The romance of excavation

by David Masters

ALL THAT REMAINS OF THE GRAND AVENUE OF SPHINXES AT KARNAK, ORIGINALLY A MILE LONG, TO REMIND US OF THE GLORIES OF EGYPT LONG AGO (see page [71])

They prayed long and earnestly to the Nile god, and held great festivals in his honour in a temple built in the vanished city of Nilopolis. Here they performed their rituals and made their offerings, and gave thanks to the god in years of plenty, expressing their joy and gratitude for the bounty they had received. They worshipped the Nile as the source of their blessings, just as they worshipped the sun.

The sun worshippers built a magnificent temple to their god, whom they called Ra, at Heliopolis, and Cleopatra’s Needle, now standing on the Thames Embankment, is one of the two monuments which Thothmes III set up before the Temple of the Sun on the banks of the Nile. Here they remained until the legions of Augustus Cæsar defeated Cleopatra just before the dawn of the Christian era. Eight years after the dramatic death of the beautiful Egyptian queen, whom Julius Cæsar loved and Mark Antony worshipped, Augustus set his engineers and slaves to work transporting the obelisks down the Nile, to set them in front of the wonderful palace of the Cæsars built in Alexandria. The new palace of the Roman invaders grew old, decayed, and fell in ruins, but the ancient obelisks of Heliopolis still reared their pinnacles to the skies. For fifteen hundred years Cleopatra’s Needle stood firm before crashing to the ground, to lie half buried in the drifting sands for three centuries, leaving the twin obelisk standing alone.

Then British soldiers, flushed with their victory over the French in Egypt in 1801, craved a memento of their triumph. Seizing on the fallen obelisk, they subscribed their hard-earned money, and sought to remove the stone to England. That weight was too much for them; it defied their efforts, so, fixing a commemorative brass plate, they left the stone lying in the sands.

Mehemet Ali, knowing the British were interested in the obelisk, presented it to George IV. That monarch made no effort to remove the unwieldy present. Once more, in 1831, Mehemet Ali approached the British Government, and this time offered to ship the monument free to Great Britain. The offer was politely declined. By the time the British Government decided to remove the stone, in 1849, there was such opposition to spending £7000 on its removal, that the matter was dropped.

Eighteen years later, the land on which the monolith lay was sold, and the new owner quickly requested the British Government to remove their property. The Government were so loath to do anything at all that the Khedive informed them they must either remove it, or forfeit the title to it. The threat had no effect. The Government seemed to look upon the present much as a suburban dweller would look upon the present of an elephant.

The owner of the land began to plan to break up the obelisk, and use it for building purposes. For ten years all the efforts of General Alexander were needed to induce the landowner to refrain from such an act of vandalism, and at last, when it was seen that the Government would do nothing, Sir Erasmus Wilson came forward and offered to remove the obelisk to England.

Accordingly a mighty iron cylinder 100 feet long was made. The obelisk, which measures 86½ feet high, and weighs 186 tons, was dug out of the sand, and after tremendous trouble safely housed in the cylinder, which, upon being completely sealed, was quite buoyant. Eventually it was floated, and taken in tow for England. All went well until the Bay of Biscay was reached, when a terrific gale sprang up, so terrific that Cleopatra’s Needle threatened to drag the tug to the bottom. At midnight the situation became so desperate that the captain ordered the obelisk to be cut adrift, feeling certain it was sinking, and when he arrived in England Cleopatra’s Needle was given up for lost.

But the monument, which had survived the accidents of Time for so long, was fated to survive the storm. Instead of plunging to the bottom of the Bay of Biscay, it tossed about on the heaving waters for nearly three days. Then it was sighted by a steamer, and taken in tow, to be brought at last to England.

It is remarkable that this same monolith, which a Pharaoh erected on the banks of the Nile to tell the sun-worshippers of his glorious deeds in war, should now be reposing on the banks of the river Thames, and that it has survived the age of bows and arrows to be damaged by bombs from aeroplanes. What a story Cleopatra’s Needle would tell if it could only speak.