Friday, August 28, 2015


Today's picture is from 1880, and is shows the waterfront in Cairo. The interesting thing is that they are crating up an Obelisk, and preparing to ship it to New York. Not sure where this massive stone structure ended up there, but it certainly took some engineering to get it moved.


  1. I wonder about the placing it so high on the boat. Wouldn't that make it very top heavy?


  3. There are two nearly identical "Cleopatra's Needles," misnamed because they were built for a Pharaoh named Thutmose long before Cleopatra, moved several times, and ended up in Alexandria on their sides in the mud. One of them ended up on the Thames Embankment in London, the other, as noted above, in Central Park. It's a major tourist attraction in London, but apparently kind of lost in Central Park, where it sits behind the Metropolitan Museum. Trees have grown up around it, so it's not very visible. And yes, it was top heavy placed as it was on the boat. As I recall, the point was to GET it on the boat, so it was leveraged. They weren't quite thinking about the engineering involved to get it across the Atlantic in stormy weather. Kind of a bad trip, apparently.