The Aswan Obelisk has not yet been completed.

The Ancient Egyptian Obelisks were of great significance since they stood in front of temples, usually in pairs, to guide the structures’ main entrances.

Their primary building material was red granite hewn from the granite rock at several locations along the Nile before being transported by ship to their final destinations as far away as Cairo and Alexandria.

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Directions:

Only 7 minutes from Aswan’s downtown core and 3 hours from Luxor, with the option of taking a 1-hour flight from Cairo to Aswan, the hotel is well located.

History:

The unfinished Obelisk was chiseled out of the bedrock and abandoned when it was found that there was a fault in the stone.

The obelisk would have weighed 1168 tonnes and stood about 42 meters tall if it had been completed.

Several scholars believe this was meant to be the companion piece for the so-called Lateran Obelisk in Rome, which originally stood before the temple of Tuthmosis III at Karnak and is still regarded as the world’s most enormous obelisk.

Researchers have been able to determine ancient quarrying procedures from chisel marks and abandoned equipment, including using wooden wedges to separate fissures and using a quartz sand slurry as an abradant.

A visitor’s route winds its way through the quarries, passing some old pictographs depicting dolphins and ostriches painted by quarry workers thousands of years before the present.

Interesting facts: 

There are more Obelisks in the world now than when they left Egypt, thanks to purchases by various governments and shipping overseas.

They have been placed in prominent positions in major cities such as Rome (11 in Italy in total), Paris, London (4 in the United Kingdom), Istanbul, Israel, Poland, and New York City, in addition to many that are still in place at temples and locations throughout the country (8 in total left in Egypt).

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