Out and about with Eric Robinson

摘要

The obelisk Visit any of Britain's well-established urban cemeteries, preferably a Victorian or Edwardian one, and the skyline will be broken by tall shafts of stone pointing skywards. The obelisk was just one element of a national enthusiasm for things Egyptian which swept the country after the period of tomb and pyramid' exploration that followed the defeat of Napoleon in that far-off land. Natural shafts of stone, usually granite, 10 or 15 m tall, either four-or three-sided and terminated by a low pyramid, were common on Egyptian tomb or palace sites as a contrast to the dominantly horizontal terraces of the low, flat buildings. For several emotional reasons the obelisk seemed a fitting symbol of death and the hereafter. In London, there is the perfect example in Cleopatra's Needle on the Embankment (Fig. 4), which was originally taken as a spoil of war by French archaeologists seeking to enhance the boulevards of Paris, in just the same way in which their Roman counterparts had centuries earlier added to the squares of Imperial Rome. It was moved to Alexandria in readiness for shipment to France, but Nelson's victory at the Battle of the Nile in 1801 saw the obelisk passing into British hands, to be subsequently stranded in shore sands, where one face was eroded - damage which can clearly be seen on one of the faces as it stands on the Thames-side today. At 23 m high and comprising roughly 168 tonnes of red Aswan Granite, the Needle is a modest specimen as classical obelisks go, posing as they do several geological and logistical questions. Granite specialists will have to tell us how easy it might be to acquire an unbroken shaft of stone in the average granite.