There’s a giant chunk of ancient Egypt plonked in the middle of London, and most people barely give it a second glance. Cleopatra’s Needle, an imposing 21-metre (69-foot) obelisk covered in hieroglyphs, stands on the Victoria Embankment, looking slightly out of place among the joggers, pigeons, and traffic fumes. It has nothing to do with Cleopatra, it nearly drowned on its way to Britain, and a time capsule buried beneath it contains, among other things, a portrait of Queen Victoria and a set of ladies’ undergarments.
So how exactly did a 3,500-year-old monument from the reign of Thutmose III end up shivering in the London drizzle? And why does it have a pair of bronze sphinxes that are, quite spectacularly, facing the wrong way?
A Needle Without Cleopatra
First, let’s get one thing straight: Cleopatra VII—yes, the famous one, the lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, the one played by Elizabeth Taylor—had absolutely nothing to do with this obelisk. By the time she was making dramatic political alliances and smuggling herself into palaces rolled up in carpets, this monument was already over 1,000 years old.
The obelisk was originally commissioned around 1450 BC by Pharaoh Thutmose III, one of ancient Egypt’s most successful warrior-kings. He had it carved from pink granite quarried at Aswan and had it erected in Heliopolis, a city dedicated to the sun god Ra. Later, in the 1st century BC, the obelisk was moved to Alexandria by the Roman Emperor Augustus. It stood there for centuries, toppling at some point and getting half-buried in the sand before it was rediscovered in the 19th century.
A Gift With Strings Attached
Egypt’s ruler, Muhammad Ali Pasha, offered the obelisk to Britain in 1819 as a thank-you for Britain’s help in the Napoleonic Wars. However, the British government, proving that dithering over expenses is not a modern affliction, refused to fund its transportation.
For decades, the obelisk sat in Egypt like an unclaimed piece of lost luggage. It wasn’t until 1877 that a private fund, spearheaded by the eccentric surgeon and adventurer Sir Erasmus Wilson, raised the necessary funds to bring it to London. The cost? A cool £10,000 (around £1.2 million today). And thus began one of the most harebrained and ill-fated maritime expeditions in British history.
A Shipwreck, A Storm, and a Sinking Coffin
Transporting a 224-tonne lump of granite across the sea in the 19th century was no small feat, and the Victorians, never ones to shy away from a wildly impractical engineering challenge, devised a solution. They built a custom-made iron cylinder, resembling a floating coffin, named the Cleopatra, to tow behind a steamship.
Predictably, this plan went sideways. In October 1877, while being towed across the Bay of Biscay, the Cleopatra was caught in a ferocious storm. The crew, fearing for their lives, had to cut it loose, and the obelisk was left drifting aimlessly in the Atlantic like an enormous message in a bottle. Six sailors from the towing ship, the Olga, lost their lives in a failed rescue attempt.
By sheer luck (or divine intervention from a long-forgotten Egyptian deity), the abandoned Cleopatra was spotted by a Spanish vessel, miraculously still floating. It was retrieved, and after a few more logistical nightmares, it was finally dragged, battered but intact, to the Thames.
London’s Newest (Oldest) Landmark
After all that effort, Cleopatra’s Needle was installed on the Victoria Embankment in 1878. But it wasn’t just plonked there unceremoniously. The Victorians, ever the dramatists, buried a time capsule beneath it containing all the essentials of the era: a railway timetable, a set of British coins, copies of newspapers, a portrait of Queen Victoria, and a selection of ‘12 small photographs of English beauties’—an oddly specific choice, but who are we to judge?
The Bronze Sphinxes
The needle is flanked by two bronze sphinxes—loyal guardians of Cleopatra’s Needle, except for one minor flaw: they’re facing the wrong way.
When the obelisk was installed on the Victoria Embankment in 1878, the two reclining sphinxes were designed to sit on either side, supposedly to “protect” the monument, as per ancient Egyptian tradition. But in what can only be described as a classic case of Victorian overconfidence, they were positioned incorrectly, facing towards the obelisk instead of outward, where they should be warding off evil. Essentially, instead of guarding the Needle, they look like they’re admiring it.
This mistake wasn’t intentional—just a misinterpretation of Egyptian iconography by the British designers. But rather than admitting defeat and rearranging them, the authorities simply left them as they were. Today, they remain in their backward-facing glory, forever gazing at the obelisk as if contemplating why they were dragged from their original purpose and plonked by the Thames.
A Magnet for Misfortune
Cleopatra’s Needle has survived war, storms, and bureaucratic faffing, but it hasn’t had an easy time in London either. During World War I, in 1917, a German bomb exploded near it, leaving shrapnel scars still visible on its base today—a reminder that history is never quite done with us.
Despite its turbulent past, the obelisk has become a beloved part of the London landscape, even if most people walk past it without giving it much thought. It stands as a testament to Victorian ambition, Egyptian craftsmanship, and the sheer stubbornness of the human spirit when faced with an absurdly difficult task.
So, was it all worth it? The lives lost, the enormous expense, the bureaucratic quagmire? Well, if nothing else, Cleopatra’s Needle is a wonderful symbol of human folly. It reminds us that sometimes, in our pursuit of legacy and grandeur, we embark on wildly unnecessary yet undeniably fascinating endeavours.
It is a monument to history, to adventure, and to the sheer determination of people who decided that, against all logic, London really needed a 3,500-year-old Egyptian obelisk. And for that reason alone, it deserves its place along the Thames, an ancient enigma in the heart of modern Britain.
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