwtlys Lps wDA ini n nb tA.wy |
| Regnal year eight, under the majesty of the Horus “Strong Bull,” the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Lord of the [Two] Lands The God, the Son of the God, Beloved of All the Gods, the Son of Re, the Lord of Crowns Domitian, ever-living: a splendid sanctuary was built to Isis the Great, Lady of Benevento, and her Ennead, by Rutilius Lupus, so that the return of the Lord of the Two Lands might be prosperous. | […] The God, the Son of [the God], Beloved of All the Gods, the Son of Re, the Lord of Crowns Domitia[n], ever-living: a splendid sanctuary was built <to> Isis the Great, Lady of Benevento, (and) an obelisk of granite was erected by Rutilius Lupus, so that the return of the Lord of the Two Lands might be prosperous. |
Notes
(1) xmn.t: Note the elaborate choice of writing the number with the ibis sign, 
, “eight,” rather than with the plain numeral 8, that is, 
. The presence of a precise dating in an obelisk’s inscription is highly unusual, in earlier Egyptian and Roman inscribed obelisks alike. To be exact, pharaonic obelisks’ inscriptions could record the special occasion on which they had been erected—and therefore, indirectly, a king’s regnal year—as is the case, for instance, of Thutmose III’s Heliopolitan dedications for his third jubilee.196 More exceptionally, the exact start and end dates of the quarrying works of an obelisk could also be immortalized in writing.197 Overall, however, this remains a rather atypical feature and is exceptional in the format in which it appears here, as part of a proper dating formula that includes the titulary of the sovereign.
As previously discussed, the date recorded here as Domitian’s eighth regnal year corresponds to AD 88/89, halfway through his reign.198
(2) tA.[wy]: The second tA sign is completely lost in lacuna, in contrast with what is suggested by Erman’s copy, and was probably already gone in his time, given that Erman’s facsimile awkwardly draws it mostly over the lacuna itself.
Just below this crack in the obelisk, both Ungarelli’s copy and inspection of the original further reveal that the determinative is the one correctly expected after tA.wy and the same already found on side 2 of both obelisks, that is, 
(in these obelisks—as in other Roman inscriptions—executed with angular shapes, more like 
), and not simply three dots, as mistakenly reproduced by Erman. It is indeed the case, however, as already noted by Erman, that further down on this side of A this same determinative unexpectedly follows xa.w, in the title “Lord of Crowns” (see note 6 to this side below).199
(3) N*R %A N*R: There are multiple options for the reading of this epithet, most of which understand it as either assimilating Domitian to Horus or presenting him as Horus’s son. The group 
has thus been differently interpreted as “Morning Star” by Erman (implying the transliteration %BA _WA),200 “the Son of the Lord of Life” by Müller (%A NB aN¢),201 “Horus, the Son of the God” (@R %A N*R) by Iversen,202 “the Son of Horus” (%A @R) by Jean-Claude Grenier,203 and “Horus, the Son of Isis” (@R %A A%.&) by von Beckerath.204 Besides the proposals found in past scholarship, there are, in theory, yet more possible ways to read this group, such as %A @R aN¢ “the Son of Horus the Living” or %A N*R aN¢ “the Son of the Living God.”205 Among the published alternatives, Müller’s reading %A NB aN¢ seems to me to be the preferable option, for two reasons. First, epigraphically, this is the only instance in the obelisks in which the falcon sign appears just as 
, that is, without a flail, as in 
. In the latter case, it reads either @r “Horus” (see here above, in A/3), bik “falcon” (in combination with the gold sign, 
, when introducing the king’s Golden Falcon name; see A/1),206 or nTr “god” (if resting on a standard, 
; see A/4); it would therefore seem reasonable to read this plain falcon sign differently, as nb “lord.” Secondly, in terms of religious associations, calling Domitian “the Son of the Lord of Life” would be rather fitting here, for the epithet “Lord of Life” is most commonly associated with Osiris, brother and spouse of Isis.207 The emperor would thus be assimilated with their son Horus, of whom the pharaoh (that is, Domitian himself) was the incarnation on earth. This being said, all these arguments remain highly circumstantial: for instance, there is no stringent reason why we should assume that must necessarily be used with a different value than other falcon-based signs found in these obelisks. In fact, the opposite can easily be true, with the author of the inscription choosing a slightly different form of the sign just for variety’s sake. Or perhaps the falcon here lacks the flail simply for reasons of space, due to the star sign already taking up the area to its top left.
With this in mind, I think a much better solution can be proposed, namely, that we should read simply as N*R %A N*R “the God, the Son of the God,” with both the falcon and the star signs as logograms for nTr.208 The phrase nTr sA nTr is typically used as a formula to introduce the cartouche containing the Caesar title (i.e., throne name) of a number of first-century AD Roman emperors, including Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero.209 In our case we have instead a remarkable inclusion of it within the cartouche, as part of an elaborate throne name for Domitian. Typical writings for this formula in inscriptions from Roman Egypt are in the style 
: good examples can be found in the Roman reliefs of the temple of Ptolemy XII Neos Dionysos in Athribis, within the titulary of Emperor Tiberius (r. AD 14–37).210 Remarkably, however, the same Athribis inscriptions also show this phrase in a writing that employs exactly the same combination of signs as our obelisk, that is, as 
.211 I therefore choose to adopt the reading N*R %A N*R in our Benevento inscriptions, with no query, as I consider it to be by far the best option, on account of its straightforwardness (in terms of both its writing and its meaning), of the other attestations of this phrase in the context of Roman pharaonic titularies and of the perfect epigraphic parallel in the slightly earlier Roman inscription from Athribis mentioned above.212
With regard to content, the king’s throne name here on side 3 stands out for its original wording and exclusive focus on Egyptian theology. This contrasts with the version of Domitian’s throne name given on side 1, which just contains the standard titles “Emperor Caesar” (as customary for Egyptian titularies of Roman emperors). As observed by earlier scholars,213 it is hardly a coincidence that a good comparison for such a complex throne name applied to a Roman ruler is found in another Roman obelisk, namely, within Hadrian’s titulary on his Barberini obelisk, in which the emperor is called 
[MRY] @aPY @Na N*R.W NB(.W) “[Beloved] of Hapy and of All the gods.”214
Finally, concerning the inscription’s epigraphy, note that Ungarelli’s copy of B mistakenly adds, in the slightly damaged area underneath the falcon, a nb sign. No such hieroglyph was in fact ever there.
(4) N*R(.W): B has a full phonetic writing, 
, which also marks r, in contrast with nT(r), 
, in A/2 and A/4. The presence of r is per se a mark of the word’s use in the plural (compare Coptic ⲛ̅ⲧⲏⲣ “gods”), as the plural ending (.w) is what allows for the phonetic preservation of an otherwise silent r in final position. Conversely, the aforementioned two instances of the writing nT(r), with missing r, reproduce the pronunciation of the singular, with silent r at the word’s end (Coptic ⲛⲟⲩⲧⲉ “god”).
(5) ˹sA˺ Ra: On A, the duck sign was mistakenly reproduced by Erman as intact, but most of its body is in fact lost in lacuna, in one of the obelisk’s cracks that existed already in Erman’s time, but which he failed to mark.
(6) nb xa.w: The determinative following xa.w “Crowns” is the expected plural strokes in B (
), while A erroneously employs the determinative that is normally associated with tA.wy “the Two Lands” (
). This mix-up is possibly due to confusion between the writing of this title and the preceding nb tA.wy (see note 2 to this side above).
(7) &M&˹I˺N˹%˺: In A, note the extremely small size of m, 
, squeezed between the scarab beetle and the arm signs. This is most likely due to its insertion at a later phase, to correct an accidental omission. In B, the restoration of the missing n in the form of 
is certain, based on the size of the lacuna.
(8) xwsi: Read by Erman as qd (a verb with the same meaning),215 it may be preferable to transliterate it as xwsi, a verb commonly used in Greco-Roman texts to describe the construction of temples.216 The execution of the hieroglyphic sign is rather peculiar, showing what looks like a man operating a plumb line. It seems to be an original variation on the more canonic signs 
(a man pounding in a mortar, typically used for xwsi) and 
(a man building a wall, commonly used for qd).
(9) aH.t: A word primarily meaning “palace,” it can also be used with the meaning of “temple,” “sanctuary,” or even just “chapel.”217
It is difficult to say whether we should take the text literally and understand that, besides erecting the obelisks, Rutilius Lupus built on his own initiative the entire Beneventan Iseum during the eighth year of Domitian’s reign (granted, this is surely a possibility).218 Perhaps one should understand that the construction of the temple (or even just the expansion of a previous sanctuary) was completed in that year, specifically through the erection of the two obelisks at the initiative of our private dedicator.219 Indeed, the inscriptions credit Rutilius Lupus with only the erection of the obelisks on sides 2 and 4 (side 2 uses the word txn “obelisk,” while side 4 speaks of mnw pn “this monument,” where the reference to the obelisks is clear in the use of the demonstrative), and it is exclusively here, on side 3, that there is also mention of the construction of a sanctuary, almost as if this were of secondary importance—and this, in a passage in which A and B have somewhat divergent texts, with B further mentioning again the obelisks (see note 12 to this side below). It is understandable, nonetheless, that the primary focus of the obelisks’ inscriptions should be on the obelisks themselves, rather than on other parts of the cultic complex, and that the silence of sides 2 and 4 about the temple is therefore not necessarily a telling indicator.
Distrusting our text, some scholars have in fact suggested that the whole construction of the Iseum, including the erection of the obelisks, must have taken place by direct order of Domitian in thanksgiving for his own return to Rome and that Rutilius Lupus was merely the appointed executor of the emperor’s will.220 I reject, however, such an extreme view: if this were the case, the prominence given to the agency and name of Rutilius Lupus on sides 2, 3, and 4 would be quite out of place (not to mention that, as we have seen, the Benevento obelisks are not the only privately dedicated Egyptian obelisks in existence in Roman Italy). Whether or not Domitian had been an active benefactor in the construction, expansion, or decoration of the Beneventan sanctuary, it is certain that, based on the explicit evidence of our obelisks’ inscriptions, the initiative and direct involvement of Rutilius Lupus in this architectural enterprise—first and foremost, in the erection of the obelisks—cannot be questioned.221
(10) aH(.t) Sps(.t) <n> As.t wr(.t): In B, the carver clearly experienced some issues. Thus, not only is the datival preposition missing, but the signs are placed in an unexpected order, namely, aH(.t) <n> As.t wr(.t) Sps(.t) (potentially misleading into a translation of this sort: “a sanctuary <to> Isis the Great and Noble”). Undoubtedly, the intended order is the one given in A.
(11) Bnmnts: Concerning this full writing in A, see note 9 to side 2 above. The uniqueness of the phrase “Isis the Great, Lady of Benevento” needs little comment, with its surprising twist on a traditional combination of epithets for this goddess (As.t wr.t nb.t). It makes one wonder whether such a close connection between Isis and her centers of worship in the Roman world outside Egypt was here expressed in a Middle Egyptian text as a one-off innovation, imputable to the sole creativity of the author of the Benevento inscriptions, or if it was to be found in custom-made hieroglyphic inscriptions of other Roman Isea too. If the latter is a realistic scenario, then inscriptions from other Egyptian temples in the Roman Empire might have contained similar fascinating hieroglyphic renderings of Greco-Roman toponyms. For example, a Roman hieroglyphic relief now in Naples, which shows two facing uraei and part of a cartouche containing the text 
As.t wr(.t) nb.t [. . .] (“Isis the Great, Lady of […]”), might have continued not necessarily with the mention of a standard location associated with the goddess in her mainstream theology (be that an Egyptian toponym or, for instance, p.t “the sky”) but with the specific Italian locality where this relief and the contextual building originally stood.222
To be clear, while it is remarkable to find Isis explicitly associated with an Italian toponym in a Middle Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription on a monument erected in Benevento, the connection between Isis and foreign (i.e., un-Egyptian) lands or cities is, surely, hardly surprising per se, being part and parcel of her cults as a universal goddess in the Greco-Roman world. Her association with places outside Egypt, including the Roman West, is mentioned and celebrated even in texts stemming from Egypt itself. The clearest example of this is perhaps the Greek aretalogy of P. Oxy. XI 1380, a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus dating from the early second century AD, a few decades after the Benevento obelisks were erected.223 Here Isis is celebrated through a list of the epithets said to be attributed to her in various localities, both within and without Egypt, including ἐν Ῥώμῃ στρατίαν “in Rome, the Warlike” (l. 83) and ἐν Ἰταλίᾳ ἀ[γά]πην θεῶν “in Italy, the L[o]ve of the Gods” (ll. 109–10). Significantly, the goddess is said to have founded sanctuaries for her own cult in “all cities,” that is, throughout the oikoumene; in the text’s words: Ἰσεῖα πάσαι[ς] πόλεσιν εἰς τὸν [ἅπαν]τα χρόνο[ν κατ]έσ[τ]ησας “you [est]ab[l]ished Isea in al[l] cities for [al]l tim[e]” (ll. 202–3). Overall, a perfect testimony to the universal theology of Isis, ideally connecting our Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription from Roman Italy with a Greek papyrus from Roman Egypt.
In obelisk B, note that substantial damage has affected the right-hand side of this section since Erman’s time.
(12) Hna PsD.t=s/saHa txn mAT: The inscriptions on the two obelisks diverge at this point, with A reading “and her Ennead” (i.e., her theoi synnaoi, most likely the same deities referred to as “the gods of his city, Benevento” on sides 2 and 4) and B having “an obelisk of granite was erected” (to be compared with the similar phrase on side 2, “he erected an obelisk of granite stone”). The reason for this discrepancy, as well as whether it is deliberate or the result of a mistake, is unclear.
Note that some modern translations merge the two versions of this passage into one unique text, without warning the reader.224 Also, Pirelli translates here in B/3 “un grande obelisco,”225 adding an adjective that is not in the original inscription.
(13) in Rwtlys: On sides 2 and 4, the sentence is structured around a verb in the active voice with a pronominal subject (respectively, saHa=f “he erected” and iri<=f> “he made”), back to which the full name of the dedicator later refers, by means of the phrase rn=f nfr “his good name” (see note 13 to side 2 above). Here on side 3, the sentence is instead constructed around a verb in the passive voice (xwsi “was built”). Rutilius’s name is therefore simply introduced by the preposition of agent (in “by”), with no need for the phrase rn=f nfr.
(14) wDA ini: Despite translating this phrase on sides 2 and 4 with “per la salvezza e il ritorno in patria,” in line with Erman’s original rendering, Pirelli renders it differently here on side 3, as “per la salvezza e la prosperità,” in what I suppose is a slip of the pen.226
In B, the right-hand side of this section (which appears intact in Erman’s copy) has been badly affected by modern damage.
(15) nb tA.wy: Inscription A offers an extremely elaborate writing for this title, through the group 
.
In B, traces of the final determinative 
can still be discerned on the original, though they are recorded neither in Erman’s nor in Ungarelli’s copy.
Side 4
Summary
The text opens with another celebration of Isis, in whose honor, along with that of the gods of Benevento, Rutilius Lupus is said to have commissioned the obelisks. The occasion is given—again, if my interpretation of the text is correct—as the return of Domitian from his military campaigns. The inscriptions end with good wishes, likely for the dedicator’s welfare.
Figure 7.22
Figure 7.23
Figure 7.24
Figure 7.25| Obelisk A (Piazza Papiniano) | Obelisk B (Museo del Sannio) |
|---|---|
| ↓→ As.t wr.t mw.t nT(r) ir(.t) Ra nb(.t) p(.t) ˹Hnw.t˺ nTr.w nb(.w) iri<=f> n=s <m>nw p˹n˺ Hna ˹nTr.w˺ niw(.t)=f BnmTs ˹wDA ini˺ <n> sA Ra nb xa(.w) &M&IN% ˹anx D˺.t rn=f nfr Rwtlys Lpys diw n˹=f˺ [. . .] | ↓→ [. . .] n=s <m>nw pn Hna nTr.w niw.t=f BnmTs wDA ini n sA Ra [nb] xa(.w) &M&IN% anx D.t rn=f nfr Rwtlyys Lpws di n=f anx (w)DA s(nb) Aw(.t)-ib |
| Isis the Great, the God’s Mother, the Sun’s Eye, Lady of the Sky, Mistress of All the Gods: <he> made this <mo>nument to her and the gods of his city, Benevento, so that the return <of> the Son of Re, the Lord of Crowns Domitian, ever-living, might be prosperous. His good name is Rutilius Lupus. May […] be granted to him. | […] this <mo>nument to her and the gods of his city, Benevento, so that the return of the Son of Re, [the Lord] of Crowns Domitian, ever-living, might be prosperous. His good name is Rutilius Lupus. May life, prosperity, health, and happiness be granted to him. |
Notes
(1) mw.t nT(r): Note again the phonetic writing of nT(r) in the singular, as in A/2 (see note 1 to side 2 above). It is unclear why Iversen translates this common epithet as “wife of the god,” which surely cannot be accepted.227
(2) ir(.t) Ra: Contra Katja Lembke, who reads wDA.t Ra “the sound eye of Re.”228
(3) nb(.t) p(.t) ˹Hnw.t˺ nTr.w nb(.w): Due to the crack in the obelisk, interpreters have been uncertain as to whether one should read nb(.t) p(.t) ˹Hnw.t˺ nTr.w nb(.w) “Lady of the Sky and Mistress of All the Gods” (understanding the remainder of the sign below the crack, on the right-hand side, as the jar 
and assigning to it the 
t ending)229 or just nb(.t) p.t nTr.w nb(.w) “Lady of the Sky and of All the Gods” (seeing in that same damaged sign a diacritic stroke for p.t, to which the t would also pertain; in other words, 
).230 The first is the right reading, as confirmed by close inspection of the inscription, in which the damaged sign in question appears wider and more flared than in Erman’s (as well as Ungarelli’s) copy. Textual parallels also confirm such an interpretation, since the full formula, with the inclusion of Hnw.t, is very commonly attested following the name of Isis and other goddesses.231
(4) iri<=f>: The pronominal subject of the verb, “he,” was mistakenly left out. This is simply an accidental omission, of which we have seen a few other cases in these inscriptions and for which I see no need to censure the Egyptian translator and accuse him of linguistic incompetence.232 Indeed, strictly speaking, the sentence would be grammatically correct even without =f, if one is to understand the verb as a passive (“this <mo>nument was made”), and this is perhaps precisely what led to the accidental omission. Such a construction would then leave the possessive in the following rn=f with no antecedent, however, making the text overall anacoluthic.
(5) <m>nw: In both obelisks, note the unusually short writing of this word, as 
, without a preceding sign for mn. Within its general meaning of “monument,” mnw can also be used specifically to indicate obelisks,233 as in the present case.
(6) p˹n˺: Erman reads this demonstrative as pw in both obelisks, noting the absence of n in A and assigning the 
n in B not to pn, but to what he thinks to be a hybrid writing of the following word, nTr.w, supposedly as 
.234 In fact, inspection of the original, as well as Ungarelli’s copy, reveals that A does include an n, which is written with the nw pot sign, 
. This is missing from Erman’s copy, which also shows other minor inaccuracies in this area of the inscription. Namely, the crack in the obelisk caused the loss of the top of the divine standard for nTr (which Erman shows intact but is clearly already missing in Zoëga’s much earlier copy) and of one of its following plural strokes (two of which are instead marked as lost by Erman). As for B, the sign for n clearly belongs to pn, the t above niw.t is this word’s feminine ending, and nTr.w is written simply with the standard sign, precisely as in A. In other words, the text that Erman understood as 
must instead be broken up as 
.
(7) <n> sA Ra: In A, the genitival preposition n is missing (the only such omission following the phrase wDA ini in both obelisks). Close inspection of the inscription, supported by Ungarelli’s copy, reveals traces of the feet of the ini sign below the crack (which are not recorded in Erman’s copy) and thus excludes the possibility that n was originally present and became lost in the lacuna.
(8) ˹anx D˺.t: In A, note that the t ending of D.t, which is now lost in the lacuna, was probably still extant in Erman’s time, for it is recorded in both his and Ungarelli’s copies.
(9) diw: In A, an extra 
w is marked in this passive sDm=f form with optative value, which is otherwise written merely as di in its three other occurrences (here in B/4 and on both A/2 and B/2).235 This w should not be mistaken for a third-person plural suffix pronoun used in an impersonal passive (i.e., reading di=w), which is a construction of Late Egyptian that later became the norm for the passive in Demotic and Coptic. Not only is this unlikely in view of the language of our inscription, which is Middle Egyptian; it is also excluded by the writing of w, which lacks any plural strokes determinative.
(10) n˹=f˺ [. . .]: Inspection of the original shows that the loop surviving on the left-hand side of the bottom edge of obelisk A is definitely the flesh sign 
, for f, and not the top part of an anx sign, 
, which, while most likely the sign originally present next, must have been wholly lost in the final lacuna.236 Note also that the nw pot used to write the preposition n, which appears to be intact in Erman’s copy, is now partly damaged.
(11) anx (w)DA s(nb) Aw(.t)-ib: In B, all other interpreters read Aw(.t)-ib anx (w)DA s(nb), though I would expect Aw(.t)-ib to come, more typically, last. As far as the layout of the inscription is concerned, both readings remain possible, as the signs for Aw(.t)-ib sit lower than those for the other words (i.e., after them), but also to their right (that is, before them).
As for A, it is uncertain whether the text was here abridged and the inscription ended with a small anx sign (perhaps crammed beneath the flesh sign), or if the surface lost at the bottom of the monolith was inscribed with a further level of hieroglyphs and the inscription thus continued as in B, with multiple direct objects, either fully as anx (w)DA s(nb) Aw(.t)-ib “life, prosperity, health, and happiness,” or perhaps simply as anx (w)DA s(nb) “life, prosperity, and health” (note that on side 2 the counterpart of this final wish is longer in A—“a long lifetime in joy”—and abridged in B—just “a long lifetime”—see note 17 to side 2). Concerning the identity of the beneficiary of this wish, whom I believe to be the dedicator, Rutilius Lupus, see note 16 to side 2 above.
The left section of obelisk B’s lower end is now lost but was still preserved in Erman’s time (note that modern damage also affected other parts of this face’s inscription in B, notably the right section of the cartouche).
Privately Dedicated Inscribed Roman Obelisks: Comparing the Benevento and the Borgia and Albani Obelisks
Following my overview of the Borgia and Albani obelisks and the reedition of the Benevento twins, it is useful to draw now a comparison between these monuments in order to identify the shared features and differences between them, the sole surviving good specimens of privately dedicated Egyptian obelisks with original hieroglyphic inscriptions in Roman Italy, and thus try to achieve a better definition of this peculiar category of artifacts. One could object that the scope for such a comparison is limited, considering the fragmentary survival of the Borgia and Albani obelisks. I maintain, however, that even from such lacunose material enough useful data survives; in the case of the Albani obelisk, for example, its 3.2-meter-high original section probably preserves at the very least half of the original inscription, considering that such a monolith, with its narrow shaft, would hardly have been taller than 6 to 7 meters when complete. Thus, even within a limited corpus, there is still sufficient evidence to justify such a line of inquiry as the one that I propose.
From a material point of view, an immediately noticeable feature that these monuments share is their size. Though still monumental, privately dedicated obelisks are overall smaller than their imperially commissioned counterparts, something that makes good sense when considering the difference in the status (and means) of their dedicators.237 Their stone is also the same, red granite (most likely syenite originating from Egypt itself), a feature that they share with Roman imperial—and earlier Egyptian—obelisks too.238 A question that for now must remain unanswered, however, is whether privately dedicated obelisks were normally produced in pairs. This was clearly the case for the Benevento monoliths (as well as for those erected in Aswan by Titus Aurelius Restitutus),239 but it remains doubtful whether the same can be said about the Borgia and Albani obelisks.240
When it comes to their original location, it seems fair to believe that they all pertained to temple contexts. This is certain in the case of the obelisks of Benevento, which were erected as part of the city’s Iseum, as their inscriptions reveal. And it is also very likely in the case of the Borgia and Albani obelisks (again, if we think of them as a pair), given that the fragments of the Borgia obelisk are known to have been unearthed in Palestrina, in the proximity of the sanctuary to Fortuna Primigenia.
In terms of their textual content, they all give significant prominence to the identity of the private dedicator, with the difference that the Benevento obelisks each name Rutilius Lupus on only three of their four sides, while the Borgia and Albani ones record the name of Titus Sextius Africanus on each of their faces. Even the action attributed to the private patron, that is, the dedication of the obelisks, is similarly described between the two pairs: in fact, the same technical term, 
saHa “to erect” (an obelisk), is found in both the Benevento inscriptions (in A/2, B/3, and originally also in B/2, though here now lost in lacuna) and in the Borgia ones (though not in the Albani obelisk). All monuments also feature the emperor under whom they were erected. The Benevento obelisks extensively celebrate him, especially on side 1, which is dedicated exclusively to Domitian. As for the Borgia and Albani ones, the surviving fragments do not allow us to say whether the emperor was only named or was also the explicit recipient of celebration. Most notably, while the Benevento obelisks clearly state that they are dedicated to Isis and her theoi synnaoi, the surviving texts of the Borgia and Albani ones include no mention of any deity. Yet it seems more than reasonable to suppose that they would have been monuments of a religious nature too, as is also suggested by the temple provenance of the Borgia fragments. Some scholars have even gone as far as to propose a possible link between their association with the sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia and the local cult of Isis (which would make them a perfect parallel to the Benevento twins in terms of the deity for whom they had been erected), though, as mentioned earlier in this paper, this must remain a pure hypothesis.241 Note also that the same three basic textual components observed in the Benevento obelisks’ inscriptions (identity of the dedicator, good wishes for the benefit of the emperor, dedication to the gods) are reflected in the case of the obelisks erected in Aswan by the centurion Titus Aurelius Restitutus, though in his case we are dealing with the Latin inscription on one of their bases, rather than with hieroglyphic texts on the obelisks themselves.
At the textual level, however, there are also significant differences between the Benevento and the Borgia and Albani obelisks. Despite the repetition of some phrases (especially in the second half of sides 2 and 4), the Benevento twins essentially bear a different text on each of their sides, with their faces alternatively giving pride of place to the emperor (sides 1, with Domitian’s full titulary, and 3, with his throne and birth names opening the inscription as part of a dating formula) and to Isis (with her name starting both sides 2 and 4). In contrast, the Borgia and Albani obelisks each carry the same inscription on their respective four sides. Differences appear only between the texts of the two obelisks. Most notably, the name of the dedicator features closer to the center of the inscription in the Albani monolith, while it is near its end in the Borgia one, and the verbs referring to the obelisk’s dedication are also different, in one case 
sxn “to dedicate” (Albani), in the other saHa “to erect” (Borgia). It looks as if the two texts were conceptually the same but rather differently worded and ordered—a factor that, understandably, may contribute to the reluctance to think of them as a pair expressed by several scholars. The textual differences between the two Benevento obelisks are, instead, not as striking (as seen in detail in the commentary), being limited to relatively minor variants and in some cases consisting of simple omissions.
Moreover, what little text can be extracted from the Borgia and Albani obelisks also shows notable peculiarities. For example, the Borgia inscriptions introduce the royal cartouches with 
nb tA.wy sA nTr “the Lord of the Two Lands, the Son of the God,” which is not a standard combination of epithets in the display of a king’s hieroglyphic titulary.242 On the contrary, the Benevento obelisks make use of a completely standard Egyptian phraseology, be that in the references to the emperor (despite the accidental omission and inversion of titles found in obelisk A/1) or to Isis. More than that, in their choice of names for the pharaonic titulary of Domitian, the Benevento inscriptions are also a real tour de force. By referencing much earlier royal titularies (be they Ptolemaic or even more ancient), they testify to the deep knowledge of Egyptian traditions that the hieroglyphic inscriptions’ author must have had.
Linguistically, the inscriptions of both sets of obelisks are written in the archaic phase of the Egyptian language that was typically chosen for monumental hieroglyphic inscriptions, Middle Egyptian. What can be said about the Borgia and Albani obelisks is rather limited, as most of the preserved text is taken up by the dedicator’s name and royal epithets and cartouches, with hardly any proper sentences. As already remarked, what little syntax their inscriptions contain presents a number of peculiarities, such as the anticipation of the subject before a suffix-conjugation form of the verb, or the lack of a direct object following the verb (in the Borgia obelisk only). The former can be explained within the expected behavior of Middle Egyptian grammar, however, and the latter is probably no more than an accidental omission. The Benevento inscriptions offer instead much more material for the study of their command of Middle Egyptian grammar, as discussed in the commentary. One does observe occasionally convoluted turns of phrase or omissions, but as already argued, I do not consider these enough reason to imply that the author of the Egyptian inscriptions had a poor knowledge of Middle Egyptian or that he created a slavish and awkward text by choosing to stick too closely to the letter of an original Greek draft of the text.243
Let us now come to the epigraphy of these obelisks. The inscriptions of the Borgia and Albani and of the Benevento monoliths are in both cases inscribed on all faces as a single column of text, vertically delimited on either side by a carved double line. This carved double line is a typical feature of inscribed obelisks of the Roman period,244 including a royal commission like the Pamphili obelisk (but not the Barberini). Apart from this shared element, however, epigraphy is probably the domain in which some of the most striking differences between our two sets of obelisks emerge already at first glance. As pointed out earlier in this article, the Borgia and Albani inscriptions are rather peculiar in the design and arrangement of their hieroglyphs: the individual signs are sparsely distributed, often quite awkward in shape, frequently inverted with respect to their expected orientation, and quite large in size. For instance, the seated man sign alone, 
, always takes up the whole width of the inscription, and there are never more than two signs combined horizontally, except for the combination of three narrow ones in 
sqs (part of the name Sextius) or for the superimposed sequence 
writing saHa=f “he erected.” Note that these oversize hieroglyphs are the reason why the Borgia and Albani obelisks carry a more limited amount of text compared to the Benevento obelisks (that is, even accounting for their incomplete preservation), which pack much more information on their shafts, thanks to their smaller signs. The detail that the carver(s) of the Borgia and Albani obelisks put into the execution of some signs, such as the seated man or the stool sign 
, also appears to be manneristic more than genuinely Egyptian. Overall, these features seem to suggest an execution of the carving in Italy rather than Egypt, as is the case with Domitian’s Pamphili obelisk, which is also characterized by awkwardly shaped and elongated glyphs.245
In contrast, the Benevento obelisks are undoubtedly the work of a much more skilled hand. The look of their hieroglyphs falls in no way short of the standards found on temple inscriptions in contemporary Egypt, and despite their occasionally odd arrangement, one does not find any major problem with them. Indeed, contrary perhaps to the scholarly communis opinio, I am inclined to believe that they were carved directly in Egypt, before the finished lot was shipped to Italy.246 The choice of hieroglyphic signs too is quite remarkable, employing writings that are distinctly typical of Ptolemaic and Roman times, from the fairly common ones (the flesh sign 
for f or the eye-pupil 
for iri) to more elaborate and self-consciously complex variants (the ibis 
for the number xmn “eight” in the dating formula or the group for Xnw “royal residence, capital”).247 Even the choice of determinatives is more elaborate in the Benevento obelisks. Thus, in most cases, the Roman name of the dedicator is followed not only by the seated man, 
, but also by the foreign-land-and-throw-stick determinative, 
. The Borgia and Albani inscriptions instead make exclusive use of the plain seated man sign. Moreover, the author of the Benevento inscriptions came up with some highly creative writings. The spelling of the cognomen Lupus is a particular case in point. Not only does it surprisingly employ the striding lion 
with a phonetic value normally pertaining to its recumbent counterpart, 
(perhaps as a means to vary and establish a graphic play between the two leonine signs, given that already occurs just above, in the dedicator’s nomen), it also uses a complex writing for marking the p of Lupus, , which is derived from a writing of the word for p(.t) “sky.”
Bearing in mind the stark differences between their epigraphy, it is all the more surprising that both the Borgia and Albani and the Benevento obelisks should in fact share a most unusual feature in the idiosyncratic use of the sign for t(A), in both cases used only within the writing of their dedicators’ Roman names (see my commentary above, note 14 to side 2). It is hard to think that such a peculiar trait would independently have arisen in their inscriptions; indeed, it is precisely through similar shared idiosyncrasies that artifacts can normally be ascribed to the same scribal hand or epigraphic workshop. At the same time, though, it is equally hard to imagine a common source for monuments like ours, whose epigraphy is otherwise so strongly different. Clearly the present study is only the beginning, and much remains to be understood about these monuments and the way in which they were commissioned and prepared, from both a textual and a material point of view.
To sum up, a good number of differences can be observed between the Benevento and the Borgia and Albani obelisks. Especially when it comes to their radically different epigraphy, such differences clearly point at the Benevento twins being a product of significantly higher craftsmanship. Nonetheless, despite all their dissimilarities, the two sets of obelisks also show many common features, which we can therefore use to better define the category of privately dedicated inscribed Roman obelisks. They all are of relatively contained size, smaller on average than royally commissioned obelisks. They are carved out of the same material, granite, most probably syenite from Egyptian quarries. They most likely belonged to the same context, that is, as part of a temple or sanctuary. The language in which their hieroglyphic inscriptions are written is the same, Middle Egyptian. And finally the key elements of their texts are fundamentally the same, that is, honoring the reigning emperor and immortalizing the name of the private dedicator. A third element, which is the dedication to a deity (and the associated celebration of a specific occasion connected with said deity’s cult) is at the center of the Benevento inscriptions, with their dedication to Isis and celebration of the erection of the obelisks and Iseum. This third element was likely present in the Borgia and Albani inscriptions, but, unless more fragments of them are discovered, this must remain an educated guess.
Epilogue
When I first planned to write this paper, my intention was to focus on the characteristics and functions of inscribed Roman obelisks dedicated by private citizens. The text of the Benevento obelisks was intended to be included in a brief appendix, purely for convenience and ease of reference. But early on in my work, it became clear that a rigorous survey of all previous scholarship and, most importantly, a new documentation and edition of these obelisks were a priority and ought to sit at the heart of my new study: for the Benevento obelisks had somehow become some of the most misrepresented artifacts in the field of Romano-Egyptian antiquity, their understanding buried at the bottom of a dense stratigraphy of conflicting interpretations, misconceptions, and sometimes plain myths that had piled up at the crossroads of ancient history and Egyptology.
Undeniably, multiple approaches can be used as a valid means of furthering our understanding of these extraordinary monuments: some may study them as witnesses of the spreading of Egyptian cults and the hunger for aegyptiaca in the Roman Empire, others as unique products of the cultural and religious agenda of a specific emperor’s reign, others as some of the latest original textual products created by the Egyptian priestly intelligentsia, and others yet as examples of Roman adoption of the Egyptian sacred language and script in an early instance of cultural appropriation. But these obelisks can and should also be studied for their own value, as a rare category of monuments bearing extraordinary inscriptions, which transcend the boundaries between Egyptian and classical civilizations. More importantly, a close study of the obelisks themselves is a sine qua non that must lie at the foundation of any other study. No real advancement in their modern interpretation is possible—whatever its methods are and whatever we may think of them, groundbreaking approaches or scholarly fads—if it does not rely on a solid analysis of the primary sources as its cornerstone. This is therefore what I have tried to provide in the present paper, as a resource intended for Egyptologists and ancient historians alike.
It is perhaps an ironic testament to the importance of autopsy in scholarly practice and the need for collating old epigraphic copies—even in the case of supposedly well-known, fully accessible, and well-published monuments—that this article has had to offer a new, emended copy of the Benevento obelisks’ inscriptions. For more than a century these monuments have been published and republished based on the facsimiles first produced by Erman in 1893. Not once have the original inscriptions been revisited or has the accuracy of this old copy been questioned, even though the original monuments remained easily accessible: one displayed in a museum, the other standing in the middle of a lovely Italian piazza. Almost two hundred years ago, in 1826, Jean-François Champollion was lamenting the quality of Zoëga’s 1797 engraving of the Benevento inscriptions—back then, the only available reproduction—and expressed his resolve to replace it by publishing a more faithful copy.248 With the epigraphic documentation made available in this study, further and long-overdue steps have been taken in the direction in which he first pointed.
In conclusion, the majestic Pamphili and Barberini obelisks, with their hieroglyphic inscriptions commissioned directly by the emperor (Domitian and Hadrian, respectively), still make for some of ancient Rome’s most impressive monuments. It is, however, even more extraordinary to conceive that private citizens based in Italy could themselves commission obelisks with original hieroglyphic inscriptions containing newly composed Middle Egyptian texts—whether motivated by genuine devotion or by alignment with imperial tastes. Indeed, one wonders whether Rutilius Lupus took the inspiration for commissioning his twin monuments from the obelisk that Domitian had erected a few years earlier in Rome.
As public monuments, yet ones covered in a script that was hardly accessible to the public, these Egyptian monoliths erected in Roman Italy may appear absurdly contradictory in nature. Ironically, however, it was precisely here, in Roman Italy, that the archaic and inaccessible nature of the hieroglyphic script served its original purpose best: preserving the name of its beneficiary for eternity. Following Domitian’s assassination in AD 96, the senate “passed a decree that his inscriptions should everywhere be erased, and all record of him obliterated” (eradendos ubique titulos abolendamque omnem memoriam decerneret).249 Yet the name of Domitian, encased by protective cartouches, survived proudly and in plain view both in Rome, on the Pamphili obelisk, and in Benevento, on the Iseum’s twin obelisks. What the main languages of power in Rome, Latin and Greek, could not do was successfully accomplished by the power of Egyptian hieroglyphs.250
Appendix A
Continuous Transliteration and Translation of the Benevento Obelisks’ Inscriptions
The text reproduces the one given in the edition, with the same conventions (for example, underlined text marks points in which the inscriptions of the two obelisks diverge from one another).
Side 1
| Transliteration | Translation | |
|---|---|---|
| A | ↓→ @r Hwn n<x>t(?) <nb.ty> iTi ˹m sxm˺ bik nbw ˹wsr rnp.w(t)˺ aA nxt <nsw.t bi.ty> ˹AW˺&QR&R K%R% nsw.t bi.ty &˹M˺[&]IN% anx D.t xbi in(.w) m tA.wy xAs.wt m ntyy.w r iy.t=f n.t Xnw [!r]˹m˺ | The Horus “Str<o>ng(?) Youth,” <the Two Ladies> “He Who Conquers through Might,” the Golden Falcon “Powerful of Years and Great of Triumph,” <the King of Upper and Lower Egypt> Emperor Caesar, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Domi[t]ian, ever-living, he who collects tribute from the Two Lands and the subjugated foreign countries to his sanctuary(?) of the capital city, [Ro]me. |
| B | ←↓ [. . .] ˹bik˺ nbw wsr rnp.w(t) aA nxt nsw.t bi.ty AW&QR&[R] K˹Y%˺R% sA Ra &M&IN% anx D.t xbi in(.w) m tA.wy xAs.wt m nDy.w r iy.t=f n.t Xnw !rm | […] the Golden Falcon “Powerful of Years and Great of Triumph,” the King of Upper and Lower Egypt Empero[r] Caesar, the Son of Re Domitian, ever-living, he who collects tribute from the Two Lands and the subjugated foreign countries to his sanctuary(?) of the capital city, Rome. |
Side 2
| Transliteration | Translation | |
|---|---|---|
| A | ↓→ As(.t) wr(.t) mw.t nT(r) %pd.t HqA.t anx.w nb(.t) p(.t) tA dwA.t saHa=f n=˹s˺ txn n inr mAT Hna nTr.w niw.t=f Bnmts (w)DA ini n nb tA.wy &M&IN% anx D.t rn=f nfr R˹wt˺l˹y˺ys Lpws di n=f aHaw qAi m nDm-ib | Isis the Great, the God’s Mother, Sothis, Queen of the Stars, Lady of the Sky, the Earth, and the Netherworld: he erected an obelisk of granite stone to her and the gods of his city, Benevento, so that the return of the Lord of the Two Lands Domitian, ever-living, might be prosperous. His good name is Rutilius Lupus. May a long lifetime in joy be granted to him. |
| B | ↓→ [. . .] ˹txn˺ m inr mAT Hna nTr.w niw(.t)=f Bnmts ˹wDA ini˺ n nb tA.wy &M&IN% anx D.t rn=f nfr Rwtlys Lpws di n=f aHaw qAi | […] an obelisk of granite stone […] and the gods of his city, Benevento, so that the return of the Lord of the Two Lands Domitian, ever-living, might be prosperous. His good name is Rutilius Lupus. May a long lifetime be granted to him. |
Side 3
| Transliteration | Translation | |
|---|---|---|
| A | ↓→ rnp(.t)-sp xmn.t xr Hm @r kA nxt nsw.t bi.ty nb tA.[wy] N*R %A N*R MR(Y) N*R.W NB(.W) ˹sA˺ Ra nb xa.w &M&˹I˺N˹%˺ anx D.t xwsi aH.t Sps(.t) n As.t wr.t nb(.t) Bnmnts ˹H˺na PsD.t=s in Rwtlys Lpyws wDA ini n ˹nb tA.wy˺ | Regnal year eight, under the majesty of the Horus “Strong Bull,” the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, the Lord of the [Two] Lands The God, the Son of the God, Beloved of All the Gods, the Son of Re, the Lord of Crowns Domitian, ever-living: a splendid sanctuary was built to Isis the Great, Lady of Benevento, and her Ennead, by Rutilius Lupus, so that the return of the Lord of the Two Lands might be prosperous. |
| B | ↓→ [. . .] ˹N*R˺ %A [N*R] MR(Y) N*R(.W) NB(.W) sA Ra nb xa.w &M&˹I˺[N]˹%˺ anx D.t xwsi aH(.t) Sps(.t) <n> As.t wr(.t) nb(.t) Bnmts saHa txn mAT in Rwtlys Lps wDA ini n nb tA.wy | […] The God, the Son of [the God], Beloved of All the Gods, the Son of Re, the Lord of Crowns Domitia[n], ever-living: a splendid sanctuary was built <to> Isis the Great, Lady of Benevento, (and) an obelisk of granite was erected by Rutilius Lupus, so that the return of the Lord of the Two Lands might be prosperous. |
Side 4
| Transliteration | Translation | |
|---|---|---|
| A | ↓→ As.t wr.t mw.t nT(r) ir(.t) Ra nb(.t) p(.t) ˹Hnw.t˺ nTr.w nb(.w) iri<=f> n=s <m>nw p˹n˺ Hna ˹nTr.w˺ niw(.t)=f BnmTs ˹wDA ini˺ <n> sA Ra nb xa(.w) &M&IN% ˹anx D˺.t rn=f nfr Rwtlys Lpys diw n˹=f˺ [. . .] | Isis the Great, the God’s Mother, the Sun’s Eye, Lady of the Sky, Mistress of All the Gods: <he> made this <mo>nument to her and the gods of his city, Benevento, so that the return <of> the Son of Re, the Lord of Crowns Domitian, ever-living, might be prosperous. His good name is Rutilius Lupus. May […] be granted to him. |
| B | ↓→ [. . .] n=s <m>nw pn Hna nTr.w niw.t=f BnmTs wDA ini n sA Ra [nb] xa(.w) &M&IN% anx D.t rn=f nfr Rwtlyys Lpws di n=f anx (w)DA s(nb) Aw(.t)-ib | […] this <mo>nument to her and the gods of his city, Benevento, so that the return of the Son of Re, [the Lord] of Crowns Domitian, ever-living, might be prosperous. His good name is Rutilius Lupus. May life, prosperity, health, and happiness be granted to him. |
Figure 7.26
Figure 7.27Appendix B
Past Epigraphic Copies of the Benevento Obelisks and Their Differences
This appendix brings together the historical epigraphic copies of the Benevento obelisks’ inscriptions, that is, Zoëga’s, Ungarelli’s, and Erman’s.251 This is to allow for an easy consultation and comparison of their main differences, which have already been individually discussed in the commentary accompanying the text edition.
Zoëga’s copy documents the obelisk as it appeared in the eighteenth century, standing in front of Benevento’s cathedral before its later relocation to Piazza Papiniano. At the time (and, in fact, up until the twentieth century),252 the obelisk was reassembled out of four fragments, with the upper three being what are now the middle fragments of obelisk A, and the bottom one actually being the lower section of obelisk B. Zoëga, who could not read the hieroglyphs, therefore documented the inscriptions as they looked in real life rather than trying to reorder them correctly at least on paper, as Ungarelli and Erman do. Namely, looking at the fragments in his copy from bottom to top, Zoëga’s side 1 = Erman’s (and my) sides B/2+A/4, his side 2 = B/4+A/2, his side 3 = B/1+A/3, and his side 4 = B/3+A/1. In terms of its epigraphic value to modern studies of the obelisks, Zoëga’s copy is nowadays of little use, though far from unimportant. In fact, it makes a direct contribution to my analysis concerning a damaged passage in the bottom fragment of B/1, for which see my commentary (note 6 to side 1).
As for Ungarelli’s copy,253 the following points must be noted:
(1) the top fragment of obelisk A was yet undiscovered in Ungarelli’s time and is thus missing from his copy;
(2) Ungarelli orders the obelisks’ sides differently from later scholars: thus, Erman’s (and my) sides 1-2-3-4 = Ungarelli’s 1-3-2-4;
(3) in Ungarelli’s copy of B/3 and B/4 (= Erman’s B/2 and B/4), the two fragments from which the obelisk is reconstructed are mistakenly swapped, with the lower fragment of his side B/3 pertaining in fact to side B/4, and vice versa. Further errors are also introduced here as a consequence of this mix-up.
For ease of consultation, I have gathered in two tables all the significant divergences between Ungarelli’s and Erman’s copies, since there are good a number of them and not all are obvious at first sight. Note that, by “significant divergences,” I intend differences that entail, for instance, omitted, misplaced, and wrongly added hieroglyphs. Minor differences, such as signs reproduced with different degrees of damage or slightly different appearances, are not listed.
As regards Erman’s copy, I offer it here also for immediate comparison with my own facsimiles. In this case, I do not list all changes in a dedicated table as I have done for Ungarelli’s, since discussion in my edition’s commentary, as well as comparison with the photographs published in this article, already clarify what my improvements are. To help the reader spot all significant differences, I have simply marked their position in the inscriptions by inserting into Erman’s original copy curly brackets next to the relevant passages.
Figure 7.28
Figure 7.29
Figure 7.30
Figure 7.31
Obelisk A: differences between Ungarelli’s and Erman’s copies
| Side | Ungarelli (U) | Erman (E) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |  | Incorrect swap of  A and  w in U. |
| 1 |  |  | Incorrect omission of  i in U. |
| 1 |  |  | Incorrect omission of top of  m in U. |
| 2 (= U 3) | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| 3 (= U 2) |  |  | Incorrect rendering of  determinative in E. |
| 3 (= U 2) |  |  | Incorrect omission of  Hna in U. |
| 4 |  |  | Incorrect omissions of  nw and, partially, of  determinative in E. |
Obelisk B: differences between Ungarelli’s and Erman’s copies
| Side | Ungarelli (U) | Erman (E) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |  | Incorrect inclusion of  r atop  k in U.Incorrect inversion of k in U.The first  s in U (absent in lacuna in E) is an unmarked restoration, not only epigraphically inaccurate but also wrong (as confirmed by Zoëga’s copy). |
| 2 (= U 3) |  |  | Unspecified damage signaled left of  txn in U versus specific traces of sign (perhaps  ) in E. |
| 2 (= U 3) |  |  | Fully preserved  wDA ini group in U is an unmarked restoration, epigraphically inaccurate.The following signs in U,  n sA Ra nb, are inexistent, included by mistake. |
| 2 (= U 3) |  |  | Incorrect omission of  n in U (NB: due to a mix-up, the second fragment of U’s B/3 is incorrectly shown as part of B/4). |
| 3 (= U 2) |  |  | Incorrect inclusion of  nb below  nTr in U. |
| 3 (= U 2) |  |  | Presence of  n in U (lost in lacuna in E) may be an unmarked restoration (albeit undoubtedly correct) and epigraphically inaccurate (also considering how the layout of other signs in his cartouche is clearly unfaithful to the original). |
| 4 | n/a | n/a | n/a (NB: due to a mix-up, the second fragment of B/4 is incorrectly shown as part of U’s B/3). |
Appendix C: Documenting Benevento’s Obelisk A (by Paul D. Wordsworth)
In spite of the apparently diminutive size of the obelisk standing in Benevento’s Piazza Papiniano, as well as its excellent preservation, the three-dimensional recording of the monument and its inscriptions was not a straightforward procedure. The major obstacles to photogrammetric or laser modeling of obelisks relate not only to their size and shape but also to the materials they are made from and, most critically, to their positioning in the surrounding environment. Considering the latter, the Benevento obelisk is placed outdoors in a small urban public square, which precluded documentation using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, or drone) unless substantial safety measures could be ensured. The tall buildings on all sides, meanwhile, greatly affect the direction and intensity of the lighting of the obelisk at different times of day and in varying weather conditions, having a substantial bearing on the legibility of the inscriptions. Hard granite masonry may have ensured the longevity of the carved outlines against erosion, but the camouflaging variegation of the dark stone results in many signs being almost invisible unless in the correct raking light. As the obelisk is placed on cardinal directions outdoors, this will necessarily mean that each side must ideally be recorded at a different time of day, and that the north side (A/3), for example, will always be difficult to capture adequately, given that it always stands against the light.
The approach adopted here to document the Benevento obelisk was to use photogrammetry to generate a series of three-dimensional orthophotographs of each face. Orthographic projection of photographs onto an accurate three-dimensional model permits a full-color scaled digital output, allowing direct copying and comparison with historical facsimiles. The photographs in this instance were captured using a nine-meter telescopic monopod pole, onto which was mounted a 24.3-megapixel digital SLR camera, with a fixed focal-length lens. Photographs were taken on an automated interval setting and the camera raised between exposures, and then lowered in the same pattern, to create an average overlap of 50 percent. In order to achieve good resolution and adequate light balance while ensuring a safe distance, camera positions were kept at a distance of one meter from the obelisk, positioned at three angles per side (face-on and two oblique angles at the same distance). In theory, it would have been possible to model the complete obelisk from the photograph coverage obtained, but as mentioned above, the optimal lighting for each side was at different times of day, when the difference in shadows makes accurate photo-matching between the sides more difficult. Furthermore, the objective at this stage was to be able to represent for the first time an accurate scaled image of each face. The photographs were captured in summer, on a dry, cloudless day (July 29, 2020, morning through early afternoon), at points when the direct raking light cast strong contrasting shadows across the relief.
The resulting orthophotographs, published in this article, represent the first systematic detailed documentation of the obelisk since Adolf Erman’s recording of the stone’s surface using squeezes in the late nineteenth century. Each side is represented with sufficient detail that, even without digital tracing, it is possible to assess each individual sign, its form, and placement, and at the same time produce a comprehensive record of any damage the monument has accrued over time (which was only partially noted in the historical squeezes). With an unlimited budget it would be possible to capture yet further detail under controlled lighting conditions (erecting a scaffolding shelter and artificial light) or to use laser scanning on a suitable surrounding scaffolding. For the time being, however, it is anticipated that these orthophotographs and the resulting facsimiles will form the new primary reference for Benevento’s obelisk A and its inscriptions.254
Figure 7.34
Figure 7.35I am indebted to a good number of people and institutions for facilitating my research. The J. Paul Getty Museum invited me in 2017 to assist in the conservation project of the Benevento obelisk to be exhibited in Los Angeles (obelisk B of the pair) and, in August 2018, to present at the colloquium Egypt, Greece, Rome: Cross-Cultural Encounters in Antiquity: for their generosity and enthusiasm, I am especially grateful to Jeffrey Spier, Timothy Potts, Sara E. Cole, and Erik Risser. Mark Smith (University of Oxford) and Jenny Cromwell (Manchester Metropolitan University) kindly read a draft of this paper and suggested a number of improvements. Several insightful conversations with Maria Cristina White-da Cruz (London) helped me put in order my ideas on Roman Benevento. The Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, and the British Academy, London (from which, at the time, I held an Early Career Fellowship), funded research trips to inspect much of the material described in this study (Munich, Albani obelisk; Palestrina, Borgia obelisk; and Benevento). The Landmark Trust awarded me a grant from its Landmark Futures scheme, which enabled me to write part of this paper during a research stay at the Egyptian House in Penzance, Cornwall, in May 2019, in the fine Egyptological company of the “Griffith Ladies” (Cat Warsi, Elizabeth Fleming, and Jenni Navratil, University of Oxford). Thanks are also due to those individuals who assisted me in procuring new images—either for study or publication—of the obelisks discussed in this article. Namely, I am obliged to Laura Forte and Anna Pizza (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli), for images of the Naples fragments of the Borgia obelisk; Marina Cogotti (Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Palestrina), Nicola Barbagli (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa), and Elisa V. Bove (Rome), for images of the Palestrina fragments of the same obelisk; Sylvia Schoske and Roxane Bicker (Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst in Munich), for images of the Albani obelisk; Gabriella Gomma (Museo del Sannio di Benevento), for permission to publish the photographs of Benevento’s obelisk B, taken during its conservation at the Getty; Nicodemo Abate (Naples), for sharing with me his photographs and 3-D model of the obelisk in Piazza Papiniano (obelisk A), long before I could visit Benevento in person (his model can be accessed online on the Sketchfab platform, at https://skfb.ly/6WCRs); and Irene Soto Marín (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), for photographs of the same obelisk. Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to Paul D. Wordsworth (University of Oxford). Not only did he assist with the preparation of all the illustrations published in this study, but he also took care of documenting the obelisks’ inscriptions in Palestrina (with further logistical assistance from Massimo Giuseppetti, Università degli Studi Roma Tre, and Sahba Shayani, University of Oxford) and in Benevento, devising—in summer 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic—the ingenious system used to record the epigraphy of obelisk A, which he illustrates here in appendix C. The writing of this paper was completed at Uppsala University, after I took up my post there.
Epigraph: Ungarellius 1842, 1:160n46.
Notes
The oldest Egyptian obelisk from the Dynastic period to be found in Rome is also the largest: that of Thutmose III and IV now in Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano (18th Dynasty, fifteenth–fourteenth century BC). The most recent is the Minerveo obelisk, from the reign of Apries (26th Dynasty, sixth century BC). The bibliography on Egyptian obelisks in Rome is vast. It suffices here to mention , vol. 1; ; for shorter overviews, see , 67–85; . ↩︎
Though without hieroglyphs, this obelisk bears a short dedicatory inscription in Latin (see, for example, , 156–61; , 205–8, no. 43). Brief inscriptions in Greek and Latin to celebrate an obelisk’s (re-)dedication, carved directly on the lower end of the monolith—as in this case—or on its plinth or, at times, even on bronze supports used to prop up the obelisk, are well attested and are found in connection with both uninscribed and inscribed (sc., with Egyptian hieroglyphs) obelisks: see, for instance, , 217–19, no. 46, 225–31, nos. 48, 49. ↩︎
I do not take into consideration here the Sallustiano obelisk at Trinità dei Monti, since its inscriptions (possibly executed at some point in the third century AD) are a mechanical copy of those on the Flaminio obelisk (19th Dynasty, thirteenth century BC). See , 81–82. ↩︎
For the former, see . For the latter, see the studies in (still the best work available on its inscriptions) and . It remains debated whether the original location of Hadrian’s obelisk was in Italy (in Rome or at the emperor’s villa in Tivoli) or in Egypt, at Antinoupolis (see , 37–45). Even if the latter was the case (which seems, in fact, unlikely), the obelisk would still have been moved to Rome in antiquity, under one of Hadrian’s successors. ↩︎
See , 405. ↩︎
See . ↩︎
They must have been, however, relatively sizable obelisks—larger than the Benevento obelisks discussed later in this article—likely over 5 meters in height. This estimate can be obtained by comparing the surface of the partly surviving base of one of the Aswan obelisks (0.97 × 1 meter; see , 106) with that of the Benevento obelisks (0.63 × 0.63 meter). Given that the original height of the Benevento obelisks must have been around 4.5 meters, the height one might reasonably expect from Aurelius Restitutus’s obelisks seems to be, at the very least, 5 meters (on his part, , 111–12n5, suggests anywhere between 4 and 7 meters). ↩︎
The inscription is in Alexandria, Greco-Roman Museum, JE 21790. For a recent treatment, see , 307–9, no. 70. ↩︎
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze, inv. 3686. See , 83, no. 88, figs. 104–10; J. Baines and H. Whitehouse in , 728–30, no. 343. ↩︎
Benevento, Museo del Sannio, inv. 265. See , 64, plate xxi.2. ↩︎
Admittedly, in both the Florence and the Benevento cases one cannot positively prove that these obelisks were private commissions: since neither artifact bears a legible inscription or comes from a documented original context, it goes without saying that their dedicators remain unknown. It seems, however, wholly unlikely that such small items—as far as obelisks go—could have been expressly commissioned by an emperor (the Florentine obelisk is only 1.73 meters high, and the Benevento one was even smaller, based on what can be judged from its surviving fragment). For a similar opinion (specifically about the Florentine monolith), see , 413. Another interesting example of a small, privately dedicated monument inscribed with pseudo-hieroglyphs—an obelisk or perhaps a stela?—comes from Roman Dacia (modern Romania) and is a reminder that similar artifacts were not limited to Italy: Cluj-Napoca, National Museum of Transylvanian History, inv. 25484, published in (its height is 1.19 meters). More sizable obelisks with pseudo-hieroglyphic inscriptions are more difficult to categorize, however, for their dimensions alone may suggest the possibility of a commission from a public—if not necessarily imperial—authority. Examples include the obelisks of Catania, with the one in Piazza del Duomo being around 3.5 meters high (see , 207–9, nos. 136–38, figs. 22, 23—here classified as “colonna”), and the obelisk—categorized by some as an elongated stela—of the Tiber Island, in Rome, which, in all likelihood, was originally more than 6 meters high (see , 79–82, no. 85, figs. 95–102). ↩︎
In the case of other material pertaining to Roman obelisks inscribed with meaningful hieroglyphic inscriptions, such as the fragment now in the Musei Capitolini in Rome preserving a few hieroglyphs with the name of the god Osiris (inv. 2935/S), unfortunately too little survives to tell whether we are dealing with a royal or a private commission (on this fragment, see , 83, no. 87, fig. 103; most recently, , 200, no. 094). They will therefore be left out of my discussion. ↩︎
See Swetnam-Burland (, 7–14, 18–19), where we read at 10: “we must refrain from prioritizing the object’s [Egyptian] creation over its [Roman] reuse or favoring literal meaning over symbolic [i.e., that which a hieroglyphic inscription—or even pseudo-hieroglyphic—could have held also for those who could not read it].” On cultural and object biographies, particularly applied to obelisks, see now the recent discussion in , 38–40; to this, add several of the essays in , which revisit so-called Egyptomania (in ancient Rome and beyond) through the lens of mnemohistory, materiality, and agency. ↩︎
Apuleius, Metamorphoses 11.22 (after , 336–37). ↩︎
On matters of terminology (and the pros and cons in the use of words such as aegyptiaca, Egyptianizing, etc.), I refer the reader to Swetnam-Burland (, 113–19), whose points I need not reiterate here. Most recently, Gasparini and Gordon (, 578–87) have less convincingly argued for the concept of “Egyptianism(s)” as a new “heuristic device” to be employed in the field. Surprisingly, when discussing artifacts from Roman Italy inscribed with hieroglyphic texts, their study traces a simple dichotomy between imported earlier Egyptian antiquities with genuine hieroglyphic texts versus Roman imitations with gibberish inscriptions (see , 588–93). The category of newly composed and grammatically legible hieroglyphic inscriptions, as in the case of the obelisks discussed in the present paper, goes unmentioned. ↩︎
See note 245 below. ↩︎
See note 13 above. ↩︎
And it was still circulating in the fourth century AD, when the historian Ammianus Marcellinus cited from it in his Res Gestae; see . Based on a passage by Pliny the Elder, Swetnam-Burland (, 142–43) suggests that perhaps even the other obelisk brought to Rome by Augustus—the Montecitorio one—might have received a Latin or Greek translation of its hieroglyphic inscriptions (on these obelisks of Augustus, see also note 149 below). ↩︎
Two fragments are in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Palestrina, inv. 80548; E 19 (0.63 and 0.47 meter in height); see Agnoli (, 284–87, no. III.23), who lists three fragments (the third one has since been rejoined with the top one of the two larger fragments, as visible in , 89). Four more fragments (now restored together into a single, 1.9-meter-high, piece constituting the obelisk’s bottom section) are in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. 2317; see , 39, plate ii, no. 7; , 168, no. 14. In much past scholarship, the fragments in Palestrina and those in Naples were considered to belong to two separate twin obelisks (see, for example, , 110), but today’s consensus is that they belong to one and the same monolith (see , 88). ↩︎
Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, inv. Gl. WAF 39; see , 1–3; . Note that only the central section of the Albani obelisk is original: its bottom and top parts are fanciful restorations from the eighteenth century. The ancient section measures 3.2 meters in height, while the whole obelisk has now a height of 5.5 meters (Schlüter 2014, 90). ↩︎
For the uncertainties involved in the reading of his name, see the discussion below. ↩︎
All four faces of each obelisk preserve the same inscription (with different degrees of damage on each face and occasional minor differences in the arrangement of the hieroglyphic signs), so I offer a single transcription per obelisk. This reflects the preservation state of no specific individual side but rather gathers the epigraphic data available from all four. The same is the case with my standardized hieroglyphic transcriptions, which therefore do not signal a specific right-to-left or left-to-right reading direction, nor do they mark a sign as damaged, unless this is the case on all four faces. Save for this exception, note that all other hieroglyphic transcriptions provided in this article either mark or directly reproduce the orientation of the original inscriptions. All hieroglyphic transcriptions were prepared with the JSesh hieroglyphic editor. ↩︎
Throughout this article, text in all caps in the transliteration and small caps in the translation indicates text in cartouches. ↩︎
In my translation I try to account for the syntax of the inscription as best as I can, based on the surviving morsels of text. The Naples fragments include the bottom of the obelisk and the inscription’s conclusion, giving the identity of the dedicator. Syntactically the left dislocation of Africanus’s name is unproblematic: it can be explained within the boundaries of Egyptian grammar as an emphatic means to make his name stand out rather than be interpreted as an influence of Latin word order, that is, subject first and verb second (contra , 23). More surprising is the lack of a direct object referring to the obelisk, which I supply with the dependent pronoun sw, based on comparison with the inscription of the Albani obelisk (see note 25 below). As regards other translations of this inscription, note that the one recently offered in Giustozzi (, 168: “[e]rected by the The Lord of the Two Lands, Caesar (or Caius) … Augustus Emperor … Titus Sextus Africanus”), is, in fact, a bizarre rewriting that betrays the original text, assigning the agency of the obelisk’s dedication to the emperor, rather than the private dedicator. As for Capriotti Vittozzi (, 85), her transliteration of the cognomen as Aprikans is incorrect, for the inscription reads
, and thus contains neither i nor a (the latter being in fact an A). ↩︎On the translation of sxn as “to install,” “to introduce” (in a temple), hence, tentatively, “to dedicate,” see , 15; to this, add , 3:469; , 906. Regarding the following
s, I take it as the direct object referring to the obelisk (such a short writing of the dependent pronoun sw—masculine singular, implying a word like txn “obelisk” or mnw “monument”—is well attested in this period; see , 2:603). I withhold instead judgment on the final 
r(w) sign. One would welcome here the preposition of motion r, as this is found in combination with sxn (“to introduce into”). The writing of the preposition r with the recumbent lion sign would be completely aberrant, however, and, to the best of my knowledge, unparalleled. ↩︎See , 15–18; most recently, , 2:1121. ↩︎
See , 15. For hieroglyphic writings of this title beginning with Egyptian i, see , 251. ↩︎
First announced in Bove (, 88), her improved reading is already welcomed in two subsequent studies (, 85; , 2:1121), which both opt to restore ˹QI˺[%R% . . .] for the title Caesar. ↩︎
For details of her epigraphic study, see Bove (, 88, 90n11, claiming that traces of this previously unrecorded q survive on three sides of the fragment), and Bove (, 373–74, now stating that q is partly extant on two sides only). Besides the presence of q in one of the Palestrina fragments, other differences appear between the copies of the Naples section of the Borgia obelisk published in Bove (, 89) and in Müller (, 17, which, in turn, is clearly based on that of , 192, as far the Naples fragments go). These differences show how the obelisk must have suffered further, modern damage to its side 4 (as also highlighted in , 373). When comparing the two copies, note that, numbering the obelisk’s faces from left to right, Bove’s (and my) faces 1-2-3-4 correspond to Müller’s (and Zoëga’s) 3-2-1-4 (Bove moves clockwise around the obelisk, Müller anticlockwise). ↩︎
To be exact, Bove’s published hand drawing marks the very top of q as still visible on faces 1 and 2, but in none of the published photographs of these sides of the fragments are the remainders of such a sign apparent, nor was I able to positively identify them at the time of my own inspection of the artifact (though this may have been due to the display in the Palestrina museum, which partly obscures the fragment’s bottom edge). According to the same facsimile, the presence of the q sign is instead much more evident on side 3 (of which there are no published photographs), with more of it surviving on this face, where traces of another sign to the left of i were also marked in Müller’s copy. My own recent collation has indeed confirmed the presence of a substantial angular shape here on side 3, surely the upper half of a
q. ↩︎A suggestion independently advanced also by Capriotti Vittozzi (, 87), who proposes to identify the emperor of the Borgia and Albani obelisks in Nero (r. AD 54–68). See also , 2:1121n2067. For examples of hieroglyphic writings of Germanicus, see , 252–59 (in the titularies of Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Domitian, and Trajan). ↩︎
As first argued by Spiegelberg (), though note that the reading was already anticipated by Lepsius () as part of the diatribe between Lauth (, ) and Lepsius (, ). With regards to the issues involved in the reading of the praenomen Titus, I refer to my discussion below, within my commentary to the inscriptions of the Benevento obelisks (note 14 to side 2). As for the writing of Africanus, the rendering of Latin f with Egyptian p ought not to surprise; a parallel occurs, for instance, in the Pamphili obelisk, where the name of the dynasty of the Flavii is rendered as
Plwyi (see , 939–40, fig. 1; the copy of the hieroglyphic text in , 158, H.7, is incomplete). ↩︎See Zawadzki (, 110), who did not come up with this suggestion (as believed by , 375) but derived it from Marucchi (, 256). ↩︎
On his possible identification with homonymous Roman citizens known from other sources, see , 253–55, nos. 659, 664. ↩︎
See, for example, , 18–20; , 88–90; , 43. ↩︎
A view held, for instance, also by , 96–97, no. 5; , 333–34; , 286. It is important to note that we have no information about the discovery of the Albani obelisk (contra , 43, who misunderstands her sources). All we have is a Renaissance drawing proving that it was already in Rome in the year 1510 (see , 12–14). ↩︎
See , 97, no. 5; , 2n9; , 124; , 58; , 333; , 43. While noting that the cults of Fortuna Primigenia and Isis in Palestrina may have merged as early as the second century BC, Nagel (, 2:1119–22) remains instead more cautious about assuming any direct connection between these obelisks and the worship of Isis. ↩︎
For more on this, see note 245 below. ↩︎
See note 242 below. ↩︎
See note 24 above. ↩︎
Whether Egyptian priests with such a technical knowledge were present in Roman Italy or their services had to be requested over a distance directly from Egypt remains to this day a much-contended topic, a full discussion of which is beyond the scope of the present paper. Some evidence (such as the well-known inscription from Aquileia dedicated by Harnouphis, an Egyptian hierogrammateus living in Italy—see , 648; more recently, , 309–11, no. 71) would seem to support the former view but remains far from conclusive. On this problem, see also ; , 45–53. Newly published material, however, may help clarify this issue and seems, in fact, to be pointing in the direction of Egypt. Most recently, a hieratic text in honor of Osiris-Antinous with passages closely resembling or identical to the inscriptions of Hadrian’s Barberini obelisk has been identified in a fragmentary papyrus from Tebtunis, in Egypt (first announcement in , 79). This extraordinary material sheds new light on the textual history of such inscriptions, revealing direct links between an obelisk commissioned by a Roman emperor in the second century AD and cultic texts used in Egypt by Egyptian priests specifically to celebrate the novel cult established for the emperor’s favorite. ↩︎
To be sure, alternative explanations are also possible, albeit much less probable. For example, the royal cartouches may in theory have occurred simply as part of a dating formula (as is the case on side 3 of the Benevento obelisks, for which see the edition in the next section). ↩︎
For a hypothetical plan of the Iseum of Benevento (hypothetical in that none of its foundations have been identified and excavated to this day), see, for example, , 136. See also Erman (, 211) and his very plausible suggestion—based on the orientation of the hieroglyphic inscriptions on side 1—that obelisk A originally stood to the left and obelisk B to the right of the sanctuary’s entrance, when facing it. As pointed out by Zawadzki (, 112–13), a scene from the famous Nile mosaic of Palestrina, showing a small temple in classical style in front of which stand two small obelisks, may give us a good approximation of what a similar complex might have looked like. Most recently on the Beneventan Iseum, see . ↩︎
Not four, as instead stated by , 149. ↩︎
All measurements are from , 424, fig. 30. While the plinth is original, the pyramidion (the cusp of the obelisk) is a modern restoration dating to the nineteenth century. Moreover, the whole monument (obelisk and ancient plinth) now sits on an inscribed modern pedestal, also dating from the nineteenth century (see , 392–93 and 390, respectively). ↩︎
Measurements from L. Prada in , 262, no. 164. ↩︎
Inventory number given as 278 in , 82. ↩︎
Note, to be exact, that the base of obelisk B is significantly damaged, and one of its original faces (that pertaining to side 3) is in fact completely lost. ↩︎
This reading will be discussed in detail below, in the edition’s commentary (see notes 14 and 15 to side 2). For the wider picture regarding Isiac dedications by local authorities and dignitaries in Roman Italy, see . ↩︎
See Colin (, 253–57) regarding the exact start and end dates of this regnal year, depending on which calendar the author of the inscription followed (if following the Egyptian use, August 29, 88, to August 28, 89; if following the Roman tradition based on the emperor’s accession to the tribunicia potestas, September 14, 88, to September 13, 89). ↩︎
The first copy of the hieroglyphic inscriptions of these obelisks was published in , 644 (see appendix B). This was, however, a rather approximate and incomplete copy—albeit, for its time, still remarkable—since, back then, fewer fragments from both obelisks were known than are today. Additionally, these fragments had been erroneously combined into one single obelisk, which had been reerected in the city precisely two centuries before, in 1597. I shall not discuss here the modern history of the obelisks, the odyssey of the gradual rediscovery and reassembling of their fragments, and the chronicle of the first studies carried out about them by pioneers of Egyptology such as, among others, Georg Zoëga, Jean-François Champollion, Ippolito Rosellini, and Luigi Ungarelli (studies that, with the exception of Ungarelli’s—see note 72 below—are now of more interest for the history of the discipline than for the actual epigraphic analysis of the inscriptions). The interested reader will find a full account of these matters in the comprehensive study by . Worth mentioning is also Iasiello (, 51–61), in which the reception of modern scholarship concerning the obelisks in the local community of twentieth-century Benevento is discussed from a microhistorical perspective. ↩︎
; , 269–74. Erman’s study includes an epigraphic copy of the inscriptions, while Schiaparelli’s gives only a standardized transcription of the hieroglyphic texts. ↩︎
See , 150. Schiaparelli’s study has since fallen into oblivion—deservedly so, it must be said—but for a few bizarre exceptions. Thus, his translation of the obelisks’ side 1 is inexplicably reproduced in Capponi (, 131), while a partial translation of the inscriptions published in Marucchi (, 119) and itself derived from Schiaparelli’s has made its way into Swetnam-Burland (, 128n33). ↩︎
In addition to these complete translations, several studies give only excerpts or discuss single problematic passages of the inscriptions. I do not list those here but will refer to them below, whenever relevant, in the commentary to my reedition. ↩︎
, 10. Note that Müller merges the texts of the obelisks wherever they diverge, without pointing out which lessons pertain to A and which to B. ↩︎
, 297–98. ↩︎
, 26–27. ↩︎
, 1481–84. ↩︎
, 73–75. ↩︎
R. Pirelli in , 503, no. v.187 (in fact, a translation focused on obelisk B); , 132; , 13 (the last two publications reproduce an incomplete translation, in which the second part of the text of side 1 is accidentally omitted). ↩︎
, 186–87. ↩︎
, 618 (reproduced in , 105–6). ↩︎
, 87–88. ↩︎
L. Prada in , 264, no. 164. The translation I offered in this extended catalogue entry should be considered superseded by the present article, in which I advocate several alternative readings. ↩︎
An example of the issues observed among treatments by ancient historians is, for instance, Takács (, 100n113), who quotes part of the inscriptions directly from Erman (), seemingly unaware of the existence of any intervening study. She also speaks of the Benevento monuments as if they were one single obelisk, a misunderstanding also found in other publications, such as Luke (, 90n74) and Capponi (, 131). As for Luke (, 90n74), the radical issues with his study do not end there, for he claims that on the “obelisk” of Benevento “Isis is depicted crowning Domitian,” blindly following a garbled passage in Liebeschuetz (, 181), where the original discussion clearly referred to the scenes on the pyramidion of the Pamphili obelisk (which Liebeschuetz misassigned, through a slip of the pen, to Benevento; on these scenes, see , 955–58, figs. 5–8). Such issues, however, are not a prerogative of treatments by ancient historians. Even in the domain of Egyptology, it is striking how some of the latest scholarship often still depends almost exclusively on the earliest studies on the inscriptions of the Benevento obelisks. Examples of this are in the treatments by Sperveslage (, 84), and Morenz and Sperveslage (, 37–39), which closely follow Erman’s translation. ↩︎
A full discussion will follow in the commentary (note 10 to side 2). ↩︎
See, for instance, Swetnam-Burland (, 44–45), who points out that “the obelisk [is] a gift honoring Domitian, giving thanks for his safe return from a military campaign,” but then, when quoting from one of the obelisk’s inscriptions, relies on Iversen’s translation, mentioning the “legate of the Augustus […] Domitian.” ↩︎
For an example of the renewed interest and discussion about obelisks in Rome, see, for example, ; . For the most recent studies on the Benevento obelisks and Isiac cults in Roman Italy, see , 2:1163–64; , 37–39. ↩︎
Thus Egyptologists will have to be lenient if they find some of the remarks in my commentary to be too basic or obvious. Conversely, given that my commentary intends to be exhaustive, ancient historians will, I hope, not mind if the linguistic discussion on a number of points of lesser import is more technical, being targeted at readers with a knowledge of ancient Egyptian and the hieroglyphic script. ↩︎
See , 211n1; , 150. Note that Erman never saw the obelisks in person but had the squeezes sent to him in Germany. ↩︎
, 2: plate v (see appendix B). His copy does not include the top fragment of obelisk A, which, as mentioned before, was discovered only later, in 1892. When comparing this copy with Erman’s, note that Ungarelli’s sides 1-2-3-4 = Erman’s 1-3-2-4 and that, in Ungarelli’s copy of obelisk B’s sides 3 and 4 (henceforth, B/3 and B/4)—corresponding to Erman’s B/2 and B/4—the two fragments from which the obelisk is reconstructed are incorrectly swapped, while part of their copy is plainly wrong (more details about this are given in appendix B). Incidentally, more than thirty years after Erman’s edition, Budge (, 248–49) appeared to be unaware of his study and still reprinted Ungarelli’s copy of obelisk A—to the best of my knowledge, an extreme case of outdated referencing in the scholarship on these monuments. ↩︎
The story of Ungarelli’s copy and study of the Benevento obelisks would by itself deserve a dedicated essay. His work was based on a previous, unpublished copy, whose original dated back to 1826 and had been produced by Jean-François Champollion (see , I:iii–iv: “Champollionus […] aestate anni mdcccxxvi […] invisit Beneventum, ubi duos obeliscos recognovit eorumque inscriptiones manu sua exaravit”). After the Frenchman’s premature death in 1832, his unpublished manuscripts had fallen victim to plunder and plagiarism by some of his contemporaries, and his study of the Benevento obelisks also became entangled in this awkward episode in the history of the newborn discipline of Egyptology. What follows are the facts as briefly sketched by Ungarelli in his book. On the one hand, he clearly states that his copy is based on the work that Champollion had carried out on the twin obelisks, beginning in 1826, but ultimately never published (see, for example, , 1:155n1: “fragmenta […] delineata […] curante Equite Champolliono”). On the other hand, though he admits to having never seen the obelisks in person (unlike Champollion), Ungarelli claims to have received squeezes of them from Benevento (, 1:x: “ectypa decerpta accuratissime e saxis ipsis […] accepi”) and, on the basis of these, to have significantly improved the Frenchman’s earlier copy (see , 1:160n46: “[p]rior utriusque obelisci delineatio [sc., Champollion’s] cum variis in locis tum in hoc falsa erat; sed quum imago ectypa ex ipsis saxis nuperrime Beneventi decerpta fuerit, tabulam hanc emendandam curavi”). To this day, it remains unclear to what extent Ungarelli’s publication is a product of plagiarism. The strongest j’accuse against him was launched by Champollion’s elder brother Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac already in 1842, the year in which Ungarelli’s book appeared. Champollion-Figeac’s review is understandably virulent (see , 662–64, in particular: “[j]e revendique aussi pour mon frère la partie la plus importante du travail sur les obélisques de Bénévent”), though at times his indignation leads him to misrepresent Ungarelli’s words and to level excessive charges against him. For example, his accusation that Ungarelli’s claim of having received “copies” of the twin obelisks from Benevento is ludicrous (, 664: “à moins que le corps municipal de Bénévent ne soit composé de savans archéologues, capables de reconstruire deux obélisques avec les debris épars qu’ils possédaient dans leur commune”) is wide of the mark, for Ungarelli states that he received not drawn copies of the inscriptions but squeezes (“ectypa”), the production of which requires no special knowledge, being hardly rocket science (and we now also have independent archival evidence confirming his commission of said squeezes; see , 403). Be that as it may, Ungarelli’s debt to Champollion was certainly much larger than he ever cared to openly acknowledge in his book, particularly so with regard to his text and translations of the inscriptions (as Champollion-Figeac himself stresses), rather than the plates and epigraphic copies themselves. Based on the accounts of both Ungarelli and Champollion-Figeac, it seems that the notorious Francesco Salvolini—the pupil of Champollion responsible for stealing many of his teacher’s papers—did not play any part in how the Frenchman’s copies of the Benevento obelisks made their way into Ungarelli’s hands (on Salvolini, see ; , 410). This is perhaps surprising, given that, among Salvolini’s papers now held in Turin, there is a set of manuscript copies of the Benevento inscriptions. These are partly reproduced in Pirelli (, 90; now also in , 401, fig. 8), but their caption (“[f]acsimile dell’obelisco eseguito da Francesco Salvolini nell’agosto 1826”) is mistaken. Salvolini was seventeen in 1826, and he was to meet Champollion and begin his Egyptological studies only in 1830. As mentioned above, it was Champollion himself who had inspected and transcribed the Benevento inscriptions in 1826, establishing the correct order of the fragments, so that Salvolini’s copy (clearly his own, given that the accompanying notes are in Italian) must be later and derived from his master’s. As an epilogue to this muddled and sad story, it should be noted that later nineteenth-century studies, such as Stern (, 296; misdated to 1883 in , 210), are unaware of Champollion-Figeac’s () review and, consequently, of the existence of Champollion’s original copies. Hence they wholly and wrongly attribute the merit of the correct epigraphic reassembling of the obelisk’s fragments to Ungarelli’s ingenuity rather than Champollion’s (at the time, the obelisk that now stands in Piazza Papiniano was indeed a Frankenstein’s monster, made up of four fragments from both obelisks A and B, and it was only in the twentieth century, after World War II, that the two obelisks were correctly reassembled, under the guidance of Erman’s facsimile; see appendix B and , 413–17, figs. 18–21). This time the record was set straight, in sternly brief terms, by Adolf Erman, who was informed about Champollion-Figeac’s review and the claims of plagiarism against Ungarelli (see , 150: “[w]as Ungarelli über die Beneventaner Obelisken giebt, verdankt er wohl nur Champollion’s Notizen”). ↩︎
Cole, Risser, and Shelley (, 391, 427) point out that the damage on the fragment is compatible with the impact of projectiles (could it also be shrapnel?) and wonder if the damage occurred around 1865, at the time of the obelisk’s transfer from its original location, near the cathedral, to Piazza Papiniano, during which period it was temporarily deposited in the courtyard of a school. We can surely rule out that the damage occurred at this time, however, for the fragment and its inscriptions still appear intact in Erman’s copy, and as I mentioned, this had been prepared based on squeezes made on the original in either 1892 or 1893, well after the obelisk’s reerection in Piazza Papiniano in 1872. Whether the result of bullets fired by soldiers or of shrapnel from air raids, this scarring seems best accounted for by the events of World War II. ↩︎
An exception is Iversen (, 16, 26–27), who prefers to read the inscription in the order 1-3-2-4, following a thematic criterion that combines sides 1 and 3, whose texts he believes to be focused on the emperor, and sides 2 and 4, centered on Isis (on this dualism, see also , 258). I think it is best, however, not to trace too clear-cut an opposition between these two supposed pairs. While side 1 is undoubtedly centered on the emperor, containing his full titulary and no mention of Isis (or of the private dedicator), side 3 deals equally with the emperor (in its first half, containing a dating formula that includes Domitian’s throne and birth name) and with Isis (in its second half, concerning the building of her temple). Surely, pride of place is given to Domitian, whose names open the inscription on this side; but this is not to say that the whole of side 3 is centered on him alone. Incidentally, note that the sketch in Erman (, 211) suggests that the faces of the obelisks follow one another in a clockwise fashion in obelisk A and counterclockwise in B. This is mistaken: in both cases, their sequence moves clockwise. ↩︎
See note 43 above. ↩︎
The first four are known as the Horus name, the Two Ladies name, the Golden Falcon name, and the throne name, while the fifth is the king’s actual birth name, Domitian. The last two names are included in cartouches (see , 1–26). ↩︎
Underlined text in the translations marks those points where the two obelisks’ inscriptions diverge. ↩︎
See , 938, 940, fig. 1. The copy of the hieroglyphic text in Ciampini (, 158, H.1) is incorrect. ↩︎
For example, , 151; , 93, no. 5. ↩︎
These are the Horus names of Ptolemy II Philadelphos and Ptolemy IV Philopator, for which, see , 235 and 237, respectively. On the connection between earlier Ptolemaic titularies and Domitian’s, see note 3 to this side below. ↩︎
See , 93, no. 3. ↩︎
This reading was adopted by Iversen (, 21). ↩︎
A reading already contemplated, only as a possibility, by Iversen (, 21n25) and adopted by Beckerath (, 256). ↩︎
See hieroglyphic writings in , 5:374. Some attestations of tn with the arm-with-stick determinative can be found in Ptolemaic and Roman Demotic, however: see , 635; , Letter & 228. ↩︎
, 257. ↩︎
See, respectively, , 235, 243, 139 (the second case—that of Ptolemy X—is misassigned to Ptolemy XI in , 151). In the case of Domitian’s titulary as it appears in the Pamphili obelisk, the direct imitation of Ptolemaic models is patent, for the emperor’s Horus, Two Ladies, and Golden Falcon names are the same as Ptolemy II Philadelphos’s on side 1 and as Ptolemy III Euergetes’s on side 3 (as already remarked in , 18, 25). See , 938–40, fig. 1, and 943–44, fig. 3; to be compared with , 235 and 237, respectively. Note that Grenier (, 949) believes that part of Domitian’s Pamphili titulary originated from the Horus name of Ptolemy VIII Eurgetes II rather than Ptolemy III’s. This is, however, not the case, for the phrase from Domitian’s Horus name on which Grenier bases his claim
m Ssp=f nswy.t n it=f “as he received the kingship of his father”) is already present, almost verbatim, in the Horus name of Ptolemy III (m Ssp=f nswy.t m-a it=f “as he received the kingship from his father”), which is whence, in turn, Ptolemy VIII himself derived it, with some modifications (Ssp.n=f nswy.t Ra m-a it=f “he received the kingship of Re from his father”; see , 241). Incidentally, Bricault and Gasparini (, 133), as well as Rosso (, 559), misunderstand Grenier’s observations, surprisingly remarking that Domitian’s Pamphili pharaonic titularies are based only on those of Ptolemy III and of Ptolemy VIII, which, of course, is not the case. ↩︎Compare, for instance, the earlier case of a foreign ruler of Egypt, the Persian Cambyses (27th Dynasty, sixth century BC), whose Egyptian titulary was prepared by the priestly-born royal courtier Wedjahorresnet (see , 6–7; most recently, ). ↩︎
See , 155. ↩︎
See note 44 above. ↩︎
As instead implicitly assumed in Erman (, 212 n. d) and Erman (, 150; standardized hieroglyphic transcription). ↩︎
For an overview of hieroglyphic renderings of Domitian’s name and titulary, see the repertoires in , 89–101; , 256–57; , 108–19. Grenier (, 40–45, 92–94) provides only transliterations, without the original hieroglyphs. Incidentally, note that there is nothing to connect the writing of Domitian’s name in our obelisks with that of Thutmose III, contra Janet Richards in Swetnam-Burland (, 128n33), who suggests, for no apparent reason, that “elements of [Thutmose III’s] cartouche also may be borrowed in the cartouche used for the name of Domitian.” Perhaps she is misled by the presence, in both cartouches, of the scarab beetle sign
; this is, however, nothing more than a very common hieroglyph, whether in its phonetic value t (as in Domitian’s cartouche) or xpr (as in Thutmose III’s). ↩︎See , 1:128, no. 9. ↩︎
Erman (, 151), contra Iversen (, 21n27), who takes it for an or a. ↩︎
Though Erman had no parallels to offer for this sign used with such a phonetic value, later studies have confirmed this reading. See, for instance, , 234, no. 228; , 68; , 167 (this value is not included in the main list in , 1:320, no. 20, but does appear among the addenda; see , 2:1130). ↩︎
See , 227; , 254; , 713. ↩︎
, 21n28, 27. ↩︎
For further, external parallels of such a writing of tA.wy, see , 303–4; , 1:345, no. 100. ↩︎
See, for example, , 256. ↩︎
See , 21n29; , 565. Erman (, 152) did not recognize the word nDy, being also misled by the unusual arrangement of the signs in the inscriptions. ↩︎
See, for instance, , 22; , 256–57; , 105–6. It is supposed that the same campaigns may be alluded to in the inscriptions of sides 2–4, this time in a particularly problematic passage, about which, see note 10 to side 2. ↩︎
Compare the textual parallel offered in , 257n55. ↩︎
See , 254. ↩︎
For example, see , 150, 152–53; , 22n30; , 227. ↩︎
See , 41; most recently, , 47–49n28. ↩︎
See , 48. ↩︎
See, for example, , 415; , 213; , 69–70; more recently, , 140. Specifically on the disputed scale of Domitian’s intervention (reconstruction rather than restoration), see now , 31–35, 38. ↩︎
See , 1:49; , 12, no. 79.0123. For its Demotic counterpart, see , 23; , Letter I, 60–62. ↩︎
See , 1:26. In a few instances, the word can show the house determinative in Demotic (see , Letter A, 103–4; specifically, , 1*, no. 8), but this is also quite exceptional. ↩︎
R. Pirelli in , 503, no. v.187. ↩︎
See , 1:150. ↩︎
Hardly a name for Memphis itself, contra , 22n31. ↩︎
See , 3:369; , 766. On the Middle Kingdom origins of the interchangeability between the words ITi-tA.wy and Xnw, see , 34–35. Remarkably, this sportive writing can even be taken one step further, so that the original sign group for ITi-tA.wy can be used not only to write the noun Xnw “royal residence” but also, through an additional pun, as part of the compound preposition m-Xnw “in”; see , 3:370; , 105; , 767. Early examples of such a writing, dating from the New Kingdom, are included as cryptographies in the Book of Nut (see , 1:32, and 403, 405, §§ 55–56, 61). ↩︎
A particularly clear example of this is in a passage of the Mendes Stela (from the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphos), in which this hieroglyphic group is combined with the suffix pronoun, so:
. The sequence reads Xnw=f “his royal residence,” and clearly not ITi-tA.wy=f (see , 39), referring in this case to the Ptolemaic capital, Alexandria (on this passage, see already , 153, who, however, still prefers the literal translation “Landerobrerin”). ↩︎This translation is chosen, for instance, also by Müller (, 10) and Iversen (, 21, 26). ↩︎
, 38–39: “[v]ielleicht handelt es sich hierbei um ein intrusives h.” ↩︎
Compare already the first known attestation of the name of Rome in Egyptian, which occurs not in hieroglyphic Middle Egyptian but in Demotic, and is written !rmA. This is found in the archive of Hor, text 3 verso, l. 22; dating to the first half of the second century BC, it by far predates any hieroglyphic attestation from Roman Egypt or Italy. See , 22, 25 n. cc, 26, 29 n. u, plates iv.a, iv. ↩︎
, 258n57. On such defective late writings of nTr, see , 65–69, 71. ↩︎
See , 297–98. Among his followers are Torelli (, 187) and Bricault (, 618). ↩︎
, 2:1164. ↩︎
Compare
HqA(.t) anx.w as a title of Isis-Hesat-Sothis (Cairo Museum, Ptolemaic stela CG 22180) and 
HqA.t anx.w as a title of Isis (Dendera, Roman mammisi); for references, see , 5:540. ↩︎For example, , 153; , 26; , 118. They are also followed by , 5:545. ↩︎
See
HqA.t nTr.w “Queen of the Gods” (Behbeit el-Hagara, temple of Isis, Ptolemaic decoration) and 
HqA.t n nTr.w Hnw.t n nTr.wt “Queen of the Gods and Mistress of the Goddesses” (Philae, mammisi, Roman decoration); for references, see 5:545. In the latter example, note the use of the star sign with the value nTr, as unambiguously confirmed by the pairing with the following nTr.wt. ↩︎Compare the case of Isis-Hesat-Sothis in stela CG 22180 (see note 120 above; full copy in , 159–60). ↩︎
, 26; a mistake still surviving in recent scholarship that depends on his translation (see , 186). ↩︎
, 154. ↩︎
For the phrase inr (n) mAT, see , 2:34. ↩︎
, 154. ↩︎
See , 939–40, fig. 1. The copy of the hieroglyphic text in Ciampini (, 158, H.4) is erroneous. ↩︎
, 213; , 153, 156. ↩︎
See, for instance, , 1483; , 283. ↩︎
This mention of the Ennead (originally a group of nine deities, best known in its Heliopolitan version, which included Isis) is here meant to indicate not nine specific deities but, more generally, all those gods and goddesses who shared the temple with Isis, regardless of their number (for a comparable use in the Ptolemaic temple of Edfu, here with regard to Horus’s Ennead, see , 376). ↩︎
See, for example, , 134. More generally on Isis’s theoi synnaoi in the Roman world, see , 135–36. ↩︎
On the absence of the second n in virtually all the occurrences of this name, and the possible connection between such mt-writings—with unmarked nasalization—and their phonetic renderings as ⲙⲛ̅ⲧ in Coptic, see , 154. ↩︎
See, for example, , 1:512, no. 16.4, 513, no. 16.6. ↩︎
Pace Iversen (, 16), though his criticisms of the other arguments offered in Erman (, 214n1) and Erman (, 155n3)—arguments still repeated by later interpreters, such as Malaise (, 299)—remain legitimate. Incidentally, it is also important to remind ourselves that the concept of a Greek (or Latin) draft should not be pushed too far and that what we are discussing here was probably closer to a rough outline or sketch of the essential contents of the Egyptian inscriptions-to-be. In other words, while the core elements of the inscriptions of these and similar obelisks clearly came from the Roman dedicators, it is also undeniable that the Egyptian priests had a significant degree of leeway, and even original input, in the final preparation of the Middle Egyptian texts. Thus, for example, there is no doubt that the full pharaonic titulary of Domitian listed on side 1 of the Benevento obelisks was composed directly in Egyptian and could hardly have had an original Greek or Latin model (on this, see also note 2 to side 1 above). ↩︎
And not as Beneventus, despite the claim in Iversen (, 16n8). ↩︎
See , 423. ↩︎
On this, see also , 130. ↩︎
In , 215–16; , 154–55, 158. ↩︎
See , 215; , 155n3. One can sense a certain hesitation in Erman’s offer of his own interpretation, since, while he always holds the view that the meaning of ini is “to return,” in Erman (, 213–14) he cautiously renders it plainly as “Bringen” in his main translation. He does the same again in Erman (, 153, 156–57) but, from an inconsistency with his own commentary (, 154: “so müssen wir […] mit »Heil und Rückkehr des Herrschers« übertragen”), it is clear that he intended to update his translation to “return.” ↩︎
See , 212, 213 n. c. In Erman (, 154–55) he maintains the same view, though he no longer classifies the preposition allegedly omitted before wDA ini as “datival”; instead, he generally (and less pertinently) remarks on the omission of prepositions of all sorts in Egyptian texts. ↩︎
In , 24–26. ↩︎
See , 26; , 379. ↩︎
Contra L. Prada in , 264, no. 164. ↩︎
On the date of this triumph, see, for instance, , 255; , 106; most recently, , 168. ↩︎
See, for example, , 40. ↩︎
See, for instance, the reference to Levantine nomads and Nubians in Thutmose III and Thutmose IV’s Lateran obelisk (, 82, A.93). ↩︎
Strabo, Geography 17.1.46 (after , 124–25). Discussing this passage, Klotz (, 18) completely misunderstands it: he miscopies the Greek text (to the point of making it unintelligible) and misapprehends the meaning of Strabo’s words (which refer to inscriptions—ἀναγραφαί—as written records, not as pictorial reliefs), eventually accusing Strabo of erroneously mixing up his memories of obelisks with the warfare scenes carved on temple pylons. ↩︎
See , 225–31, nos. 48, 49. ↩︎
See note 71 above and appendix B. ↩︎
, 25–26. ↩︎
Contra, for example, , 155 (“einen Ehrentitel (wie »der wohlberühmte«)”); , 298 (“le nommé”) and 298n2 (“une épithète comme egregius ou […] l’équivalent de «le nommé»”); , 270 (“il nominato”); , 618 (“le nommé”). ↩︎
, 95 (“rn=f nfr per introdurre nomi di cittadini notabili romani su monumenti scritti in geroglifico”); a fantasy repeated in , 102. The supposed parallel given by Bresciani does not exist, being a wrong restoration in a lacunose passage of the trilingual stela of Cornelius Gallus (as proved in , 32). ↩︎
See , 1–2, 24–31. This use can also be observed in early Middle Kingdom (ca. twentieth–nineteenth century BC) inscriptions, see , 78–81. ↩︎
Cases are observed in earlier times too, when only one name is given for an individual, and this is introduced as their rn=f nfr. These are, however, rare occurrences, which scholars understand as exceptions in which only the person’s second name was given, the main one being omitted: see , 79, 80n9. ↩︎
For example, see the Middle Kingdom stela of Montuhotep (Cairo Museum, CG 20539; 12th Dynasty, twentieth–nineteenth century BC), verso, l. 21: sxA.t(y)=f(y) rn=y nfr “one who shall remember my good name” (recently reedited in , 179). This is not a reference to a second or nickname, as Montuhotep is known only by this one name in his stela. ↩︎
See , 256. ↩︎
See, for example, the graffiti in , 81, no. 1385 (rn=f nfr mn “his good name endures”), and 227, no. 1710b (l. 2: rn=f nfr mn “his good name endures”; the editor reads nfr with a query, but the reading appears correct). For another, even more unusual exception, see the hieratic-Demotic graffito Philae 68, l. 1 (already singled out in , 28, no. 3.3.3): mn rn=f pn nfr “may this good name of his endure.” Incidentally, the concerted use of suffix pronoun and adjective is observed even in an extraordinary Ptolemaic Demotic graffito from Karnak, which plays on a surprising reversal of the rn nfr-concept and puts a curse on an individual by recording pAy=k rn bn “your bad name” (see , 418–19). ↩︎
Compare the case of the Middle Kingdom stela discussed at note 156 above. Ptolemaic examples include: the stela of Heriew in Paris, Musée du Louvre, C 124 (= N 275; , 1:303–4 [l. 5], 2:140–41): rn=f nfr mn “his good name endures” (exactly the same wording is found in the ensuing Demotic text, l. 9); the stela of Tadimhotep in London, British Museum, EA387 (, 1:376–77 [l. 7], 2:188–89; referring, in this case, to a female deceased): rn=s nfr mn wAH sp-2 “her good name does endure and last”; and the stela of Ankhmaatre called Hor in Paris, Musée du Louvre, E 13074 (, 1:371–74 [l. 6a], 2:185–87; see also , 235–36, 240, 242, 248): rn=f nfr wAH sp-2 mn sp-2 “his good name does last and does endure” (the Demotic parallel, l. 12, has only rn=f mn “his name endures,” omitting nfr, but an earlier section of the Demotic text, ll. 9–10, has a wording similar to the hieroglyphic one: rn=f nfr iw=f wAH iw=f mn “(as for) his good name, it lasts and it endures”). Regarding this last inscription, note that Ankhmaatre was known by a second name too, Hor, but this is always introduced by the phrase D(d) n=f “called” in the hieroglyphic and Demotic texts alike (ll. 4, 9, 12) and should not be mistaken for a rn nfr of the kind previously discussed (see note 154 above). On the unclear relationship between names introduced by rn=f nfr and by D(d) n=f, see , 25–26. ↩︎
See, for instance: the already mentioned stela of Tadimhotep, British Museum, EA387 (, 1:376–77 [l. 6], 2:188–89; in this case, referring to the deceased’s husband): rn=f nfr Iy-m-Htp “(he) whose good name is Imhotep”; and the sarcophagus of Horemakhet, Leiden AMT 3-c (, 1:140–41 [col. bI.4], 2:36): rn=f nfr @r-m-Ax.t “(he) whose good name is Horemakhet.” Note that both men are known by these names only—neither bears a second one. ↩︎
This syntactical motivation was also suggested in , 298n2. ↩︎
Pace , 214–15; , 155. ↩︎
On the Villa Borghese obelisks and their inscriptions, see , 29–30, fig. 2. It is likely that Gell was inspired by the Benevento obelisks even in the choice of the expression that he used to refer to the erection of the monuments, that is,
saHa txn.wy “(he who) erected two obelisks” (compare Benevento’s B/3, 
saHa txn “an obelisk was erected”). Although this phrase is not uncommon, being attested also in the inscriptions of other obelisks, Gell must have had the text of the Benevento monoliths especially fresh in his mind, as he was composing his own text for the Prince of Sulmona in 1827. Indeed, it had been only a few months since he had accompanied Champollion on his epigraphic reconnaissance to Benevento, in the summer of 1826 (on this, see , 662, quoting from a letter by his brother: “[j]e viens d’enrichir mon portefeuille hiéroglyphique d’une copie exacte de l’obélisque de Benevent. J’en ai fait le voyage avec le chevalier Gell”). ↩︎See , 217; , 153, 156–57. Here I focus on the order of the signs, but, nota bene, Erman also transliterates some of these hieroglyphs differently; on this issue, see the following discussion. ↩︎
See, among others, , 217; , 153; , 10–11; , 1483. ↩︎
See, for example, , 11; , 298; , 17; , 253; , 618. The reading Rutilius had in fact already been offered in Lepsius (, 79) but only en passant, within an article not specifically discussing the Benevento obelisks and for this reason overlooked by later scholarship. ↩︎
See, for example, , 11. ↩︎
On the gens Rutilia, see the discussion and references in , 98n100, 187–88nn67–71, 199n110. ↩︎
The former in Borgia, side 1, and Albani, sides 1–3; the latter in Borgia, side 2, and Albani, side 4. It is likely that just &its was intended by the author of the hieroglyphic inscription, in view of how often signs are oriented inconsistently in these two obelisks. See also , 17n15. ↩︎
A similar hypothesis was already advanced in Spiegelberg (, 103), with regard to the Borgia obelisk’s inscription. Still concerning the Borgia obelisk, one must instead surely reject the suggestion made in Bove (, 90n13)—and repeated in Bove (, 375)—according to which
should here be read as ti.t, with “the sign of the vase used as a determinative” (ti.t is an extremely rare word for a type of vessel attested, to the best of my knowledge, only in the Old Kingdom). ↩︎See , 37–38, nos. 393, 385; , 190–91, 200–201, nos. U30, W11. The hieratic samples in my text are reproduced from Möller’s specimens for P. Berlin P 3030 (ca. first–second century AD). ↩︎
See, for example, the sign for im(y), whose shape is
vel sim., that is, based on its hieratic appearance, rather than on its standard hieroglyphic aspect, which is instead 
(images in , 42, 48, 52, 60, 62, plates 10, 9, 15, 22, 23, respectively). ↩︎, 84; repeated in , 95, 97n9; and republished yet again (with hardly any changes from the latter) in , 102. Also mentioned in , 32. ↩︎
On the latter, see , 98n39. ↩︎
See, for example, , 217; , 156 (in which, however, the first sign is transliterated as m, not as l, as I will discuss next). ↩︎
The second p is obtained from the phonetic value of p(.t), from the sky sign
. ↩︎The sign next to the foreign-land determinative looks like a chunky diacritic stroke; it may be a poor execution of the throw-stick sign, displaced within the original inscription to the right of the foreign-land sign for lack of space above it (the place where it normally belongs). ↩︎
A suggestion originally made in , 17. For an actual example of this same writing,
, being used to write the word for “sky,” see , 378. Another sportive writing playing on the sky sign and its phonetic value as p is found in the contemporary inscriptions of Domitian’s Pamphili obelisk, in the rendering of the emperor’s Two Ladies name on side 1. The name is wr pH.ty “Great of Strength,” which appears here in the remarkable writing 
; see , 940, fig. 1 (and the remarks in , 18). ↩︎Note that even actual writings of the word p.t “sky” are attested, which contain additional, semivocalic signs. For example, a writing
pyy.t is attested in Edfu (see , 378). ↩︎See, for instance, , 274. This reading had originally been proposed by Champollion, according to whom the dedicator’s nomen and cognomen were to be understood as Lucilius Rufus (see references in , 149, 156, and , 29n13, contra what is stated in , 17). Despite being completely superseded, this reading is questionably still offered, at least as a possible alternative, in some modern literature: see, for example, , 523, no. 3; , 559. ↩︎
See , 217 (with the even unlikelier alternative that the name’s first sign should be understood as V rather than M); , 156. ↩︎
See , 11. ↩︎
See, for example, , 298; , 17–20; , 253; , 618. ↩︎
Note that Müller was still troubled by the supposed double p in the Egyptian writing of Lupus. He tried to justify it by referring to secondary Greek spellings of this name that can show double π, suggesting that this might have been how such a double consonant had entered the Egyptian version (see , 30n17). As we have seen, the hieroglyphic text writes only one p; hence Müller’s concerns are unnecessary. ↩︎
Previous scholars also tried to explain this value of
as l, but their suggestions can hardly be accepted. To be exact, Müller (, 11, 30n16) proposed that the reading of the striding lion sign as l might have been suggested by the initial of this animal’s name in Greek, λέων. Iversen (, 20) instead argued that this hieroglyph was not meant to represent a striding lion but, rather, a wolf (= Latin lupus), as a pun to reproduce the dedicator’s cognomen. Both ideas are exceedingly fanciful. ↩︎See , 1:200, no. 46a. ↩︎
A typical application of it is observed, for instance, with regard to signs depicting snakes, as exemplified in , 65. Note that such a swap between our two lion signs in phonetic writings is possibly already attested, albeit in the other direction, that is, with
(typically standing for r/l) used to write m (the value associated with ); see , 1:201, no. 54. When looking at the original manuscript in Herbin (, 256n10, plate lv, col. 6), however, I wonder whether the sign here is indeed a recumbent lion or simply a cat, for which the value m(i) is completely common. The latter is surely the case in writings of mi “like” in the late Ptolemaic stelae of Taimhotep and Pasherenptah in London, British Museum, inv. EA147 and EA886, as confirmed by the visibly pointy ears of the feline, which are incompatible with the depiction of a lion (see images in , 2:61 [l. 7], 71 [l. 5], respectively). ↩︎See , 138–39; , 187n67. ↩︎
See, respectively, , 148; , 119; , 111. They propose to identify the dedicator in a Lucilius Labienus. ↩︎
Indeed, while offering no alternative solution to the issue of the initial lion sign, the reading Lbynws overcomplicates matters, for it also requires transliterating the sky sign as n, which is a very uncommon value for this hieroglyph, albeit not an unparalleled one (see , 1:318, no. 1). Nor is the idea of an accidental confusion between the signs
and 
credible, not even on account of a possible hieratic draft, since the two signs have significantly distinct shapes in hieroglyphs as much as in hieratic (contra , 148). ↩︎Beginning with , 156. ↩︎
See , 23n36, 24n39, 27. ↩︎
For a quick survey of the occurrence of this phrase in Egyptian letters across the centuries, see the examples in , 63, no. 71 (Middle Kingdom, ca. twentieth century BC), 90, no. 113, 118, no. 140, 167, no. 282 (New Kingdom, ca. fifteenth–twelfth century BC), 209, no. 339 (Third Intermediate Period, ca. eleventh–tenth century BC). ↩︎
A good example is a Demotic inscription on a Greco-Roman stela of Horus on the Crocodiles in the Cairo Museum (CG 9406), reedited in , 83, no. 121. Note that the divine agent interceding in favor of this stela’s human beneficiary—a certain Petosiris—is Isis, who is addressed by means of the same epithets that appear at the beginning of our obelisks’ inscription, on side 3: [As.t] wr(.t) mw.t nTr ti anx wDA snb . . . n . . . PA-ti-Wsir “[Isis] the Great, the God’s Mother, gives life, prosperity, health … to … Petosiris.” ↩︎
See , 153, 156. ↩︎
An example is his obelisk now in London, one of the so-called Cleopatra’s Needles. See , 2:90; , 94. ↩︎
So does the “small print” inscription at the bottom of the obelisk of Hatshepsut (18th Dynasty, fifteenth century BC) that still stands in Karnak, an obelisk erected—as in the case of the previous example—to celebrate the sovereign’s (first) jubilee: see Habachi (, 41–43) and, for a full running translation of the original, Lichtheim (, 26, 28). ↩︎
See note 50 above. ↩︎
See , 213; , 157. ↩︎
, 156 (“der Morgenstern”); already offered—albeit, in this case, with a query—in , 213. I suppose he suspected a sportive writing, with the egg and the falcon signs in their respective phonetic values of s and b. ↩︎
, 10. He was followed by R. Pirelli in Arslan (, 503, no. v.187), who, however, later switched to Grenier’s interpretation: see “figlio di Horus” in , 132 (= , 13); , 90. ↩︎
, 26. ↩︎
, 44. This is the weakest of all published proposals, as it simply does not account for the star sign. ↩︎
, 256. He probably follows an alternative suggestion given in Iversen (, 16n9), in which the star sign is interpreted as the star Sothis and hence, by association, as Isis. ↩︎
In the latter case, Domitian would be identified directly with Horus, since the epithet “Living God” can be applied to his father, Osiris (see , 4:417–18). ↩︎
That is, of course, if we choose to read this title as bik nbw “Golden Falcon,” as I have. Other Egyptologists prefer to read it as @r nbw “Golden Horus.” Most recently on this title, see Citation: Spalinger, Anthony. 2015. “Concepts of Kingship: The Golden Horus Name
.” In Royal versus Divine Authority: Acquisition, Legitimization and Renewal of Power, edited by Filip Coppens, Jiří Janák, and Hana Vymazalová, 331–50. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.. ↩︎See , 3:596–99. ↩︎
Note how the variation in the use of the signs thus concerns not only the falcon but also the star, which—here used in its value nTr—is otherwise found in our obelisk only as anx (on this, see note 3 to side 2). ↩︎
See the examples collected in , 20, 28, 33. But compare also writings from the time of Augustus, such as the phrase
included in one of his cartouches in the Kalabsha gate (see , 67, fig. 13), for PA N*R PA %A (alternatively, ^RI) PA N*R “the God, the Son of the God.” Note here, on the one hand, the influence of Demotic in the intrusion of the article and, perhaps, in the value of the child sign, if this is to be read as Sri (compare the same title, pA nTr pA Sr pA nTr, being used for Augustus in contemporary Demotic documents; see , 14); on the other hand, note the remarkable inclusion of this phrase inside the cartouche, as is the case with its occurrence in the Benevento inscriptions. ↩︎See, for instance, , 1:188, 2: plate 222 (L 3, 88). ↩︎
See , 1:2, 2: plate 138 (L 2, 13). With further regard to this group of inscriptions in Athribis, note that the falcon sign in both its variants (i.e., with and without the flail) is employed to write the word nTr here too, as it is in our obelisks: compare the epithet
with the beginning of this same inscription, L 2, 13, in which the sentence anx nTr nfr “may the Perfect God live” is written 
. ↩︎Following the completion of this article, I was alerted to the fact that Kurth (, 2:1036) also independently advanced the suggestion that
here in the Benevento obelisks could read N*R %A N*R (information courtesy of Nicola Barbagli). He was, however, unaware of the—then still unpublished—parallel from Athribis that I offer, which provides a definite confirmation of his and my reading. Note also that the text from the temple of Deir el-Hagar reproduced in Kurth (, 2:1035; left side, l. 3) shows another example of the nTr sA nTr phrase employed in the titulary of Domitian. In this case, though, it occurs in its more common use, that is, in a plain orthography of the type and inserted before, rather than within, the cartouche (for which, see note 209 above). ↩︎For example, , 157; , 31 n. c. ↩︎
See , 32–33, plates 4, 5. ↩︎
See , 157. ↩︎
See, for example, , 712. ↩︎
See , 169. ↩︎
In this respect, note that Swetnam-Burland (, 128n33) understands this as a reconstruction (rather than the original construction) of the Beneventan Iseum, following a fire that occurred earlier in the reign of Domitian. This is, however, completely unfounded; we know of no fire or other destruction affecting the temple in Benevento. Swetnam-Burland is probably here confusing the Beneventan Iseum with the Iseum Campense in Rome, which was indeed damaged by a fire in AD 80, leading to Domitian’s restoration of it (on this, see also my commentary above, in note 12 to side 1). ↩︎
On this issue, see , 255–56; , 134. The latter suggests a possible direct involvement of the emperor in the construction of such an extensive Iseum, as that of Benevento supposedly was (on similar views, see also further below and notes 220 and 221). ↩︎
See , 299; followed by , 960n47. This view, which takes away all agency from Rutilius Lupus, has recently been repeated by Bricault and Gasparini (, 134; incidentally, note that the obelisk at 132, fig. 8.1, is misidentified as Domitian’s Pamphili obelisk but is in fact Hadrian’s Barberini obelisk) and further supported by Bragantini (, 246), who stresses the special connection that Domitian had with Benevento, the city where he had first met his father, Vespasian, following the latter’s proclamation as emperor and return from Egypt. ↩︎
For a similar opinion, in this case excluding any kind of direct imperial intervention in the construction of the temple, see , 402; , 129; , 186–87 (especially this last study). Recently, Lembke (, 36) has argued that the obelisks’ dedication to the emperor (which she too understands on the basis of Erman’s diehard interpretation of wDA ini as pro salute et reditu), along with the large number of Egyptian sculptures originally decorating Benevento’s Iseum, speaks against a private dedication by Rutilius Lupus. Frankly, I fail to see how a dedication to the emperor can be incompatible with said dedication being by a private citizen, or how the presence of several imported Egyptian antiquities must imply a direct involvement of the emperor. This being said, mention of the temple’s construction in our inscriptions need not be taken in absolute terms, as I have already remarked; in other words, Rutilius Lupus’s contribution to the construction or decoration of the local Iseum and a possible imperial involvement have no reason to be mutually exclusive, though the obelisks are undoubtedly Lupus’s own commission and his own alone. ↩︎
The relief is in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, inv. 1029 (provenance unknown, but surely from an Isiac cultic building in Italy, perhaps from Rome itself). See , 65, no. 53, fig. 69. ↩︎
For a recent discussion of this papyrus and the aretalogy that it contains, see , 1:600–635. ↩︎
See, for example, , 10. ↩︎
R. Pirelli in , 503, no. v.187. ↩︎
A slip, however, consistently repeated in R. Pirelli in , 503, no. v.187; , 132 (= , 13); , 90. ↩︎
, 24, 27 (already picked up by , 258n57). ↩︎
, 118. Nagel (, 2:1164) considers both readings equally possible, but regarding my preference for ir.t, see references below, in note 231. ↩︎
As does, for example, , 157. ↩︎
As do, for instance, Iversen (, 27) and, most recently, Nagel (, 2:1164). In fact, Iversen here oddly translates “Lord” rather than “Lady” (see note 4 to side 2 above). ↩︎
For instance, as one of innumerable examples, see the Ptolemaic decoration of the temple of Deir el–Medina, with Isis labeled as
As.t wr.t mw(.t) nTr ir(.t) Ra nb(.t) p.t Hnw.t nTr.w “Isis the Great, the God’s Mother, the Sun’s Eye, Lady of the Sky, Mistress of the Gods” (, 78, 312, fig. 86). Incidentally, note here the unambiguous writing of “eye” with ir.t (about which, see note 2 to this side above). Concerning Isiac epithets, see also the useful repertoire in , 1:530–33. ↩︎Contra, for example, , 214; , 157–58; , 23n37. ↩︎
See , 2:70. ↩︎
, 157–58. ↩︎
On this verbal form, see , 2:902–3. ↩︎
Contra , 157. ↩︎
The Pamphili and Barberini obelisks are, respectively, 16.54 and 9.25 meters high (, 157, 169). Benevento’s obelisk A, which is the only private obelisk to have its shaft fully preserved, for a height of 4.12 meters, was probably originally no taller than 4.5 meters, when its ancient pyramidion was still preserved. ↩︎
On the materiality of aegyptiaca, including obelisks, see , xxvii, 68–76. ↩︎
See note 6 above. ↩︎
See more on this above, in the section devoted to these obelisks. My view—which I cannot prove incontrovertibly—is that they were a pair, but scholarly opinion remains divided as to whether they both originally stood in Palestrina or if only one was in Palestrina and the other was in Rome. ↩︎
See note 37 above. ↩︎
Indeed, the epithet sA nTr “the Son of the God,” not traditional on its own before a cartouche, is more typically attested in hieroglyphic royal titularies from Roman Egypt in the combination nTr sA nTr “the God, the Son of the God,” which we also find incorporated in one of the names of Domitian in the Benevento obelisks (see note 3 to side 3 in the commentary and note 209 above). The supposed parallels for the shortened epithet sA nTr invoked by Müller (, 18, 22n33) are misleading, for in fact they also pertain to renderings of the fuller phrase nTr sA nTr, and in its Demotic version at that—namely, pA nTr pA Sr pA nTr “the God, the Son of the God” (see references in , 99). ↩︎
Contra, for instance, Erman (, 212, 214–15) and Erman (, 158), who classifies the language as “barbarisch” and the Egyptian priest’s knowledge of it as “dürftig.” Unjustly harsh, Erman’s low opinion of the Egyptian author’s linguistic skills at times verges on mockery, as he states that the supposedly confused syntax of these inscriptions would have been as evident to an “ancient” (i.e., in his mind, Dynastic, pre-Greco-Roman) Egyptian as it is to “us” modern scholars (“[d]er seltsam konfuse Satzbau dieser Inschriften, der für einen alten Aegypter ebenso auffallend gewesen wäre, wie er es für uns ist, erklärt sich ohne Zweifel aus den mangelhaften Sprachkenntnissen ihres Verfassers”). Erman’s words betray the same rigid attitude to Egyptian philology for which he was lambasted by some of his contemporaries, as exemplified by a famous tongue-in-cheek anecdote recorded by Gardiner (, 23): “[o]n reception of the collation [of a passage of the Pyramid Texts] Erman wrote to Maspero: ‘What a pity it is that even at this early period the Egyptians could not write correctly!’ on which Maspero’s caustic comment—not communicated to Erman, needless to say—was: ‘What a pity that the Egyptians of the old Kingdom had not read M. Erman’s grammar!’” ↩︎
See , 25, no. 3. ↩︎
See, for example, , 7–8; , 937. ↩︎
As also believed by Schiaparelli (, 274) and, most recently, suggested by Morenz and Sperveslage (, 38–39); the latter suggest specifically a production in Alexandria, but this is no more than a guess, which I do not find particularly convincing. It is ironic that these two privately dedicated obelisks erected in a southern Italian city in celebration of Domitian should be much better works of craftsmanship, from an epigraphic viewpoint, than the contemporary Pamphili obelisk, which had been erected in Rome by direct order of Domitian (a contrast already noted in , 1:155n1; , 211; , 54). The more competent epigraphy of the Beneventan monuments also means that they are mostly free from mistakes in their choice of signs, which is not the case with the Pamphili obelisk (see , 8). It should still be stressed, however, that from a specifically linguistic point of view the Pamphili obelisk contains a remarkable Middle Egyptian text, surely composed by very learned Egyptian priests. One can still note in it the odd interference from later phases of the Egyptian language, for example, the use of the definite article within the title pA nTr “the god” (= Latin divus) in the cartouches of Vespasian and Titus (respectively, written
and 
; see , 942–43, fig. 3). Far from a slip of the pen, however, this is likely an intentional homage to tradition, for the title pA nTr, with the article, is commonly included already in Ptolemaic cartouches (for example, see some of the royal names of Ptolemy IX Philometor Soter and Ptolemy X Alexander in , 242–43). ↩︎With regard to the choice of signs, the remarks by Iversen (, 27), according to whom some among them are unique “inventions by the hierogrammate,” seem somewhat exaggerated and, at times, are just wrong. For instance, the group
for nb tA.wy “Lord of the Two Lands” (at the bottom of A/3) is undoubtedly very rare but not unknown; it is found, for example, at Hibis temple (where the human figure, however, does not wear the double crown; see , plate 71, just above the king’s cartouche). In the case of another sign, that for qAi at the end of B/2, Iversen mistakenly believes that the standing man (
) is holding between his hands a foreign-land sign (
) and understands their combination as a supposedly unique invention. In fact, the latter sign is not part of qAi, which is here written in its plain logographic fashion, but belongs to the determinative denoting foreignness that follows the name of the dedicator (
), occurring just before in the text. ↩︎See Champollion-Figeac (, 656), quoting a letter from his brother in which he discusses work on his envisaged study on Egyptian obelisks in Italy: “[j]e suis bien aise que ces beaux monumens [sc., the obelisks of Rome] paraissent enfin fidèlement reproduits […]. J’y joindrai l’obélisque de Bénévent, et comme il n’en existe qu’une mauvaise gravure de six pouces, je vais faire exprès le voyage pour le dessiner moi-même.” At the time Champollion had yet to discover that the fragments in Benevento belonged to two obelisks rather than just one, hence his use of the singular here. Compare this with another, slightly later letter, which follows his inspection of the inscriptions: “j’ai dessiné moi-même l’obélisque sur les lieux et vérifié ce que je supçonnais, même d’après la mauvaise gravure de Zoëga, c’est-à-dire que l’obélisque existant était fait des morceaux de deux obélisques” (cited in , 662). On this topic, and on Zoëga’s illustration, see also , 400–402 and 386–88, respectively. ↩︎
Suetonius, Life of Domitian 23 (after , 384–85). ↩︎
In contrast, it is worth comparing the fate of the original Latin inscription on the Vatican obelisk (see note 2 above), which recorded the name of Cornelius Gallus and was later recarved. Note, however, that it remains deeply disputed whether Gallus’s inscription was actually erased deliberately, as an act of damnatio memoriae following his fall from grace with Augustus and subsequent suicide in 26 BC, or if it was replaced due to the obelisk’s later move and repurposing, thus being the consequence of an act devoid of any political intention. Undoubtedly, views that overplay Gallus’s supposed hubris and consequent damnatio memoriae should be treated with caution, as they clearly force the epigraphic evidence; see, for example, , 1:20 (“the inscription makes it a monument to Gallus rather than to the Emperor”); , 76 (“Gallus did […] commission two victory monuments”). On this, see also the detailed discussion in Alföldy (, 21–27, 78–81), and the recent summary in Pfeiffer (, 205–8, no. 43). ↩︎
Respectively published in , 644; , 2: plate v; , plates vii, viii = , plate viii. ↩︎
See note 72 above. ↩︎
On the origins of this copy, which are rooted in Champollion’s work, see note 72 above. ↩︎
As regards the high-resolution images of obelisk B published in this article, these are not orthophotographs but studio photographs produced in optimal artificial light conditions by the staff of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, in June 2017, ahead of the obelisk’s conservation. Note that the conservation process did not entail any restoration of the hieroglyphic inscriptions themselves, hence pre- and post-restoration images do not differ in terms of the analysis of the original epigraphy. On the conservation of obelisk B, see the study in , 426–29 (with a series of related blog posts: ; ; ; ). ↩︎
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