01/09/2024
Something we see on our tours!
It was on the 22nd February, back in 1881 when thousands of New Yorkers gathered to see Cleopatra’s Needle being assembled in Central Park. The 3,500-year-old obelisk from Ancient Egypt is New York’s oldest artefact. It is one of three, re-erected in London, Paris, and New York. Interestingly, England were originally given their needle in 1801 as a gift for helping Egypt oust Napoleon. America’s needle and England’s needle are a pair and were originally erected by Thutmose III at Heliopolis in about 1,460 BC and were later moved to Alexandria. Transporting the obelisk to America was a huge task, as the largest item to sail in the hold of a ship at that point was a one-hundred-ton cannon, and the obelisk weighed nearly twice that! Thankfully the month-long sea-journey from Alexandria was a success, and Cleopatra’s Needle arrived in America in July 1880. It then took a further five months to transport the artefact to Central Park.
