The Secrets of the Obelisk

The Egyptian obelisk long gracing the Place de la Concorde in Paris is 3,000 years old, rises 75 feet, and was built in the reign of Ramses II, in the 13th century BCE.  

The structure, sent to Paris in 1836 by Ottoman Egypt, is covered in hieroglyphics, which contained hidden messages meant for the elites. It has baffled experts for years. 

Then French Egyptologist Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier took an interest while strolling by.  

“I would walk up to it and read the hieroglyphs on its surfaces to relax,” Olette-Pelletier said in an interview with Sciences et Avenir. “At one point, I realized something unusual: The hieroglyphs’ meaning indicated a direction, that of the entrance to the portico of the Temple of Luxor. But that was just the beginning.” 

Because he couldn’t find other studies related to this observation, he started his own. 

He studied the obelisk’s engravings with binoculars and found pieces of code called crypto-hieroglyphs. Olette-Pelletier is one of the few Egyptologists in the world who can decipher these hieroglyphs. 

These crypto-hieroglyphs were found in the 1950s, featuring puzzles and wordplay, or even changing the reading direction, explained Artnet. 

“Although some Egyptians could read hieroglyphs, only certain elites were capable of understanding the hidden messages that they could contain, considered a language of the gods,” said Olette-Pelletier. 

Thanks to the conservation work done on the obelisk in 2021 in preparation for the Olympic Games three years later, Olette-Pelletier was granted permission to examine the upper parts of the monument, confirming his theories. 

Originally one of the two red granite columns that existed outside of Egypt’s Luxor Temple, the obelisk overlooked the banks of the Nile. Based on the location and angle of the code messages, these were likely meant for people approaching by boat.  

Given the angle of arrival, the Egyptologist thinks that one secret message in particular was meant to make noble Egyptians who were joining an annual festival at the temple see the message and think: “The king confirms himself as god incarnate, who cannot be dethroned.”

“It was propaganda aimed at the very high intellectual elite,” Olette-Pelletier told Artnet. 

In total, Olette-Pelletier found seven crypto-hieroglyphs on the obelisk in Paris, which he says are examples of the many things in Egyptology still waiting to be discovered.