Pliny, Egyptian History, and How To Remember That All Ancient History Is Not a Homogenous Mass.
Have you ever heard how the tyrannosaurus rex lived closer to us today than to the stegosaurus?
I read that for the first time several years ago and it kind of did my head in. We tend to see the period of the dinosaurs as a homogenous whole, whereas it was a varied long period of changing time. Have you noticed that we tend to look at ancient history in a similar way to how we look at the age of dinosaurs?
In a similar vein, I've also come across a similar factoid regarding antiquity: Cleopatra the Seventh lived closer to the invention of the iphone than to the building of the pyramids.
It was with these factoids in mind that I decided to look at Pliny's description of obelisks and pyramids in his Natural History for an edition of Critical Dialogues for students. (Sure, only one person showed up, the other organiser, but that's another story.) Pliny discussion of these was a tangent within his discussion of stones in book 36, following on from his discussion of various Egyptian stones which were imported to Rome.
Pliny's descriptions of obelisks can be found here within Perseus Project if you want to look at his description of Egyptian obelisks for yourself. Pliny never visited Egypt, so his descriptions of Egypt were fully based on the experience of others who appear to have been quite knowledgeable of Egyptian history, culture, and language. At the start of his discussion he points out that the Egyptian word of obelisk was the same word for sunbeam - something we now know to be correct.
The names Pliny gives to various Egyptian rulers does not match the names of pharaohs which we now commonly use, but in some cases relate to other names which were used in antiquity. The first pharaoh Pliny names in this passage is "Mesphres". Thanks to the work of Rolf Krauss, we now know that this name is a Hellenisation of Thutmose III's "throne name". Pliny's sources really seem quite knowledgeable, but Pliny tries to implement his own judgements and thoughts where he can.
He describes Ramses (although it is written as Rhamesis) as reigning during the Trojan War. The Trojan War marks the point for most historians in the Classical world as where true history begins as distinct to the legends which preceded it, so this is an attempt by Pliny (or his source), to drag Egyptian history into line with Graeco-Roman history. The reason I am unsure whether I should consider this an action by Pliny or his source is because there is a very obvious way to seem when Pliny seems to shift from using other sources for his discussion of obelisks - his choice of measurement when describing them. At the start of Pliny's discussion of obelisks, he consistently measures their height in cubits, but at a point he changes to using feet instead. This shift occurs when he goes from describing obelisks existing in Egypt to describing those which were brought to Italy which he saw himself.
Rome has eight obelisks that were cut in Egypt prior to the Roman period, and plus a further five which were cut during the Roman period, but at the time Pliny was writing, there were only three in Rome which had been transported from Egypt. These three obelisks he provides heights for in feet measurements. These obelisks were the two brought to Rome by the emperor Augustus, and the single obelisk brought by Caligula. Pliny makes an error regarding Augustus' obelisks. He states that the obelisk raised by "Psemetnep-serphreus" was positioned in the Circus Maximus, while that raised by "Sesothis" was placed in the Campus Martius. Pliny actually has these the wrong way around. Psemetnep-serphreus is a corruption of the names of the pharaoh we now call Psammatichus II (594-589 BCE), and this was the obelisk actually raised on the Campus Martius. I think Pliny's sources actually understanding hieroglyphics is part of the reason he made this mistake.
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| Marble Frieze from Vatican Museums (my photograph from 2003) showing an obelisk placed in the spina of a circus. Both Augustus and Caligula placed obelisks in this way. |
This is another element of our understanding of Egyptian history which sometimes we mis-imagine. Because much is made of the Rosetta Stone and how to understand hieroglyphs was rediscovered, we don't give much thought to when this knowledge of actually lost. Hieroglyphs were still used and read in the Roman period, and I am unsure as to when this knowledge was actually lost. Roman emperors were depicted as pharaohs in Egypt wearing the double crown with accompanying hieroglyphic inscriptions. It seems highly probable that Pliny was reading a translation of one of Augustus' obelisks' inscriptions. According to the later Roman historian, Ammianus Marcellinus, the inscription of the obelisk placed by Augustus was translated by one "Hermapion", and he provides a transcript of the Greek translation which was provided. This translation is not perfect, but it is pretty close and includes some changes to make the descriptions of the Egyptian pharaoh who raised it to sound more like a Roman emperor. Amin Benaissa makes a great case for this "Hermapion" to be instead identified as "Apion", one of Pliny's sources. Apion was from Egypt, understood hieroglyphics, and seems to have lived in Rome during the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius.
So why might a translation have confused Pliny? This translation is filled with references to Apollo, as this obelisk was originally raised in Heliopolis bearing the names of Ramses II and Seti I. The emperor Augustus promoted his association with Apollo from the start of his career, and therefore it would have been highly suitable for the task Augustus set the other obelisk, that of gnomon for the horologium Augustus had built on the Campus Martius. Horologia and gnomons are all based on the sun as they use shadows to mark the passage of time. The Horologium of Augustus has been the topic of varied debate since the 1970s, but it should be noted that this was NOT a sundial, but rather a meridian which marked the changing length of days throughout the year. (see endnote 1 for more). Language like:
Mighty Apollo, child of the Sun, all-radiant, whom the Sun hath chosen and valiant Mars endowed; whose blessings shall endure forever; whom Ammon loveth, as having filled his temple with the good fruits of the date palm; unto whom the Gods have given length of life.Apollo, mighty son of Heron, Ramestes, king of the world, who hath preserved Egypt by conquering other nations; whom the Sun loveth; to whom the Gods have granted length of life; Lord of the world, Ramestes ever-living.”
would be well placed in such an important Augustan monument.
Yet despite hieroglyphics being understood by people in Rome, translations of the texts engraved on these obelisks being available, Pliny still wrote:
- Both have inscriptions comprising an account of natural science according to the theories of the Egyptian sages.
So what does all of this have to do with how we seen the progression of time explicitly?
Well, I also discussed Pliny's passages on the pyramids of Giza. You can find this discussion starting here. Pliny's discussions includes a reference to a community which had grown up around climbing the pyramids. Given that this particular activity continued until its ban in 1951, this indicates a continuous approach to how these monuments were visited and abused dating back millennia. Pliny also includes theories about how the great pyramids might have been built:
No traces of the building operations survive. ... The crucial problem is to know how the masonry was laid to such a great height. Some think that ramps of soda and salt were piled against the structure as it was raised; and that after its completion these were flooded and dissolved by water from the river. Others hold that bridges were built of mud bricks and that when the work was finished the bricks were allotted to individuals for building their own houses. For it is considered impossible that the Nile, flowing at a far lower level, could have flooded the site.
No ancient aliens (thankfully), but it again shows a continuity of how people were thinking about the Egyptian past in Roman times and today.
So Pliny was living in a time when hieroglyphs were understood (if not by him) and yet he still did not know how the pyramids were built. Let's look at a timeline of all this information Pliny was reviewing in relation to today:
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| Timeline from Khufu to today. |
While this timeline is not completely to scale, it is as close as I could make it using PowerPoint. Look at the time difference between 2023 and 77 CE when Pliny's Natural History was completed. It is less distance to that between the start of the Common Era and the date of Khufu's reign.
What might the Egyptian past have looked like to Pliny?
In order to illustrate this, I have replicated the timeline and overlaid it from 77 CE aligned with 2023 CE:
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| Timeline reimagining 77 CE as 2023 CE |
Cambyses in Egypt just predates the start of the Renaissance. Ramses' reign is around 733CE, roughly equal to the start of the first iconoclastic period in the Byzantine empire. Thutmose III's reign is only a little after the sack of Rome, and Khufu's reign, the period of the building of the Great pyramid starts around 620 BCE.
Pliny looking at the building of the pyramids is the timeline equivalent of us looking at Roman history a century before the overthrow of the kings.
Cleopatra lived closer to the iphone than to the building of the pyramids, and Pliny closer still. His descriptions of Egyptian monuments built centuries when no millennia before his lifetime is rather remarkable. Perhaps we should consider his writings on such things as similar to how we view his work.
- If you want to know more about this, I recommend Peter Heslin's 2007 paper and but bear in mind that some of his argument about how the shadow of the gnomon interacted with the Ara Pacis is debated (see a virtual reconstruction of the Horologium) and a google scholar search will show how debates about this monument continue. Heslin's paper is excellent (in my opinion) for anglophone scholars as it gives an overview of the German scholarship from the late 1970s and early 1990s.
Extra Reading
In addition to the links to various papers or sources, some Victorian era discussions of Rome's obelisks:
John Henry Parker, The Twelve Egyptian Obelisks in Rome 1879
and how "Cleopatra's Needle" was moved to New York might be of interest. Pliny describes the way people viewed the movement of the obelisks from Egypt to Rome, apparently it was rather similar.
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