Scientists have discovered a new inscription on the 3,300-year-old Luxor Obelisk in Paris’ Place de la Concorde that reveals that this ancient monument is still yielding Egyptian secrets. The Luxor Obelisk stands tall at Place de la Concorde in Paris’s eighth arrondissement.
Constructed by the Egyptians more than 3,000 years ago, the stunning artefact is carved from red granite. It was gifted to France in the 19th century, and since then it has been with the European city. While the experts believed that they had uncovered the hieroglyphs running the length of the monument, which is topped by a gold-leafed pyramid cap added by the French in the 1990s, a new discovery has left everyone startled.
Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier, an Egyptologist at the Catholic University of Paris, found some interesting details during restoration work in late 2021. He has claimed to have found seven secret messages on the obelisk.
Dr Olette-Pelletier examined the upper sections that were rarely seen after climbing the scaffolding that surrounded the monument. Near the pyramid-shaped cap, he found an intricately hidden inscription – embedded within the hieroglyphs and designed to be viewed from a specific angle.
He said: “When I calculated where someone would have to stand to view this message, I found myself in the middle of the Nile.”
One offers a cryptic phrase ‘Appease the ka-force of Amun’ in reference to the ancient Egyptian god of the air. He said: “This phrase is there to remind us that men must constantly make offerings to the divinities in order to appease their sometimes destructive vital force.”
Dr Olette-Pelletier is believed to be one of only six people worldwide who is able to read ‘crypto-hieroglyphs’. These are secret texts inserted into the hieroglyphic inscriptions themselves – historically making them visible to a select group of people.
He told the French magazine Sciences et Avenir: “I understood that the obelisk contained multiple hieroglyphic cryptography.
“While some Egyptians could read hieroglyphs, only a certain elite were capable of understanding the hidden messages they could contain, considered a language of the gods.”
The Luxor Obelisks were initially proposed as symbols of power during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign in the late 18th century. Although early efforts to transport them to France were unsuccessful, interest resurged in the 1820s.
In November 1830, Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, officially presented the Luxor Obelisk to France as a gift.