Our first stop of the day was at a granite quarry that is home to an unfinished obelisk. This is something I had heard about and was really excited to see, to get a sense of how they were constructed and to have the chance to get up close to one. Queen Hatshepsut was the first to commission obelisks and they quickly became popular monuments, often carved with hieroglyphs celebrating a particular god or Pharaoh. Transporting the obelisks up to Thebes (modern Luxor) took about seven months by boat on the Nile. There are a few that still stand in Egypt, and of course many of them were transported to ancient Rome as symbols of the Empire's conquest of Egypt. Unburied and restored in the Renaissance, many popes re-erected them in key locations throughout the Italian capital where they still stand today. Quite a history for a bunch of granite that humbly began down in Aswan.
The quarry from the entrance
Standing on solid granite!
The unfinished obelisk! Michael provides a nice sense of scale. During its carving a flaw was discovered and therefore it was abandoned. If finished it would have been the largest of its kind at about 120 feet and weighing over 1200 tons.
A nice view of the unfinished top, still rough from carving
View of the crack that caused the project to be abandoned
View of the passages and tunnels carved out and surrounding the obelisk. They give a fabulous sense of how the masons worked.
Remember, these monuments were carved before metal tools were perfected and therefore it was stone on stone. Diorite is harder than granite and was the primary material used for carving at the time.
Best backsheesh ever spent! There was no one else around so for a few Egyptian Pounds the guard took us all around the roped off sections and we saw much more than we had anticipated.
He led us down the foot path of another, smaller, unfinished obelisk. These pathways were also carved out by hand before work on the obelisk even began.
A great view of the carving process. This is the underside of the smaller unfinished obelisk.
Trying to finish what the Egyptians started.
The mud-brick crypts reminded me a lot of the pueblo architecture of the southwest U.S.
The quarry from the entrance
Standing on solid granite!
The unfinished obelisk! Michael provides a nice sense of scale. During its carving a flaw was discovered and therefore it was abandoned. If finished it would have been the largest of its kind at about 120 feet and weighing over 1200 tons.
A nice view of the unfinished top, still rough from carving
View of the crack that caused the project to be abandoned
View of the passages and tunnels carved out and surrounding the obelisk. They give a fabulous sense of how the masons worked.
Remember, these monuments were carved before metal tools were perfected and therefore it was stone on stone. Diorite is harder than granite and was the primary material used for carving at the time.
Best backsheesh ever spent! There was no one else around so for a few Egyptian Pounds the guard took us all around the roped off sections and we saw much more than we had anticipated.
He led us down the foot path of another, smaller, unfinished obelisk. These pathways were also carved out by hand before work on the obelisk even began.
A great view of the carving process. This is the underside of the smaller unfinished obelisk.
Trying to finish what the Egyptians started.
After the quarry we made our way across the street to an old cemetery where some of the graves date back to the 9th century.
The mud-brick crypts reminded me a lot of the pueblo architecture of the southwest U.S.
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