Philae obelisk

It was discovered by William John Bankes in 1815, who had it brought to Kingston Lacy in Dorset, England, where it still stands today.

The priests complained about the financial burden resulting from the large numbers of royal functionaries visiting their sanctuary.

The king and queens approved the request and instructed the governor to stop having the temple service the state officials.

[7] Bankes noticed the obelisk in 1815, while travelling in Egypt and believed that the bilingual inscription would help with the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

He accordingly acquired the obelisk and a single, large broken piece of its twin found at Philae and had them transported to his estate at Kingston Lacy in Dorset, England.

Jean-Antoine Letronne sent him a copy of the lithograph of the Philae obelisk, which confirmed that his reconstruction was correct and he announced the decipherment of hieroglyphs in the Lettre à M. Dacier in 1822.

[14] Bankes, Young, and their circle responded to this announcement with great hostility, claiming that Champollion had not given them proper credit for the discovery.

Further autopsy was carried out by Ulrich Wilcken in 1887, who reported that the painted Greek inscription was no longer visible by this time.

In October and November 2014 and spring 2015, Ben Altshuler of the Institute for Digital Archaeology, in association with Alan Bowman and Charles Crowther of Oxford's Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents (CSAD), undertook RTI scans and 3D imaging of the obelisk, in conjunction with a commercial measurement company called GOM UK.