The Unfinished Obelisk | Aswan Obelisk | Hatshepsut Obelisk

Hatshepsut ordered the creation of the Obelisk to complement what would later become known as the Lateran Obelisk, which was first located at Karnak before being taken to the Lateran Palace in Rome.

The largest obelisk ever made by the ancient Egyptians, according to the history of Egypt during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut (18th dynasty specifically), is known as the Unfinished Obelisk. Even today it is located exactly where it was once semi-carved in solid rock, in the granite quarries near the city of Aswan. This huge block of stone was destined to become an obelisk almost 40 meters high, weighing more than 1000 tons.

Unfortunately, it was never finished, probably because during the process to separate the block of stone from the bedrock a huge crack opened, making it unusable and no longer of any value for those who had worked so hard to create it.

It would have been the highest in the world, also believed that it was part of a pair of obelisks together with the Lateran Obelisk, once located in the Karnak temple, and which today is standing at the basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano in Rome.

Holes were made in the granite in which sun-dried wooden wedges were inserted. Subsequently, the wedges were repeatedly immersed in the water, which caused them to increase in size. The expansion of these wedges caused a crack in the rock along the line of the holes, thus separating the obelisk from the rock below. And that's how the obelisk was to be separated from the bedrock.

Today, the Aswan Unfinished Obelisk is an open-air museum within the granite quarries where ancient Egyptian kings used to cut and transport all the necessary stone blocks that were to be used in building the immense pyramids of Egypt especially those standing in glory within the Giza Necropolis that was used during the 4th dynasty' in the old kingdom, for kings Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, as well as the gigantic temples of the middle kingdom and the new kingdom like the temple of Luxor and El-Deir El-Bahari Temple, all of which allow us to identify ourselves in a distant world, full of mysteries still to be discovered.

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Planning any tours to Egypt? or from our varieties of tours from Cairo, you can easily see the Unfinished Obelisk with our selected Egypt Travel Packages.

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Unfinished Obelisk

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