Description
Unfinished Obelisk roughly dresses and nearly cut free from the bedrock, before being abandoned after a flaw in the stone was discovered. Had it been finished, the obelisk would=d have weighed 1168 tons and stood nearly 42m high. It’s reckoned that this was the intended mate for the so-called Lateran Obelisk in Rome, which originally stood before the temple of Tuthmosis III at Karnak and is still credited as being the largest obelisk in the world. From chisel marks and discarded tools, archeologists have been able to deduce pharaonic quarrying techniques, such as soaking wooden wedges to split fissures, and using quartz sand slurry as an abrasive. A visitor's trail runs through the quarries past some pictographs of dolphins and ostriches, painted by ancient quarry workers.
