Obelisk of Abgig
# Obelisk of Abgig

The Obelisk of Abgig (also known as the Faiyum obelisk) is an ancient stone monument erected by the Egyptian pharaoh Senusret I c. 1971–1926 BC near what is now Faiyum.

## Description

The obelisk of Abgig is made of red granite, and when first erected, it likely stood 12.9 meters high with a 3.6 meters wide base. The obelisk tapers upwards and has a rounded top. In the middle of the obelisk's crest, there exists a recess, which may have once housed a sculpted figure. Gaston Maspero and Hourig Sourouzian both argued that this figure was probably made of metal and depicted a falcon, although such a suggestion is speculative at best.

The obverse of the obelisk is detailed and features five registers, each of which depicts two instances of the pharaoh Senusret I (identified in several places as "Kheper-ka-ra" [ḫpr-kꜣ-rꜥ], which means the "Manifestation of the Ka of Ra"), facing a pair of gods. A description of the registers, arranged from top to the bottom, is as follows:

Description of the Obelisk of Abgig's obverse registers :

| Reg. | Left-hand side | Right-hand side |
| - | - | - |
| 1 | The king, Senusret I, faces Montu and Amun. | The king faces Ptah and Ra-Horakhty. |
| 2 | The king presents an offering to Isis and Nephthys. | The king faces two male deities. |
| 3 | The king faces Sobek and a goddess. | The king faces Thot and another goddess. |
| 4 | The king presents an offering, likely to to Satet and Khnum. | The king presents an offering to a god with ram's horns and a goddess with cow horns. |
| 5 | The king invokes a god (likely Min) and a goddess. | The king presents an offering to the falcon-headed god "foremost of Khem" and to Seshat. |

Below the fifth register, there once existed fourteen columns of hieroglyphs. By the 19th century, this text had been badly eroded, and Karl Richard Lepsius was able to copy only parts of the inscription. Today, none of this inscription remains. Because the text copied by Lepsius is so fragmentary, determining what the inscription once said is likely impossible. That said, Marco Zecch postulates that the columns may have recorded a speech that Senusret I delivered to his court concerning the construction of new monuments. Zecch notes that text of this general sort has been identified on a variety of objects that were constructed during Senusret I's reign.

## History

The earliest mention of the obelisk was made in 1672 by Johann Michael Vansleb. The monument was later described by Richard Pococke (1704–1765), M. Caristie (1775–1852), Richard Lepsius (1810-1884), Edward William Lane (19th century), John Gardner Wilkinson (1915), and Mohamed Chaaban (1925).

In the early 1970s, the obelisk was restored by Egyptian authorities and moved to Medinet el-Fayyum.

