Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4-A—The Southern Cross, January 5, 1963
Solves Mystery Of Origin
Of Egyptian Obelisk That
Adorns St. Peter’s Square
SOLDIER SANTA BRINGS JOY TO REFUGEES - “Felices Navidad" (Merry Christ
mas) is the greeting from Master Sergeant Nector Morales of Fort Dix, N. J., as he
distributes toys to more than 1,000 Cuban refugee children at Centro Hispano Catolico,
diocesan Spanish center in downtown Miami. The Puerto Rican born soldier has collected
thousands of toys annually for Korean orphans. This year he brought 1,300 toys to Miami
for the Cuban children. - (NC Photos)
Sacred Bible Site Found, Archaeologists Believe
Irish Priest Ousted
VATICAN CITY, (Radio,
NC) - New light has been shed
on the mysterious Egyptian obe
lisk that stands in the vast
square in front of St. Peter’s
basilica.
It was the light of a mid
summer sun that gave the first
clue to the solution now ad
vanced by Filippo Magi, di
rector of excavations and ar
cheological research in Vatican
City.
Studying the obelisk’s ancient
Roman inscription one brilliant
August day, Magi noticed tell
tale marks of an earlier in
scription and proceeded to de
cipher them.
He discovered that the obelisk
had first been erected by a
Roman prefect of Egypt, Caius
Cornelius Gallus, a poet,^sol
dier and politician who fell in
to disgrace and died by his
own hand.
The present inscription by
the Emperor Caligula was cut
into the stone after the bronze
letters of the original inscrip
tions of Gallus were removed.
Holes left by the rivets which
had attached the earlier legend
on the obelisk were what first
attracted Magi’s attention. They
also enabled him to reconstruct
the original.
The earlier inscription an
nounced that the obelisk had
been erected in a place known
as Forum Julium by Gallus.
That place, unknown today, was
named after the birthplace of
Gallus in Gaul, Forum Julii,
the modern city of Frejus on
the French Riviera.
Gallus was born in 69 B. C.
of poor parents. He first
achieved renown in Rome for
his poems, later distinguished
himself as a soldier and finally
was made the prefect of Egypt.
He incurred the displeasure
of Augustus Ceasar and was
relieved of his post by the
Roman Senate, which also con
fiscated all his property and
condemned him to exile. He
commited suicide in 26 B. C.
All that had been known of
the obelisk's history until now
was that it had been brought
from Egypt to Rome by the
Emperor Caligula to adorn a
Roman square and that it was
placed in its present position
in 1586 by Pope Sixtus V.
It lacks Egyptian hiero
glyphics. Among the obelisks
in Rome, the 83-feet high monu
ment is second in size only to
the one near the Archbasilica
of St. John Lateran, which is
106 feet high.
The problems of its removal
to its present site under the
direction of the architect Do
menico Fontana are still
legendary in Rome. The most
celebrated legend says that
spectators were bound under
pain of death to keep silent,
but that one cried out that the
ropes raising it upright were
about to catch fire from fric
tion and thus saved the monu
ment known to millions.
In a report on Magi’s work
on the obelisk, the Vatican City
daily, L’Osservatore Romano,
styled it “the most sensational
archeological discovery of the
year.’’
New Convent
For Protestant
Community
CASTELL-ON-THE -RHINE,
Germany, (NC) - A new Pro
testant community of women
similar to a Catholic religious
society has dedicated a con
vent near here.
Casteller Ring (the Society
of Castell), whose main purpose
is welfare work for the young,
has 27 members, 11 of whom
have taken solemn vows. The
members profess the same
vows of poverty, chastity and
obedience which Catholic Re
ligious profess. They wear ci
vilian dress in public and don
a black dress with a white
hood and collar when in the
convent. The women, who have
adopted the Benedictine motto
“Pray and Work,’’ have choir
office seven times a day.
A Lutheran community, the
Sisters of Mary, already exists
in a suburb of Darmstadt.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., (NC) -
A team of archaeologists be
lieves it has uncovered the sa
cred site in the Biblical city
of Sichem where Abram and
Jacob worshiped in the 19th
century before Christ.
Harvard University pro
fessor G. Ernest Wright said
the site, which is mentioned in
Genesis and reappears from
time to time in the Old Tests-
ment, was uncovered this past
summer below the courtyard
of Sichem's temple-fortress
erected over the site in about
1650 B. C.
He said that the existence of
such a site, where an altar to
the Lord and a sacred oak were
located, was reported in an oral
tradition kept alive by Israelite
people for some 1,000 years
before the Bible began to be
written around the 11th cen
tury before Christ.
The major significance of the
excavation, he said, is that it
allows a history with dates,
worked out archaeologically, to
be set back-to-back with an
oral tradition that predates the
writing of the Bible.
The archaeologists who made
the discovery came from Har
vard, the McCormick Theologi
cal Seminary, Chicago, Drew
University, Madison, N. J., and
some other American and
foreign institutions, Wright
said.
The Drew-McCormich-Har-
vard expedition was begun in
1956. The city of Sichem, with
its 4,000 years of history, now
lies buried in a 10-acre mound
just east of Nablus in Jordan,
Wright said.
Sichem is the first city men
tioned in the Bible. When
Abram and Jacob visited it,
the city was a stronghold of
an empire ruled from Egypt.
SHANAGOLDEN, Ireland,
(NC) - One of the more than
30 missionaries expelled from
the Sudan in November said here
that Sudanese officials told him
only that he was ordered out of
that African nation because he
had finished his work.
He is Father Thomas Broud-
er of the Mill Hill Fathers who
is now on leave here in his
hometown. He reported that
another Irish member of the
Mill Hill Fathers ousted from
the Sudan, Father Edward
Sloane of Belfast, has gone to
start a new mission in Kenya
among a remote African tribe.
Before his expulsion, Father
Sloane had been arrested for
preaching in church on the
ground that this illegally made
the church a “teaching estab
lishment.’’ But the magistrate
who heard the case dismissed
it.
(Since the Sudan won indepen
dence in 1956, its Moslem-
dominated government has
sought to Islamize the part-
pagan, part-Christian southern
part of the country, the region
from which the missioners were
expelled. The government has
allowed no new missionaries to
enter the Sudan and in 1957
it nationalized all mission
schools. Earlier this year it
decreed the Missionary Socie
ties Act, a law which prohibits
all proselytizing and provides
the legal basis for the expul
sion of missioners.)
Father Brouder, headmaster
of a mission school in Malakal
taken over five years ago, said
he was given six weeks to leave
the Sudan after receiving his
notice of expulsion. When hi
asked why he was being ordered
out of the country, he said, the
authorities claimed that he had
completed his work there and
that from now on Sudanese were
going to take it over.
BEST
WISHES
FROM
St. Christopher’s
Church and Missions
CLAXTON, GA.
Best Wishes From
THE CATHOLIC
YOUTH ORGANIZATIONS
C. Y. O. Diocesan Director,
Rev. Herbert J. Wellmeier
Best Wishes To The Southern Cross
jjj|
■ ■
Conducted by
The
Sisters Of St. Francis
Columbus
From
Saint Francis
I
School Of Nursing