Philae obelisk
obelisk found at Philae, Egypt
The Philae obelisk is one of a pair of twin obelisks erected at Philae in Upper Egypt in the second century BC. It was discovered by Giovanni Belzoni in 1818, who had it brought to Kingston Lacy in Dorset, England, where it still stands today. The Greek and Egyptian hieroglyphic inscriptions on the obelisk played a role in the decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Description
The obelisk was originally one of a pair that stood at the east pylon of the temple of Isis at Philae. The other obelisk of the pair was broken into pieces in antiquity. The surviving obelisk consists of a long shaft, topped by a pyramidion and a rectangular base. The bottom of the shaft is a modern restoration. Including the modern base, it stands roughly seven metres tall. There are two inscriptions: a hieroglyphic text on the shaft and a Greek text on the base. The first half of the Greek text was only painted in red colour and is no longer visible, the second half was inscribed. The inscriptions are published in the Corpus of Ptolemaic Inscriptions as number 424.
“Philae obelisk” enters the record as obelisk found at Philae, Egypt. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Philae, obelisk and found can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1245805. Authority coordinates are 50.810, -2.033. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1818.
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This entry incorporates text from “Philae obelisk” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.