Have you ever wondered why the iconic Washington Monument so closely resembles an ancient Egyptian obelisk? In this video, I discuss the role of Egyptomania in early American architecture, contextualizing the movement within the long history of foreign imperialistic powers appropriating Egyptian obelisks. Ancient Rome, Renaissance Italy, and the Napoleonic regime all played a hand in shaping how early Americans constructed a national identity through monumental architecture.
Bibliography
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Freeman, Robert Belmont. 1973. “Design Proposals for the Washington National Monument”. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 49: 151-186. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40067740
Giguere, Joy M. 2014. Characteristically American: Memorial Architecture, National Identity and the Egyptian Revival. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.
Hansen B. 2008. “Orchestrating the Obelisk: The Washington Monument”. Civil Engineering. 78 (7): 38-41. https://doi.org/10.1061/ciegag.0000812
Heldal, Tom, and Per Storemyr. 2014. “Fire on the Rocks: Heat as an Agent in Ancient Egyptian Hard Stone Quarrying.” Engineering Geology for Society and Territory 5, 2014: 291–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09048-1_56
Jeffreys, D. G. 2003. Views of Ancient Egypt Since Napoleon Bonaparte: Imperialism, Colonialism and Modern Appropriations. London: UCL Press.
Swetnam-Burland, Molly. 2010. “‘Aegyptus Redacta’: The Egyptian Obelisk in the Augustan Campus Martius.” The Art Bulletin 92, no. 3: 135–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29546118.
Tompkins, Peter. 1981. The Magic of Obelisks. New York: Harper & Row
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