CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

THE COMING OBELISK.

For more than fifty years we have heard of projectsfor bringing to England the prostrate obelisklying on the sandy shore of Egypt at Alexandria,and popularly known as Cleopatra's Needle. Everysuccessive scheme of this kind has come to nothing.When the French army quitted Egypt in 1801, theBritish officers, wishing to have some memorial ofthe victories of Sir Ralph Abercrombie, claimedthe prostrate obelisk as a spoil of war, and formeda plan for bringing it to England. A ship wasobtained, a mode of stowage planned, and a jettybuilt between the obelisk and the beach. TheEarl of Cavan, in command of the troops, headedthe scheme; Major Bryce, of the Royal Engineers,worked out on paper the details of the operation;while officers and men alike subscribed a certainnumber of days' pay to meet the expenses. Theobelisk was to be introduced into the ship throughthe stern port, and placed on blocks of timberlying over the keel. But difficulties of variouskinds arose and the scheme was abandoned.

Eighteen years afterwards the Pacha of Egypt,Mehemet Ali, presented the prostrate obelisk tothe Prince Regent; the British government acceptedthe gift, but took no steps towards utilisingit, being deterred by an estimate of ten thousandpounds as the probable cost of bringing themonolith to England. Thirty-three more yearspassed; the Crystal Palace Company was organisingits plan for the costly structure and grounds atSydenham; and a question was started whetherCleopatra's Needle would form an attraction tothe place. Men rubbed up their reading to ascertainhow the ancients managed to remove suchponderous masses as this. It is certain that thestone must have been quarried in Upper Egypt,and conveyed somehow down to Thebes, Alexandria,and other places in that classic land.Pliny describes a prostrate obelisk which wasmoved to a distance by digging a canal under it,placing two heavily laden barges on the canal, andunloading them until they were light enough torise and lift the obelisk off the ground; it was thenfloated down the Nile on t

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