Luxor Obelisks

You are looking at the Luxor Obelisk, a three thousand year old monolith of red granite that stands as the oldest monument in Paris. It was originally one of a pair carved for the entrance of the Luxor Temple in Egypt during the reign of Ramesses the Second. In eighteen twenty-nine, the Viceroy of Egypt gifted both obelisks to France as a gesture of gratitude for the work of Jean-François Champollion, the French scholar who famously cracked the code of Egyptian hieroglyphs.