Detail no. 1 from the Innocence Museum of Displaced Monuments: Luxor Obelisk

In “Detail no. 1 from the Innocence Museum of Displaced Monuments: Luxor Obelisk” Nevet Yitzhak follows desire for the enormous monument.

On July 6, 2014, the National Maritime Museum in Paris closed the exhibition Le Voyage de L’obelisque: Louxor/Paris [1829-1936] (The Voyage of the Obelisk: Luxor/Paris). With hundreds of documents, letters, artifacts, models and prints, the exhibition delineated the extraordinary journey of the obelisk, which in the early 19th century was displaced from the entrance of the Luxor Temple in Egypt, and moved to Paris, France.

The obelisk, with a golden tip connecting earth and heaven, was built in the 13th century BC as one in a pair of twin obelisks which stood at the entrance to the temple of the sun god Amun-Ra until they were presented as a gift to the French people in 1829. At the end of the grueling journey from Egypt to France, the obelisk was positioned in a festive ceremony at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, the very spot where the guillotine once stood– the symbol of the dark side of the French revolution – in the aim of erasing its horrible memory. Two hundred thousand people came to watch the ceremony; a battalion of French soldiers assisted in the erection of the monument and a band played the aria “The Mystery of Isis” from Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute.”

The journey—which took seven years and included the demolition of houses that stood in its path, sickness, long periods of waiting for the tide, storms and disputes—made it clear that the second obelisk could not be brought to Paris. It remained orphaned, standing by itself at the gate of the temple, lamenting the disruption of symmetry, with only the phantom of the missing obelisk reverberates beside it like a leg severed from the body. Is it doomed to remain on its own forever? Is it still possible to take the obelisk back from the Concorde to Egypt? And if so, what would be the meaning of the return home? Is there even such a thing as a “natural place” for artifacts and structures?

Vardit Gross