Racist Christian Sculpture
If you have ever visited Rome as a tourist, you will almost certainly have gone to Piazza Navona, whose centrepiece is Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers. This is a great baroque work of writhing stone and splashing water surmounted by an ancient Egyptian obelisk.
This very famous monument, bang in the centre of the Piazza, was commissioned by Pope Innocent X whose original name was Giambattista Pamphili, who is a central figure in my novel The Fatal Touch.
The inscriptions below the obelisk are fascinating examples of the arrogance of not just the Pamphili family, not just the popes, both of us Westerners with respect to other cultures.
Although the pyramids are generally recognised even in popular culture thanks to films such as "The Mummy" as predating the Islamification of that area of the world, there is still our deep suspicion of the culture that built the pyramids and now finds itself occupying a central part of the Muslim world.
The Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona is surmounted by a tall Egyptian obelisk that the Pamphili Pope had brought from the outskirts of Rome where it lay discarded and broken in three pieces having been originally stolen from Egypt by the Romans in the days of the Emperor Caracalla. We can be thankful that the rescued a piece of ancient Egyptian art, but we should be under no illusion that his motives in displaying this piece of imperial loot where broadminded. The obelisk is topped by a carved white dove, symbol, as we know, of peace but, more to the point, symbol also of the Pamphili family. The dove on top of the Egyptian obelisk is intended to show who is boss. It is also intended to signify the superiority and triumph of Christianity over this weird and evil Egyptian culture.
So the dove, a Christian bird (an American eagle is our modern-day equivalent), is seen to triumph over the evil monsters of Egypt, a reference to the hieroglyphics below. Why are these monsters evil? They are evil because they are Egyptian. The Latin inscription reads:
"Innocent X, Pope, installed this stone inscribed with the riddles of the Nile, above the flowing waters with which, with great generosity, he provides healthy distraction for those who walk below..."
What is interesting here is that the inscription explicitly states that the obelisk is inscribed with "riddles". That is to say, the obelisk is inscribed with a language that nobody understands. Yet on the first inscription that we looked at, we are told that this language is somehow evil. That which we cannot understand, that which is foreign and ancient, that which comes from where Muslims now reside, is evil.
As it happens, the inscriptions on the Egyptian obelisk are understood now thanks to the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone. But that did not happen until 1822, long after the obelisk and its inscriptions appeared in Piazza Navona. Meanwhile, the message of western contempt for other civilizations is now lost on the millions of visitors who understand the Latin inscription no better than the hieroglyphics that it mocks.
This very famous monument, bang in the centre of the Piazza, was commissioned by Pope Innocent X whose original name was Giambattista Pamphili, who is a central figure in my novel The Fatal Touch.
The inscriptions below the obelisk are fascinating examples of the arrogance of not just the Pamphili family, not just the popes, both of us Westerners with respect to other cultures.
Although the pyramids are generally recognised even in popular culture thanks to films such as "The Mummy" as predating the Islamification of that area of the world, there is still our deep suspicion of the culture that built the pyramids and now finds itself occupying a central part of the Muslim world.
The Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona is surmounted by a tall Egyptian obelisk that the Pamphili Pope had brought from the outskirts of Rome where it lay discarded and broken in three pieces having been originally stolen from Egypt by the Romans in the days of the Emperor Caracalla. We can be thankful that the rescued a piece of ancient Egyptian art, but we should be under no illusion that his motives in displaying this piece of imperial loot where broadminded. The obelisk is topped by a carved white dove, symbol, as we know, of peace but, more to the point, symbol also of the Pamphili family. The dove on top of the Egyptian obelisk is intended to show who is boss. It is also intended to signify the superiority and triumph of Christianity over this weird and evil Egyptian culture.
So the dove, a Christian bird (an American eagle is our modern-day equivalent), is seen to triumph over the evil monsters of Egypt, a reference to the hieroglyphics below. Why are these monsters evil? They are evil because they are Egyptian. The Latin inscription reads:
"Innocent X, Pope, installed this stone inscribed with the riddles of the Nile, above the flowing waters with which, with great generosity, he provides healthy distraction for those who walk below..."
What is interesting here is that the inscription explicitly states that the obelisk is inscribed with "riddles". That is to say, the obelisk is inscribed with a language that nobody understands. Yet on the first inscription that we looked at, we are told that this language is somehow evil. That which we cannot understand, that which is foreign and ancient, that which comes from where Muslims now reside, is evil.
As it happens, the inscriptions on the Egyptian obelisk are understood now thanks to the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone. But that did not happen until 1822, long after the obelisk and its inscriptions appeared in Piazza Navona. Meanwhile, the message of western contempt for other civilizations is now lost on the millions of visitors who understand the Latin inscription no better than the hieroglyphics that it mocks.
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