Monday, March 08, 2010

Ryan and the Obelisk



Monday 8 March 2010

Here's Ryan taking a picture of the largest obelisk in the world, which was commissioned by Hatshepsut, the female pharaoh I mentioned yesterday. It is in Karnak temple.

These obelisks are fascinating - they are unbelievably big up close. And did you know that they are not embedded in the ground at all, but are rather cut absolutely perfectly, so they rest on a precisely flat bottom and are held up by gravity?

A group of people tried to raise an obelisk a while back, for a television program, using ancient Egyptian methods. They had all the manpower they could want, and still couldn't do it. These ancients are absolutely amazing us, the more we learn about them.

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