CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE

Cleopatra’s Needle is the oldest object on London's streets and one of several interesting monuments on London’s Embankment, not far from Westminster.  It is an Egyptian obelisk, one of a pair originally made for the Pharaoh Thutmose III in c1500 BC, erected in Heliopolis and moved to Alexandria in 12 BC.  The link to Cleopatra is spurious.  It is a single piece of inscribed granite about 60 feet (18m) high and weighing around 186 tons (189,000Kg).  The monument was presented to Britain by the Turkish Sultan of Egypt and Sudan, Mahommed Ali, in 1819 in commemoration of Lord Nelson’s victory at the Battle of the Nile in 1798 and Sir Ralph Abercromby’s victory at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801.

However, the obelisk was not moved to the UK until September 1877.  Its journey is a story in its own right.  A cigar-shaped container ship named the Cleopatra – a kind of iron cylinder complete with deckhouse, mast, rudder and steering gear – was specially made to transport the obelisk, and its crew.  It was towed by the steamship, Olga, but a violent storm struck in the Bay of Biscay, the towropes had to be cut and six men from the Olga drowned trying to rescue the Cleopatra’s crew.  The crew were saved, but Cleopatra was lost in the raging seas.  Later, she was sighted and towed into harbour in Spain.  From there, the paddleship Anglia towed her to England, arriving in Gravesend on 21 January 1878. Crowds cheered as Cleopatra's Needle was towed up the Thames.  It was finally erected on the Embankment on 12 September 1878. The two sphinxes that sit beneath it were cast in bronze at the Ecclestone Iron Works in Pimlico in 1881.

London’s Cleopatra’s Needle has a twin in New York’s Central Park.