Cleopatra's needles

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the middle of the 19th century, one of Cleopatra's needles was still in Alexandria, Egypt

The needles of Cleopatra (English: Cleopatra's Needles ) are two ancient Egyptian obelisks that were erected in London and New York at the end of the 19th century .

The name is misleading as the two obelisks to Cleopatra (* 69 BC in Alexandria ; † 30 BC ibid), the last regent of the Egyptian Ptolemaic Empire , had no close connection during her lifetime. They are around 1450 BC. Under Pharaoh Thutmose III. made and erected in Heliopolis . One and a half millennia later, at the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus, they were brought to Alexandria and placed in front of the Caesarium . In the 19th century, the Egyptian government gave away both obelisks - one was erected in London in 1878, the other in New York in 1881.

In addition to this pair of obelisks, the Luxor obelisk erected in Paris in 1836 is occasionally called a Cleopatra needle (French: Aiguille de Cléopâtre ), which is also misleading .

history

The two obelisks from the 15th century BC Chr. Are of reddish Aswan Granite manufactured and Thutmes III. ( 18th Dynasty , New Kingdom ) was erected in Heliopolis in front of the pylon of the temple of the sun god Re . In addition to the inscriptions with hieroglyphics by Thutmose later from the 13th century BC, Chr. , Ramses II. ( 19th Dynasty ) praising.

In the 2nd decade BC BC - after the end of the Ptolemaic War , after the deaths of Mark Antony and Cleopatra and after Egypt was annexed as a Roman province - the obelisks were rebuilt under Emperor Augustus around 12 BC. Brought from Heliopolis to Alexandria and placed here in front of the Caesarium , which had been rededicated into a temple for the Roman Caesar cult.

This temple complex fell into disrepair, but the pair of obelisks remained. When the French invaded (1799/1800) under Napoleon Bonaparte , one obelisk was still upright in its place near the port of Alexandria, while the other lay on the ground.

In the 19th century both obelisks were given away by the Egyptian government:

  • The lying, about 21.9 m (68  ft 5½  in ) long and over 186 tons heavy monolith was shipped to Great Britain in 1877/78 in a specially built barge , the Cleopatra , where the obelisk was in London on September 12, 1878 Northwest bank of the Thames on the Victoria Embankment in the City of Westminster .
  • The standing, approximately 21.5 m (67 ′ 2 ″ ) high monolith went to the United States . The obelisk was towed to New York in a special container in 1880 and placed in Central Park on February 22, 1881 . At first it was considered to surround the monument with a glass box to protect it from damaging weather influences.

literature

Web links

Commons : Needles of Cleopatra  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see A. de Fivas: New Guide to Modern French Conversation, Or, ... Lockwood, Harvard 1877, p. 148 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Encyclopedia Americana . Volume 7. New York 1920, Cleopatra's Needles on Wikisource.org.
  3. ↑ Hermann von Pückler-Muskau : From Mehemed Alis Reich in the Gutenberg-DE project
  4. ^ Meyer's Large Conversational Lexicon. Volume 14. Leipzig 1908, p. 857 on Zeno.org.
  5. ^ Centralblatt der Bauverwaltung dated February 17, 1883, p. 68 , accessed on April 15, 2018.

Coordinates: 51 ° 30 ′ 31 ″  N , 0 ° 7 ′ 13 ″  W.