Concorde: Clue & Answer

Sitting at the cross of nature and construction,
of the new and the old,
marking the base of monumental Paris
there stands a petrified sun ray
crowned with gold,
grounding the meeting of Egypt and France:
a constant in the whirl of shifting surroundings.

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Obelisk from the ancient Egyptian 

Temple of Luxor, 1250 BCE. 
Place de la Concorde.

8th arrondissement. Metro: Concorde

Photo: Lindsay Persohn and Anna Ross

Certainly the oldest monument in Paris to be seen outside of the Louvre Museum, this obelisk was originally part of a pair that formed the entryway to the temple complex at Luxor, created under pharaoh Ramses II. It was a gift from the viceroy of Egypt to king Charles X in 1831 and was finally transported to Paris and installed in the Place de la Concorde by 1837. 

Photo: Lindsay Persohn and Anna Ross

Weighing over 220 tons and measuring 75 feet tall, the obelisk presented extraordinary challenges in both transport and installation. Pictographs (which Todd Porterfield has likened to nineteenth-century hieroglyphics; Porterfield 1998) on the pedestal chronicle the technology amassed to achieve this feat of engineering.

Photo: Lindsay Persohn and Anna Ross

The obelisk was placed where the guillotine had stood during the French Revolution. Its presence signaled the replacement of bloodshed during the Reign of Terror with the enduring brilliance of  French civilization.               

"By effacing the bloody memories hanging over the 

Place de la Concorde, by uniting the urban plan, and by propagating a rationale for imperialism in the Near East, 

the obelisk would provide post-Revolutionary France with a 

          monument that could last. It offered modern France an ideological center by which the country could not only survive but flourish." 

                                                          ~ Todd Porterfield (Porterfield 1998)