A couple of years ago I was walking around Rome, as one does, and happened upon an obelisk. It turned out to be the Lateran Obelisk, the largest standing Egyptian obelisk in the world. (For the uninitiated, I seem to have developed an obsession about obelisks. Please don’t judge.) The Lateran Obelisk was constructed around 1400 BC, and moved to Rome by the Roman emperor about 1800 years later. Apparently, collecting Egyptian obelisks was a thing for the Roman emperors, and today Rome has more Egyptian obelisks than anywhere else…include Egypt.
I mention this because I just received a message from loyal reader Brian W. By way of background, he explained that well over a half-century ago his father carried home a box from work that contained sundry photography equipment. Included in the box were a bunch of old black-and-white negatives. The family fooled around with the photography equipment a bit but the negatives were eventually forgotten. Recently, however, Brian’s sister located the negatives and gave them to him as a birthday present. Brian, who is an accomplished photographer in his own right, has been busy converting those negatives into digital prints. Most of them seem to have been taken in Europe during or shortly after World War II. And here is one of those photos:
It is, of course, another Egyptian obelisk. This one is the Luxor Obelisk, in Paris. Brian guesses that the photo was taken in the late 1940s.
The Luxor Obelisk has suffered various indignities over the years, not least of which was being moved from where it had stood for 3000 years. And then, in 1993, it was sheathed in a pink condom for World AIDS Day. I am not making this up.
Finally, I’ll share with you one final photograph from Brian. It’s part of that same collection of negatives that his dad brought home in the cardboard box, of unknown provenance. I know little about military uniforms, but this appears to me to be an infantry lieutenant(?).
Maybe he is a fellow soldier known to the photographer? It’s simultaneously heartwarming and eerie to see him smiling across something like 80 years of history. Perhaps there is a reader out there with the ability to do an image search and see if he shows up in any other photo collections?
Meanwhile, take this as a friendly reminder to label your photographs!
Chasing Phantoms 
Good advice, Steve. This past summer, I met a 50-year-old goal and scanned over 5,300 family photos. I somehow became their repository over the decades. Fortunately, I was able to identify most of the people and dates/years where names and other information were missing. Thanks for the interesting obelisk article. I won’t judge. One week to go until your birthday! Sherrill
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5,300 family photos??! You win the prize!
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