Photo : Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Aswan · Quarries
Unfinished Obelisk
An obelisk still lying in its quarry, cracked: the one place that shows how they were cut.
The stone is still attached to the bedrock along its underside. Attributed to Hatshepsut, Eighteenth Dynasty, it would have stood over forty metres and weighed more than a thousand tonnes, larger than any obelisk ever raised, but a crack opened during the work and it was left where it lay. You can make out the trenches cut around the shaft, and the marks of pounding with balls of stone harder than granite, which the metal of the day could not cut. No standing obelisk shows you this: here the commission never got past the quarry floor.
The extra bit
The site is small, thirty minutes will do. Take it early and pair it with the High Dam or Philae in one outing: the granite throws the heat back from mid-morning.
Know before you go
Expect little shade and nowhere much to sit, and polished granite is slippery: closed shoes. You move along stone ramps and steps, hard going in a wheelchair. The visit is short: don't hire a guide for the day just for this one stop.
