[George/Cannon] Obelisks

This is an Obelisk.

The other day in Egypt we went to a temple called Karnak. And what this temple is famous for is obelisks. Only two of these obelisks are standing now, though. In this post I’m going to talk a bit about how obelisks are built, and how in some ways it’s harder to build an obelisk than a pyramid.

An obelisk was built out of pink granite. All of the obelisks in Egypt were quarried from the same quarry in Aswan. What makes quarrying an obelisk so hard is that an obelisk is one big piece of granite. And it can weigh about the weight of two jumbo jets! Also the Egyptians didn’t have the right tools for it. They only had copper tools, and granite is really hard. So what they do is they take diorite (which is a stone harder than granite) and pound it against the granite. You have to pound until you have a rock is the shape of an obelisk. That couldn’t have been easy.

After you have the obelisk, you need to load it onto a barge and then erect it. To load it you need to make a canal under the obelisk and then raise the water level in the canal, until the obelisk is on the boat. You then need to travel with the obelisk. The way to do it is you get towed by a bunch of other tiny boats.

Then finally you need to erect it. You do this by loading the obelisk onto a ramp, attaching ropes to the top and then pulling it upright. Just imagine the amount of people needed to pull that big hunk of stone up.  And then you have your obelisk.  But to me erecting the obelisk isn't the most impressive part.  All that holds up an obelisk is gravity.  It's not held up by anything except it's own weight.

Some of the most impressive obelisks were made by Hatshepsut, the female Pharaoh.  She built the two biggest obelisks in Egypt, loaded them on to a single barge, and erected them all in under 7 months.  Later Pharaohs hid one of her obelisks, and destroyed the other, only to hide the fact that a woman had ruled Egypt.

This is us at Karnak.  The larger obelisk is Hatshepsut's, the smaller belongs Thutmoses I.

This is me in front of Hatshepsut's Obelisk.

This obelisk was build by Ramses the Great, or Ramses II.