FAYUM
The obelisk was placed by JEPERKARA-SENUSERT, Dinasty
XII, in Abgig or Begig (region of Fayum), a locality located
to 3
km to S.E. of Medinet el-Fayum.
The Napoleonic expedition already soo and thus is gathered
in its
Description of l'Egypte (to see attached image). Later Lepsius and
Wilkinson year 1827 copied part of its inscriptions: it was the time
at which they went away gathering all type of testimonies of
the
hieroglyphic writing hardly deciphered to throw the bases
of the
historical reconstruction.
John Gardner Wilkinson, communicated his discoveries
to the
antique dealer William Gell, doing to him
to observe that its
vagabundeos by the desert they were not a loss of time; in fact it
interpreted correctly name of its author JEPERKARA-SENUSERT.
The monument lay collapsed in the middle of the field cultivated
and without relation with any surrounding structure, as it indicated
Mohammed Effendi Shaaban, the last one in charge, in 1925,
to
carry out one ocular inspection of the zone.
Later was transferred like decorative monument to the entrance of
the oasis of the Fayum, in the original place, four calcarea
stone
slabs they composed a square base of 3.6
meters of side, for a
monolith of granite (started off now in
two trunks) of 12.90
meters of stop, that it was narrowed upwards and
from 2.30 to
1.40 of side.
The superior part is cleared and appears cut in the center
by one
rectangular cavity to maintain its termination;
it is necessary to
exclude pyramidon (like in the obelisks themselves), because they
do not exist comparisons for this system of assembly.
It is more
probable hypothesis of a statue, metal perhaps, a divine image
or
of an emblem.
Shaaban looked for the rest in vain and also it
has been tried to
find possible parallel in the representations of the primitive chapel
of Shedet (the pharaonic chapel of Fayum) consecrated the main
God, the crocodile Sobek. This chapel is represented with a cover
in finished off arc and by a bucraneo (head of ox or antelope) that
there is to understand like protective symbol or like
datum point
for the offerings to the God.
The sides of the monolith, that altogether can be formed like
one
highest WAKE, is enrolled, with the exception of
the later face,
with the title of the ofrendante. In the previous face a decoration
is reserved more complex: in five boxes, divided in two halves, the
sovereign one is before two divinities of Low and the Egypt
Stop
(and the crown by consequence, is red and the white) and creative
divinities.
The rest of the final inscription
allow to interpret that it is
celebration of the opening of the Fayum, operation that
sends to
the creation original original that is to have of the king to continue
and to renew.
Image of the napoleonic expedition
at the Description de l'Egypte
Actual view to the Fayum´s obelisk, Egypt