3-028-129 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Obelisk of the Lateran at Rome, 1870. 'The attention of several of our most learned antiquaries skilled in the remote history of old Egypt has lately been directed to the supposed forgery of a part of the figures and hieroglyphic inscriptions on the obelisk...[It] was found broken into three pieces, and it was requisite to cut off a piece from the base, to make it stand...It is evident, says Mr. Joseph Bonomi, of Sir John Soane's Museum, that the figure and hieroglyphics of Ammon are considerably lower than those of the King, and that the sculpture is of a different style...The vertical columns terminate three or four feet above the present base, and immediately below them is the horizontal line, representing the sky or heaven of the subject delineated beneath. This on two of the sides is entirely obliterated; but on the other two sides enough remains to show the date, and even the name of Rameses, who completed the works of Thothmes III. and Thothmes IV. "But the circumstance," adds Mr. Bonomi, "to which it is particularly desirable to call the attention of hieroglyphists, is the concavity of the surface wherever the figure or titles of Ammon occur on this obelisk, except on the base, which was executed in the time of Rameses"...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1870.