Visible by millions of passers -by, the Obelisk de Louxor has been sorting since 1836 at the center of the Place de la Concorde, without anyone suspecting the presence of messages voluntarily hidden on its surface. However, in 2021, on the occasion of a restoration site, Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier, Egyptologist at the Catholic Institute of Paris and teacher at the Sorbonne, identified seven inscriptions hitherto unknown.
A rediscovery 30 meters high
During the first confinement, Jean-Guillaume Olettetier devotes his trips authorized to the meticulous observation of the only Egyptian vestige accessible from his home: the obelisk of the Place de la Concorde. Armed with twins and patience, he identifies irregularities in the arrangement of signs. These anomalies awaken his suspicions. The hieroglyphs seem to be oriented differently according to the areas, betraying an unusual writing logic. No anterior academic statement mentioned such configurations. It was necessary a field study to confirm intuition.
In 2021, thanks to a project supervised by the Regional Directorate of Cultural Affairs (DRAC), he obtained unprecedented access to the upper parts of the obelisk. From this privileged angle, more than 30 meters from the ground, he manages to examine the details invisible to the naked eye from the place. He then identifies signs voluntarily hidden in the hieroglyphic setting. They are integrated according to a coded logic that he knows well: that of sacred cryptography practiced in the new empire.
© © JG. Olette-Pelletier
Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier on the DRAC scaffold in 2021. © JG. Olette-Pelletier
The inscriptions are not content to adorn the monument. They exploit reliefs, shadow games and volumes to hide their message from any uninitiated person. This three -dimensional reading is based on the position of the spectator and the spatial arrangement of the signs. Like certain royal funeral objects, the meaning of the image depends on the physical context in which it is perceived. The top of the obelisk, long ignored, turns out to be the key to a targeted royal message.
Visual and textual propaganda
E these inscriptions were not addressed to everyone. They aimed at a limited audience, precisely defined: the Egyptian elite, literate and initiated into the visual codes of royal power. One of the messages, engraved on the originally turned west, is only readable from an angle of 45 degrees. This corresponded to the view of the nobles accosting to the Luxor temple by the Nile during the Opeet Festival. This annual ceremony honored Amon and celebrated the renewal of its divine energy. In this context, the visibility of the registration was not fortuitous. She placed Ramses II in an undeniable posture of religious legitimacy: that of the sovereign chosen by the gods to reign.
© © JG. Olette-PelletierPossible view of the western face of the obelisk. © JG. Olette-Pelletier
The image of the pharaoh wearing the pschent, the double crown of High and Lower Egypt, reinforced this message of national unity and divine authority. The intention was clear. The king was presented not only as head of state, but as a living link between men and the pantheon. These texts, however invisible to the majority of the population, exercised a first -rate political function. They validated the power of the pharaoh by coded signs that only the privileged could decipher.
On other faces of the monolith, Olette-Pelletier has identified hybrid compositions where reading depends on the orientation of the gaze. Certain combined signs form whole sentences: an appeal to appease the “ka” of Amon or the affirmation of royal eternity. These messages unite graphics, geometry and religious symbolic to produce a powerful and refined legree of legitimacy. The text then becomes an image, and the image, sacred language.
A revised dating and political context
The study of the inscriptions of the Luxor obelisk makes it possible to better locate certain stages of its engraving. Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier has highlighted a detail rarely accessible to researchers: the simultaneous presence of two distinct royal names from Ramses II. Mon, Usermaatra (“Powerful is the justice of dreams”), corresponds to the name he used at the very beginning of his reign. The other, Setepenra (“Chosen from dream”), only appears from his second year on the throne. “The fact that the two names are engraved on the same monument suggests a two-step execution, with a voluntary modification of the iconographic program”, specifies Olette-Pelletier in an interview cited by Bruújula Verde.
This overlap also makes it possible to better understand the communication strategy of the young pharaoh. Born before his father Sethi I said to the throne, Ramses II could not claim direct divine filiation. The adoption of the name Setepenra thus constitutes a clear political maneuver to strengthen its legitimacy by symbolically associating with the solar God.
This cryptographic reading is not a first for Olette-Pelletier. In 2022, he had already shown that the throne of Tutankhamon contained an incomplete message. It could not be deciphered only when the king was seated on it. Indeed, his arms and legs formed the missing hieroglyphs. “” The body became an integral part of writing He explains. These analyzes confirm that certain hieroglyphic messages were designed to operate in space, in movement, and sometimes even in the physical presence of power.
A revelation that relaunches the study of Egyptian monuments
The upcoming publication of the work of Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier in the review Nilotic and Mediterranean Egypt (ENIM) promises to feed an already initiated scientific debate. Because if his discoveries fascinate, they are not unanimous. Filip Taterka, Egyptologist at the Polish Academy of Sciences, quoted by Live scienceexpressed reservations as to the actual readability of these messages for ancient travelers. According to him, the distance and elevation of the top of the obelisk would make their perception improbable since a boat on the Nile. These criticisms underline the importance of a confrontation of hypotheses in the field of Egyptology. In this discipline, the interpretation of sources is often based on cross -readings, archaeological, textual and contextual.
Beyond this punctual controversy, the rediscovery of invisible inscriptions opens up new perspectives on the political uses of the monumental decor in ancient Egypt. She recalls that obelisks, beyond their aesthetic or religious dimension, were also instruments of power, thought in space, in the corner, in the light. Their message was not only written: it was staged.
The Parisian obelisk, often reduced to its role as a witness to a distant past, thus reveals an unsuspected complexity. He invites us to revisit other monuments in the light of these methods of analysis, especially in the great Theban temples or the royal necropolises. Because if the stones have long been silent, today's tools allow them to be given voice. And it is likely that other secrets are still waiting, buried in the sight of everyone, that someone takes the time to look at them differently.
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