The obelisk
 Built
three-thousand-five-hundred years ago, it’s one of the two built in the queen
Hatshepsut’s reign, the other one collapsed centuries ago, during an earthquake
and is yet at the feat of the similar one- Each obelisk weighs over
three-hundred and twenty tons and for a long time, the archaeologist racked
their brains to understand how thay were built in a vertical position.In Hatshepsut’s time, the serrated wheel wasn’t yet know, nor the hoist or capstan. In spite of this the Egyptians succeeded in a hard undertaking, hard even for today: to lift a heavy block of granite and put it in vertical position. The Egyptians themselves have left not very clear documents. We knows that these obelisk were obtained by a quarry in Assuan and transported along the Nile on a great barge pulled by twenty-seven smaller boats. It was a very dangerous operation, in fact the task made for Ramses IV, in the XII century BC, costed the life of eight-hundred men. Only hypothesis can be made on how the obelisk reached their final position. Two theories have been made, one by the English archaeologist Reginald Engelbach, the other one by the French Henry Cherrier. Both of them begin from the supposition that a mound of sand was prepared, which served as downward slide for the obelisk, which, going down on gradient of 34°, was put downward in a funnel pit. At this point, according to Chevrier, it was lifted in the vertical position with ropes. Engelbach instead supposes that the Egyptian workers used a kind of lever system. Both theories are possible, but maybe Chevrierìs one is more reliable, since it comes from a pratical experience. Chevrier dedicated two archaeological campaigns to the dismantling and them to the reconstruction of the monument eighteen meters high, that went back to the VII century BC. |
