Cleopatra's Needle - New York, NY - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

Taken from Wikipedia, "Cleopatra's Needle in New York is one of three similar named Egypian obelisks and was erected in Central Park (at 40°46'46.67?N 73°57'55.44?W, just west of the Metropolitan Museum of Art) on 22 February 1881. It was secured in May 1877 by judge Elbert E. Farman, the then-United States Consul General at Cairo, as a gift from the Khedive for the United States remaining a friendly neutral as the European powers – France and Britain – maneuvered to secure political control of the Egyptian Government.

Made of red granite, the obelisk stands about 21 metres (69 ft) high, weighs about 224 tons[1] and is inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was originally erected in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis on the orders of Thutmose III, around 1450 BC. The material of which it was cut is granite, brought from the quarries of Aswan, near the first cataract of the Nile. The inscriptions were added about 200 years later by Ramesses II to commemorate his military victories. The obelisks were moved to Alexandria and set up in the Caesareum – a temple built by Cleopatra in honor of Mark Antony or Julius Caesar – by the Romans in 12 BC, during the reign of Augustus, but were toppled some time later. This had the fortuitous effect of burying their faces and so preserving most of the hieroglyphs from the effects of weathering."

"To the right from the terrace across the green oval of the Lawn are the buildings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (see page 368), and the Obelisk, quarried by Thothmes III in 1600 B.C. and brought to this country in 1880 with much difficulty: unloaded at Staten island it was towed on pontoons up the Hudson to Ninety-sixth Street and then in a great cradle it was rolled on cannon balls to the 'worst place within the city for getting an obelisk to.' The path that leads over billowing landscape to the neighborhood of the museum is the best approach to the Obelisk's two hundred tons of granite, whose hieroglyphics tell of Thothmes II, Rameses II, and Osarkon I. In 500 B.C. Cambyses, the Persian, overturned the monument, and in 12 B.C. Romans brought the shaft to Alexandria, and placed it before a temple. Although it is widely known as Cleopatra's Needle, the obelisk has no known historical connection with Cleopatra."

--- New York City, 1939

Book: New York City Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 354 Year Originally Published: 1939

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