Writing on the Obelisks

There is a lot of writing on the obelisks. The writing was done in hieroglyphs. King Sesostris' obelisk says stuff about people living-in-births. I thought it was quite weird. Cleopatra had one talking about her father. He would be very proud to have an obelisk in his name.

Temple to Ra

The Egyptians built obelisks because they thought they were sacred. Why, you ask? In the morning when the sun comes up the first rays shine on the pyramid shape on the top. So, the obelisks were thought to be sacred to Ra, the sun god. Other groups don't think they are important because the greek word for obelisk is meat skewer!

Building the Obelisks

The obelisks sounded hard to build. They were made of pink granite from the mine in Aswan. Oh, and I forgot to tell you. The obelisks are 1 piece! Do you want to know how they did it? Well, they were pounded out with 12 pound diorite balls! You would not want to be a worker making an obelisk. Swinging a 12 pound ball all day is not an easy task. Then they would pound out caves under the obelisk. Next, they would load the obelisk on a barge down the Nile. Once it got to its destination they lifted it up. Nobody knows how the lifted them but it probably took hundreds of people.

locations of Obelisks

There are lots of obelisk around the world. Tuthmoses III has 7 obelisks. Rome has the most standing obelisks in the world with 13. Ramses II has the most obelisks for a pharaoh where researchers have found fragments for 23 obelisks in Delta city!

Cleopatra's Needles

2 famous obelisks from ancient Egypt were the Cleopatra's needles. Then they were moved. One went to central park, and one went to London.

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