Cleopatra's Needle

Put your hand flat against the base of the obelisk, if you can reach it. The granite is cool and slightly rough. It is speckled pink and grey, with tiny glints of crystal. Behind you, traffic hums along the Embankment. In front of you, the Thames slides past, brown and patient. The stone under your palm was cut from a quarry in southern Egypt roughly three and a half thousand years ago.

That quarry was at Aswan, far up the Nile. Egyptian workers cut this single shaft of red granite and floated it downriver. It stood first at Heliopolis, an ancient sacred city near modern Cairo. The pharaoh Thutmose the Third raised it there, around 1450 BC. A solar temple stood at Heliopolis, and obelisks like this one were linked to the sun god. The pointed tip was meant to catch the first light of morning.

Now for the first surprise. This monument has nothing to do with Cleopatra. It was already more than a thousand years old when she was born. Around two centuries after Thutmose, the great pharaoh Ramesses the Second added his own inscriptions to its faces. Later, under Roman rule, the obelisk was moved to Alexandria. Cleopatra's name became attached to it because of that famous city. The nickname stuck, and Londoners never let it go.

Look up at the carved signs running down each face. These are hieroglyphs, the picture-writing of ancient Egypt. The central column on each side belongs to Thutmose. The outer columns were added by Ramesses. They name the kings, praise their power, and dedicate the stone to the gods. Centuries of London air have softened the edges. Even so, on a bright day, the birds, the eyes, and the seated figures still stand out clearly.

For a long time, the obelisk lay fallen in the sand at Alexandria. In 1819, the ruler of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, offered it to Britain as a gift. It honoured British victories over Napoleon's forces in Egypt. But nobody wanted to pay to move it. For almost sixty years, it stayed where it was, half buried, while Britain hesitated. Moving a stone this heavy across the Mediterranean seemed almost impossible.

Then, in the 1870s, a wealthy surgeon named Sir Erasmus Wilson agreed to fund the project. The engineer John Dixon designed an unusual solution. He built a huge iron cylinder around the obelisk, like a sealed metal tube. It was fitted with a small deck, a mast, and a rudder. This floating container was named the Cleopatra. A steamship called the Olga would tow it all the way to London.

In October 1877, the voyage turned to disaster. A violent storm hit them in the Bay of Biscay, off the coast of France and Spain. The Cleopatra rolled badly and seemed ready to sink. Six sailors from the Olga set out in a small boat to rescue the crew. Their boat was lost, and all six men died. The Cleopatra was cut loose and left to drift in the storm.

Here is the second surprise. The cylinder did not sink. A few days later, another ship found it still floating. It was towed into the Spanish port of Ferrol. After repairs and arguments about salvage, it finally reached London in early 1878. That autumn, the obelisk was raised on this spot. If you walk around the base, you will find bronze plaques. One of them remembers the six men who died at sea.

Now turn to the sphinxes on either side. They are bronze, not Egyptian, and they were made in Victorian London. Notice which way they face. They look inward, towards the obelisk, rather than out towards the river. Some people say they were placed the wrong way round. Others believe they are meant to guard the needle itself. Either way, they give this corner of the Embankment its strange, watchful mood.

Look closely at the stone pedestal and at one of the sphinxes. You will see pits, gouges, and small holes in the surface. These scars come from the First World War. In September 1917, a German aeroplane dropped a bomb close to this spot during a night raid. Fragments of metal struck the monument. A plaque on the base explains the damage, and it was deliberately left unrepaired.

There is something hidden beneath your feet too. When the obelisk was raised, the Victorians buried a kind of time capsule in its base. According to accounts from the time, it held newspapers, coins, a railway timetable, and children's toys. It also held photographs of English women, chosen as examples of the era's beauty. Nobody alive has seen these objects. They are still sealed somewhere below the granite.

This needle also has a twin. A companion obelisk stood with it at Alexandria. That one now stands in Central Park, in New York, raised there a few years after this one came to London. A third Egyptian obelisk stands in Paris, though it comes from a different temple. Notice too the benches and lamp posts along this stretch. Their cast iron is decorated with sphinxes and curling fish, an echo of the Egyptian theme.

Before you go, step back towards the river wall and take in the whole scene. Behind the obelisk, trains rumble across the bridge towards Charing Cross. Across the water, the London Eye turns slowly. Gulls call over the tide. This stone has watched the Nile, the Mediterranean, a storm at sea, and an air raid. Now it simply watches the Thames, and you, as you walk on.