DIEGO DELSO / WKIMEDIA COMMONS
French Egyptologist says he had deciphered secret messages recorded in an Egyptian obelisk aged 3000, built during the reign of Ramses II.
At the outside of the Luxor temple in Egypt, a stone structure was lifted about 12 meters high. No one knew what was written in the Obelisk, which has been since 1836 in the Praça Concorde, in Paris, by offering the Egyptians.
This mysterious object is signed with two names used by Ramses II, and is written with hieroglyphics, the Egyptian characters.
Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier, Egyptologist at the Parisian University of Sorbonne and the Catholic University, began to study the obelisk in his walks through the neighborhood, describes a.
“I approached him and read the hieroglyphs on his surfaces to relax,” Olette-Pelletier tells. “At one point I realized something unusual: the meaning of hieroglyphics It indicated a direction, that of the entrance to the portico of the temple of Luxor. But that was just the beginning. ”
The expert then realized that the pillar contained several pieces of code called crypto-hieroglyphics. “Although some Egyptians knew how to read hieroglyphics, only certain elites were able to understand the hidden messages they could contain, considered a language of the gods,” says the researcher.
Then the archaeologist began to gather pieces. The obelisk rose over the banks of the Nile when he was in Luxor. Those who arrived by boat could therefore see the message. One of the messages probably intended for upper class Egyptians who arrived at the temple for an annual party.
“Given the angle of approach, the nobility would have seen the hidden and reflected message: ‘The king confirms himself as an incarnate God, who cannot be dethroned,'” adds Olette-Pelletier. “It was a propaganda directed to a very high intellectual elite“.
“The use of hieroglyphic encryption allows us to make a new reading of the pharaonic texts,” says the investigator, who identified identified seven crypto-hieroglyphics on the pillar. “It’s an example that proves that Egyptology still has many things to find out.”
