Abgig obelisk

The Abgig obelisk (also known as the Begig obelisk and the Faiyum obelisk) is an ancient stone monument erected by the Egyptian king Senusret I in the 20th century BC near what is now Faiyum. Made of red granite, it is likely that the obelisk once stood 12.9 metres (42.3 ft) high with a base of four limestone slabs. While the structure was still upright in the 17th century, by the early 19th, it had been toppled and split in two. The obverse side of the obelisk features five detailed registers, each of which depicts two instances of Senusret I facing various Egyptian gods; the obverse side once also featured a now-lost hieroglyphic inscription. While the Egyptian government restored the obelisk in 1972 and placed it near the entrance of modern-day Faiyum, centuries of neglect and exposure have badly eroded the monument.

The Abgig obelisk was erected in the 20th century BC by king Senusret I (second king of the 12th Dynasty of ancient Egypt), roughly 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) southwest of present-day Faiyum. Archaeological reports from the early 20th century confirm that the toppled remnants of the monument were not located near any other major structures, and both Marco Zecchi and Roland Enmarch note that there is little if any evidence that the obelisk was originally erected elsewhere before being relocated to Faiyum. To account for its otherwise isolated location, scholars such as Enmarch, Sydney Aufrère, and Jean-Claude Golvin have suggested that the monument was likely once part of a larger religious complex that was lost at some point in antiquity. The earliest post-antiquity mentions of the obelisk were made in 1672 by Johann Vansleb, and by Richard Pococke in the mid-18th century; the latter, in his work Description of the East, described the structure as "a very particular obelisk of a red granite" that was "much decay'd all round for ten feet high, but mostly on the south side; the west side is almost entirely defaced, and at the south west and south east corners, it is much broken for about twenty feet high". Pococke's description suggests that the obelisk was still standing in the 17th century, but by the time the French engineer Philippe Joseph Marie Caristie visited the monument near the turn of the 19th century, it been "knocked down on the ground [and] broke[n] into two pieces". In the following years, the obelisk was visited and described by Edward Lane (1827), John Wilkinson (1827), and Karl Lepsius. In 1925, Mohamed E. Chaaban excavated the area around the fallen obelisk and discovered its base. Chaaban also unsuccessfully searched for the figure that may have once rested on the top of the monument. In 1972, the obelisk was restored by Egyptian authorities and moved to Medinet el-Fayyum. However, due to centuries of neglect and exposure to the elements, hardly anything remains of the monument's inscriptions or its registers. For this reason, Lepsius's detailed drawings of the monument are considered "of permanent value for its study".

The obelisk of Abgig is made of red granite and when first erected, it likely stood 12.9 m (42.3 ft) high, with a base (composed of four limestone slabs) that measured 3.6 m (12 ft) by 3.6 metres. The obelisk tapers upwards and has a rounded top. There is a recess in the middle of the obelisk's crest, which may have once housed a sculpted figure. Gaston Maspero and Hourig Sourouzian have both argued that this figure was probably a falcon made of metal, although Marco Zecch argues that this suggestion is speculative at best.

Monument data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).