Cleopatra's Needle

Cleopatra's Needle in New York City is one of three similarly named Egyptian obelisks. The 15th-century BC stele was installed in Central Park, west of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, on February 22, 1881. It was secured in May 1877 by judge Elbert E. Farman, the United States Consul General at Cairo, as a gift from the Khedive for the United States remaining a friendly neutral as the European powers – France and Britain – maneuvered to secure political control of the Egyptian government. The transportation costs were largely paid for by railroad magnate William Henry Vanderbilt, the eldest son of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

Made of red granite, the obelisk stands about 21 metres high, weighs about 200 tons, and is inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was originally erected in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis on the orders of Thutmose III, in 1475 BC. The granite was brought from the quarries of Aswan near the first cataract of the Nile. The inscriptions were added about 200 years later by Ramesses II to commemorate his military victories. The obelisks were moved to Alexandria and set up in the Caesareum, a temple built by Cleopatra in honor of Mark Antony or Julius Caesar, by the Romans in 12 BC, during the reign of Augustus, but were toppled some time later. This had the fortuitous effect of burying their faces and so preserving most of the hieroglyphs from the effects of weathering.

Address
Central Park, New York, United States

Established
1881