Cleopatra’s Needle

Despite its name, the obelisk was not from the reign of Cleopatra VII, but was originally erected by Thutmose III in the city of Heliopolis and later usurped and inscribed by Ramesses II. The obelisk was moved in 12 B.C. to Alexandria, where it remained for over 1,800 years. It is made of Aswan granite.

In 1819, the obelisk was gifted to the British by Egypt, in commemoration of the victories of Lord Nelson at the Battle of the Nile and Sir Ralph Abercromby at the Battle of Alexandria in 1801.

Although the British government welcomed the gesture, it declined to pay to move the obelisk to London, so the obelisk sat in a port of Alexandria until 1877 when Sir William James Erasmus Wilson, a distinguished anatomist and dermatologist, sponsored its transportation to London from Alexandria at a cost of some £10,000 (equivalent to over £1,000,000 in 2020). It was subsequently erected in the West End of London on the Victoria Embankment in Westminster, in 1878, and is still there to this day, despite London suffering under two World Wars.

The obelisk’s move to London, lead to a boat named the “Cleopatra” being built for the journey. The Cleopatra was a “cylinder ship” and set sail from Alexandria to London in 1877.

However, the effort to get the obelisk to London nearly failed on October 14th, 1877, during a storm in the Bay of Biscay when the Cleopatra began to roll violently and became uncontrolled. The Olga dispatched a rescue boat with six volunteers, but the boat capsized, and all six crew were lost; their names are commemorated on a bronze plaque mounted to the foot of the needle’s mounting stone.

Captain Booth of the Olga eventually got his ship adjacent to the Cleopatra and rescued Captain Carter and the five crew members on board. Captain Booth reported the Cleopatra as “abandoned and sinking,” but she remained afloat, floating in the Bay, until located four days later by Spanish trawler boats, and then rescued by the Glasgow steamship Fitzmaurice and transferred to Ferrol in Spain for repairs.

The obelisk is flanked by two modern-Egyptian sphinxes created by English architect George John Vulliamy (1817–1886).

The sphinxes are made of bronze and have hieroglyphic inscriptions that read “Netjer Nefer Men-Kheper-Re Di Ankh, which translates as “the good god, Thuthmosis III given life”.

These sphinxes appear to be looking at the Needle rather than guarding it, owing to their faulty or backward installation. The Embankment also contains Egyptian embellishments, such as buxom winged sphinxes on bench armrests.

During World War I, on September 4, 1917, a German air raid bomb landed near the obelisk. To commemorate this occurrence, the damage remains unrepaired and is readily apparent in the form of shrapnel holes and gouges on the western sphinx.