The Unfinished Obelisk of Aswan
Yes, your favorite guide in Rome is posting an article about an unfinished obelisk in the ancient granite quarry of Aswan, Egypt. And yes, the thumbnail for this blog misleadingly shows three finished obelisks at the Temple of Karnak. (False advertising.) And yes, I took that photo during my first-ever trip to Egypt in early February, 2026!
If you were curious, the journey was an improbable cocktail of dream come true and total nightmare. Unwittingly (my fault), I signed up for a trip that was a mass tourism personified. The daily drill was, “Here’s the attraction. Take some pictures. Now we’re going to the alabaster shop.” Argh!
Almost Ready to Talk about the Unfinished Obelisk in Aswan…
Don’t get me wrong! Intense moments of private bliss sparkled in the suffocating darkness of over-tourism. For example, I saw the pyramids with my own eyes. As I said to my trusty traveling companion: “Most of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World no longer survive. The pyramids are the only ones that still exist…” (Well, so does the lighthouse of Alexandria. But it collapsed into the Mediterranean Sea. So, it’s sort of there, but sort of not.) “I have been to almost all the sites where the Ancient Wonders once were. And now I have seen the only Wonder that still stands.”
In my little heart of hearts, in the insignificant sancta sanctorum of who I am and the experiences that shape me, I was having a moment.
Among impertinent camels, idiot tourists, and locals who gave up trying to sell me stuff, I was having A MOMENT. I stared at the Pyramids. The chaos and stupidity slid into the background. I felt blessed. Unbeknownst to me, my traveling companion caught that moment and I’m posting his photo. But this is just a digression, since I promised you a blog on the unfinished obelisk in the ancient granite quarry in Aswan!
Here it comes! The Part About the Unfinished Obelisk. Well, No. Fooled You!
Now, let’s talk obelisks, Egyptian obelisks. When the Temple of Karnak was at its height, archeologists believe it was home to roughly 20 of them. “Was,” is the operative word. Imperial Romans hijacked many obelisks from this and other Egyptian temples to adorn the city of Rome. The passage of time ruined others. In the 19th century, the ruler of Egypt very diplomatically gifted an ancient obelisk to London and another to Paris. So, here’s the marvelous irony: I went to Egypt to see one obelisk in particular (i.e. the unfinished one in Aswan), when I live in the city with the greatest number of ancient Egyptian obelisks in the world — even more than Egypt itself currently has!
More Cool Facts about Obelisks
Before we tackle the unfinished obelisk in the ancient quarry in Aswan, let’s talk about Guinness Book of World Record Obelisks. Did you know that the OLDEST Egyptian obelisk dates to 1945 B.C. and it still stands near the ancient city Hieropolis? (I did NOT see it with my own eyes, which gives me a reason to go back.) It measures a tad more than 65.5 feet.
Meanwhile, the TALLEST standing ancient Egyptian obelisk (dating to circa 1400 B.C.) is now in Rome (near the Church of Saint John in Lateran). It was originally part of the Karnak Temple in the ancient capital Thebes (now Luxor). But Emperor Constantius II thought it would look better in Rome’s Circus Maximus. So, he had it moved in circa 360 A.D. It tops out at just over 105 feet — excluding the base and cross mounted on it in the late 1580s, when it was moved to the Church of Saint John. In the photo to the left, you will see Ramses II erecting his own obelisks, in the carvings in a column at the Temple of Horus at Edfu.
In fact, as an aside, Egyptian rulers are generous because they share moments of engineering and architecture with us through the art on their monuments. By contrast, Roman emperors seem obsessed with a sort of overly-serious elegance and therefore, in their monuments, they avoided showing plebeian scenes of construction work. So, Ramses II is getting off on erecting not one — but two obelisks! And he wants you to know about it. Likewise, Queen Hatsheput proudly ordered her court chiselers to illustrate how her sailors barged one of her obelisks down the Nile. And you can see a tracing of that scene from her tomb at Deir El-Bahari by clicking on this link. Now, back to us and the unfinished obelisk in Aswan!
The Unfinished Obelisk at Aswan
Some scholars believe that in roughly 1500 B.C., Pharaoh (Queen) Hapshepsut wanted an obelisk erected at Karnak. Clearly, not any ole obelisk. She had put in an order for an oversized one that would have risen to 137 feet, had it been finished. (That’s 32 feet more than the tallest one in Rome boasts!) But size isn’t everything. And the oversized obelisk suffered erectile disorders. That is, no one ever erected it. It didn’t even make it out of the quarry!
Hapshepsut’s workmen chiseled out its sides and its pyramidal tip. But before they could cut the monstrous granite block out of its bed, it cracked. It has laid in the ancient quarry, abandoned, ever since, namely for over 3500 years. I traveled to Aswan to pay it my respects. Had Hapshepsut’s workmen succeeded in following her orders, I might have seen it standing in the temple at Karnak, an Eighth Wonder of the Ancient World.
Marvelous are the implications regarding its engineering — and engineering in general in antiquity. But perhaps, this is even more marvelous: The unfinished obelisk demonstrates how exceptional people will always test limits, sometimes without being able to surpass them.
I had wanted to see this obelisk with my own eyes for decades. And now that I have seen it, I want to share it with you in my very homespun video!
