Well there are actually three, so depending upon where you live in the world you may have one of them near to you. Although none actually have any connection with the famous Egyptian ruler Cleopatra VII of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony fame, in fact they all predate her by over a thousand years.
The very first one to be so named would have been the one that now stands in the Place De La Concorde in Paris and was a gift made in 1826 by the then ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali (no, not the boxer). It was a gift to France and King Louis Philippe had it erected near the spot where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were guillotined. Anyone who has visited Luxor will recognise it as being the other one of a matching pair that would have stood on the empty plinth at the entrance to Luxor Temple. Both are made from Red Granite from the quarries at Aswan and they were erected by Ramesses II better known as ‘Ramesses the Great’
Cleopatra’s Needle in Paris, note the modern inscription on its base showing how it was erected in modern times
The empty plinth at Luxor Temple.
A close up of the inscriptions on the remaining twin at Luxor, praising Ramesses the Great.
It is believed that the original capstone was stolen from the Luxor temple sometime around the 6th century BC, so it lacked the typical pyramid shaped top, but in 1998 the French government added the beautiful new gold leafed capstone.
The other two belong to a pair that were originally erected in the city of Heliopolis close to modern day Cairo by the pharaoh Tuthmosis III around 1450 BC. Heliopolis is now mainly agricultural with some parts still buried below the streets of the Al-Matariyah suburb of Cairo, the stone of the old temple buildings having been re-used to build the ancient city of Cairo itself. They were originally plain, but later inscriptions were added by that great usurper of existing monuments, Ramesses II who often added his own inscriptions to nearly everything he could find.
There is still one surviving obelisk in the Al-Matariyah distict of old Heliopolis, known as the Al-Masalla obelisk, still on the original site it as was erected on by the 12th dynasty pharaoh Senusret I, at the temple of Re-Atum. All three obelisks were again made from Red Granite taken from the same Aswan quarries.
The Senusret 1st Obelisk, still at the location of the Re-Atum Temple of Heliopolis.
The one we know today as Cleopatra’s Needle that sits on the Victorian Embankment in London, is one of the pair erected by pharaoh Tuthmosis III and was also given to the United Kingdom by the then Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali in 1819. It was given prior to the French one and was meant to commemorate Nelsons victory at the Battle of the Nile when he defeated the French fleet of Napoleon Bonaparte. I still find a slight irony in the fact that the original owner of the obelisk, Tuthmosis III, was also know as ‘The Napoleon of Egypt’ because of his military prowess and his monument is later given to commemorate someone who defeated Napoleon, maybe it was intentional, maybe it is just a coincidence.
Both obelisks had been moved by the Romans under Augustus to the port city of Alexandria in around 12 BC and set up in a temple that Cleopatra had previously built to commemorate Mark Anthony, so maybe this is where the Cleopatra connection comes in. It seems that they had not done such a good job of re-erecting them as they had both toppled in antiquity and become buried under the sand for the last 2000 years. This was serendipitous, as it helped to protect the hieroglyphs from erosion until they were excavated from the sand once more.
While accepting the gifts, the British government in true fashion refused to fund the transportation costs so it stayed in Alexandria until 1877 until Sir William Wilson sponsored it to the tune of £10,000 a great sum in those days. An engineer from Newcastle upon Tyne, John Dixon, had been in Cairo constructing an iron bridge and was given the task of getting the obelisk to the UK. He came up with a design for a cylindrical shaped vessel, a bit like a submarine that would encase the obelisk and it could then be towed behind another vessel all the way back to the UK. This vessel was constructed back in the UK and then shipped out to Alexandria in sections where it was then built around the now exposed and recumbent obelisk. In part two I will included a series of old photographs and sketches that show this taking place, these were very kindly sent to me by ‘Charlie’ better known to some of you as ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ shortly before his untimely death over a year ago.
:):)
