Documented: obelisks are monolithic granite sun-pillars of New Kingdom Egypt, tekhenu, gilded at the tip to catch first light, sacred to Ra at Heliopolis. Augustus began the removals; Rome eventually held more Egyptian obelisks than any modern city. Sixtus V had the Vatican obelisk, brought by Caligula, raised in St. Peter's Square in 1586 with exorcisms to purge its pagan charge. The Washington Monument (1884) and London's and Paris's obelisks extend the pattern into modern capitals.
The folk observation: the powers that publicly despise paganism keep installing its most unmistakable monument at their centers, and the 1586 exorcism reads like an admission that the object has a charge worth purging. Maxwell's lecture files the obelisk as the sun cult's signature on the modern state, alongside the dome, womb and phallus, the architectural marriage.
The claim: obelisks are instruments, not memorials, piezoelectric granite needles in a planetary circuit, per the fringe engineering literature, or the wardens' territorial markers, per the trap reading. The domed-womb and obelisk pairing in Washington and the Vatican is read as the system's own fertility diagram.
Trophy, technology, or the oldest continuous salute in the city-building file?