During a visit to the ruins of monumental sites scattered throughout Egypt, it is rare to stop and reflect on the various stages necessary for their realization. The unfinished obelisk is a rare opportunity to consider this complex process and the difficulty of shaping the large stone blocks that were part of most of the monuments in Egypt.

The obelisk located about 2 km south of the city of Aswan, Egypt, can be contemplated: giant, tall and still lying in its bed of pink granite. We are talking about the unfinished Obelisk of Aswan, abandoned in the place of construction probably due to a fracture in the process.

The structure and construction of the Egyptian obelisk 

This huge obelisk, if completed, would have reached a height never reached, to be the largest ever built in Egypt. The material used for the realization is, as anticipated, the pink granite brought from Aswan, the same used for many of the main monuments of the Pharaonic era, and for which the city is famous. However, this colossus has never been completed.

Once the last phase of its realization, when three of the sides had already been completed, cracks in the rock were discovered. For this reason, the construction of the work was interrupted and the unfinished obelisk abandoned in one of the ancient quarries of Aswan, still anchored to the bed of rough rock. Archaeologists think that this obelisk was designed for Karnak, the fact that it was never completed but remained inside the quarry is an interesting testament to the difficulties of sculpting for the next millennia.

It is thought that it was commissioned by the pharaohs Hatshepsut during the 18th dynasty over 3,500 years ago. If it had been completed, reaching a height of 42 meters and an estimated 1,200 tonnes in weight, it would have been the highest in the world, on a par with the gigantic Baalbek monolith in Lebanon. It is also thought to have been part of a pair of obelisks. The other twin obelisk would be nothing less than the Lateran Obelisk, once located in the temple of Karnak, and now stands opposite the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome.

What do you know about the unfinished obelisk?

The Obelisk of Aswan is the very find thanks to which it was possible to explain how the ancient Egyptians did to divide the finished sculpture from the stone bed once finished, it would seem a complicated process that requires advanced equipment and techniques, instead, it is very simple: they used wet wood. The procedure was as follows: holes were made in the granite in which sun-dried wooden wedges were inserted.

The wedges were repeatedly and periodically covered with water, this process caused a gradual increase in size. Finally, the expansion of these wedges caused a regular fracture in the rock along the line of the holes, thus separating the obelisk from the rock below.

Once separated from the bed of rock, the obelisk was smoothed with diabase or dolerite rock to make its surface evener. Being harder than granite, dolerite could be used on the obelisk without breaking.

The historical value of the unfinished Egypt obelisk 

Today, the Aswan Obelisk is a real open-air museum, allowing us to take a virtual journey into a distant world, full of mysteries yet to be discovered. The commission and original destination of the work are still uncertain, which makes the unfinished obelisk, the pride of the city of Aswan, even more, fascinating because it is shrouded in a halo of mystery.