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Cleopatra's Needles are a pair of obelisks in London and New York. Each is made of red granite, stands about 21 metres (68 feet) high, weighs about 180 tons and is inscribed with hieroglyphs. Although the needles are genuine Ancient Egyptian obelisks, they are somewhat misnamed as neither has any connection with the legendary queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt. They were originally erected in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis on the orders of Thothmes III, around 1500 BC. The inscriptions were added about 200 years later by Ramses II to commemorate his military victories. The obelisks were moved to Alexandria by the Romans in 12 BC, during the reign of Augustus Caesar, 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.
1 History of the needles
1.1 London
The London needle is in the City of WestminsterThe City of Westminster is a London borough and a city in its own right, situated to the west of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It was extended in 1965 to include the former Metropolitan Boroughs of St. Marylebone and Paddington in the, on the Victoria EmbankmentThe Victoria Embankment previously the Thames Embankment is a road and walkway along the north bank of the River Thames in London in the cities of Westminster and London. History It was created in 1870 by Joseph Bazalgette, and was a project of the Metrop near Hungerford BridgeHungerford Bridge is a bridge, or triplet of bridges, over the River Thames in London, between Waterloo Bridge and Westminster Bridge. In its current design, it comprises a steel truss railway bridge sometimes known as the Charing Cross Bridge flanked by. It was presented to the United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a state in Western Europe, usually known simply as the United Kingdom the UK Britain or less accurately as Great Britain . The UK was formed by a series of Acts of Union which united the formerly in 1819Events January 17 Simon Bolivar proclaims the Republic of Colombia January 29 Sir Stamford Raffles lands on the island of Singapore February 6 Formal treaty between Sultan Hussein of Johor and the British Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles originates Singapore F by Mehemet Ali, the AlbanianThe word Albanian can mean: From or related to Albania. The Albanian language When used to denote a person, it can either denote an inhabitant of Albania or an ethnic Albanian. See: Albanians.-born viceroy of Egypt, in commemoration of the victories of Lord Nelson at the Battle of the Nile and Sir Ralph Abercromby at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801. Although the British government welcomed the gesture, it declined to fund the expense of transporting it to London.
The obelisk remained in Alexandria until 1877 when Sir William James Erasmus Wilson , a distinguished anatomist and dermatologist, sponsored its transportation to London at a cost of some £10,000 (a very considerable sum in those days). It was dug out of the sand in which it had been buried for nearly 2,000 years and was encased in a great iron cylinder, 92 feet long and 15 feet in diameter, designed by the engineer John Dixon and dubbed Cleopatra. It had a vertical stem and stern, a rudder, two bilge keels, a mast for balancing sails, and a deck house. This acted as a floating pontoon which was to be towed to London by the ship Olga.
The effort met with disaster on 14 October 1877, when the Cleopatra foundered in a storm in the Bay of Biscay, with the loss of six lives. The Cleopatra did not sink but instead drifted in the Bay until it was rescued by the English ship Fitzmaurice and taken to Ferrol in Spain for repairs. It finally arrived in Gravesend on 21 January 1878. The obelisk was erected on the Victoria Embankment the following August.
Cleopatra's Needle is flanked by two faux-Egyptian sphinxes cast from bronze. The Embankment has other Egyptian flourishes, such as buxom winged sphinxes on the armrests of benches. On 4 September 1917, during World War I, bombs from the first German air raid on London by German aeroplanes landed near the needle. In commemoration of this event, the damage remains unrepaired to this day and is clearly visible in the form of shrapnel holes and gouges on the right-hand sphinx.
