Cleopatra's Needles

Damage to the obelisks by weather conditions in London and New York has been studied, notably by Professor Erhard M. Winkler of the University of Notre Dame.

[12] The earliest known post-classical reference to the obelisks was by the Cairo-based traveller Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi in c.1200 CE, who according to E. A. Wallis Budge described them as "Cleopatra's big needles".

[14] George Sandys wrote of his 1610 journey: "Of Antiquities there are few remainders: onely an Hieroglyphicall Obelisk of Theban marble, as hard welnigh as Porphir, but of a deeper red, and speckled alike, called Pharos Needle, standing where once stood the pallace of Alexander: and another lying by, and like it, halfe buried in rubbidge.

"[15] Two decades later, another English traveller Henry Blount wrote "Within on the North towards the Sea are two square obeliskes each of one intire stone, full of Egyptian Hieroglyphicks, the one standing, the other fallen, I thinke either of them thrice as bigge as that at Constantinople, or the other at Rome, & therefore left behind as too heavy for transportation: neere these obeliskes, are the ruines of Cleopatraes Palace high upon the shore, with the private Gate, whereat she received her Marke Antony after their overthrow at Actium".

One is now overturned, and almost buried under the sands; the other still remains upright.In 1755, Frederic Louis Norden wrote in his Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie that:[18] Some ancient authors have written that these two Obelisks were found in their time in the Palace of Cleopatra; but they do not tell us who had placed them there.

[21] In 1867, James Edward Alexander was inspired on a visit to Paris' Place de la Concorde to arrange for an equivalent monument in London.

[21] On September 7, 1940, the pedestal of the needle and one of its surrounding sphinxes were scarred by debris cast by a nearby bomb, dropped by a Luftwaffe plane as part of The Blitz.

In 1869, at the opening of the Suez Canal, Isma'il Pasha suggested to American journalist William Henry Hurlbert the possible transportation of an obelisk from Egypt to the United States.