 With the help of the naval engineer Apollinaire Lebas, Verninac developed the idea of cutting a flat-bottomed barge in half across its center, installing the obelisk, then rebuilding the barge so it could be towed down the Nile and on to France.The steam corvette "Le Sphinx", a three-masted schooner that was the first steam vessel of the French Navy, was used to tow the specially built "Le Luxor" barge, which carried the obelisk from Thebes to Paris.Verninac published an account of the voyage in 1834, "Le voyage du Luxor en Égypte".