In Sultanahmet Square stands something a pharaoh ordered about 3,500 years ago. It has been here for over 1,600 of them. It still isn't from here.
Red granite from Aswan. Thutmose III raised it at Karnak around 1450 BC to mark his victories toward the Euphrates.
Then Rome wanted it. In 357 Constantius II shipped it down the Nile to Alexandria, where it waited 33 years.
In 390 Theodosius I brought it to Constantinople and stood it on the spine of the Hippodrome, the racetrack that is now the square. Proculus ran the job. Two verses on the base record it: the Greek says 32 days, the Latin 30. They still disagree.
Proculus didn't keep the credit. His name was scratched out of the Greek in 392, and cut back in years later.
And it isn't the whole obelisk. The lower part was damaged in antiquity; what stands is about 18.5 to 19.6 m, sources vary.
The pedestal is the Roman half. Its reliefs show Theodosius and his court in the imperial box, watching the games: one face shows this very obelisk going up; others, tribute, a race, music, even a water organ.
The Hippodrome was dismantled in Ottoman times. The obelisk wasn't.
The oldest thing in Istanbul? No: Yenikapı's Neolithic settlement is about 8,500 years old. Old enough, though, to outlive the pharaoh, the emperor and the racetrack.
Free, open, in the square. Go early, before 09:00, and walk to the pedestal: the emperor in his box, then the Latin on the east face, the Greek on the west. The crowd shoots it from the Blue Mosque side; you read the carved crowd instead. The pit shows how far the ground has risen: the old track lies about 2 m down. Fences and access: check on site.
