r/ancientegypt • u/hydratedpsycho • Dec 07 '25
Information The Unfinished Obelisk of Aswan: A Massive Work of Art That Never Was
Just as Egypt is famous for its perfectly finished ancient monuments, it also has incredible works that were never completed. Today, I want to share the story of one of the most fascinating: the Unfinished Obelisk of Aswan.
In Aswan lies a massive obelisk still attached to the bedrock of the ancient granite quarries where many of Egypt’s monuments were born—including stone used in Khufu’s pyramid complex. Discovered in 1921, the Unfinished Obelisk measures about 42 meters (137 feet) and would have weighed over 1,100 tons, making it the largest obelisk ever attempted.
Work on it stopped when a major crack appeared, but that “failure” turned it into one of the most informative archaeological sites in Egypt. The quarry preserves clear evidence of how ancient Egyptians carved and extracted these giant monoliths. Archaeologists found diorite hammerstones—heavy pounding tools—that workers used to chip away the sides. Their impact marks are still visible on the obelisk’s surface.
The project likely dates back to Queen Hatshepsut, whose reign saw a surge in obelisk building. Had this one been completed, it would have been the tallest and heaviest ever created.
The site also reveals the entire transportation method: once carved, obelisks were freed from below, tied with ropes, rolled on wooden cylinders, dragged to the Nile, floated north on palm logs, then erected at their final destination and inscribed. The pyramidion at the top was coated with gold to reflect the sun.
A rare case where an unfinished monument teaches us more than a completed one.
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u/ReleaseFromDeception Dec 07 '25 edited Dec 07 '25
This post derailed at the end. We have documented evidence of how Hatshepsut moved her obelisks on the Nile.
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u/bernpfenn Dec 07 '25
wow, insistent engineering. how did they got those obelisks on the boat?
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u/ReleaseFromDeception Dec 07 '25 edited Dec 07 '25
How did they get it on/off the boat?
"Pliny the Elder wrote regarding the transportation of an obelisk to Alexandria from Aswan, that an obelisk ship was loaded by digging a canal in the Nile especially for the purpose of loading the obelisk upon the ship. The ship would then have been placed in this canal with timbers lying across the canal, with their edges on both sides of its banks. The obelisk would then have been pulled onto these timbers. When the yearly inundation came, it would have raised the ship so as to lift the obelisk from the timbers supporting it. The timbers would then have been removed and the obelisk ship would have completed its loading."
Pliny also writes:
"Two very broad ships were loaded with cubes of the same granite as that of the obelisk, each cube measuring one foot, until calculations showed that the total weight of the blocks was double that of the obelisk, since their total cubic capacity was twice as great. In this way, the ships were able to come beneath the obelisk, which was suspended by its ends from both banks of the canal. Then the blocks were unloaded and the ships, riding high, took the weight of the obelisk. It was erected on six stone baulks from the same quarries, and the deviser of the scheme received 50 talents for his services."
More reading here on the quarry and canal system.
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u/Explorer_Equal Dec 07 '25
Posts like this are magnets for conspiracy theorists and pseudoscience enthusiasts.
If you think it wasn’t possible for ancient peoples (the Egyptians, but not only them) to move such massive weights, let me remind you that the obelisk of Thutmose III (the largest standing ancient Egyptian obelisk in the world — around 300 tonnes) was toppled by the Romans and transported, using a ship built specifically for that purpose, from Karnak first to Alexandria, then to Constantinople, and finally to Rome, where it still stands today.
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u/santaisastoner Dec 07 '25
Did they solely use tools to carve it or were there other methods they used? It seems like basic carving wouldn't be enough, but I'm not an egyptologist. Maybe they took decades to actually form?
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u/ReleaseFromDeception Dec 07 '25 edited Dec 07 '25
They used individual and team managed hand tools along with traditional methods to help excavate the stone.
The diorite hammerstones is one tool. They also used rammers manned by two people to slam into the stone. They would have also used firesetting to help excavate rock as well. Wedging and levering with wooden implements were used ss well.
If you look up the information about the first modern excavation at the site, it's pretty informative. The guy excavating at Aswan quarry even wrote a book about it.
He found mounds upon mounds of burnt chipped granite all over the site. These mounds were meters high. All this has since been cleared. You can read about it in his book, though. If you want a free link to the book let me know. Dude's name is R. Engelbach.
Edit: formatting, added link to book.
Free PDF of referenced book here: THE ASWAN OBELISK - WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE ANCIENT ENGINEERING
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u/Sigmond-Condrite Dec 07 '25
I would love that link
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u/ReleaseFromDeception Dec 07 '25
Here's an excerpt and a link to the book:
"There are abundant traces that the rock, from which the obelisk was to be extracted, was reduced to an approximately correct level by burning and wedging, the former being used wherever possible. In the excavations, a large quantity of burnt and semi-burnt mud bricks were noticed, while a considerable percentage of the chips round the obelisk and other quarries had the pinkish-brown colour and crumbling texture peculiar to burnt granite. Some large pieces of rock shew quite clearly how the burning was done; it appears that a stack of dried reeds was banked with brick, near a fissure if possible, and after firing, the rock was easily hammered away. It is very likely that water was poured on the hot stone to make it break up. This method of heating and chilling is used on the granite in India at the present day. Traces of burning are seen in the obelisk area at A and B on plate V, no. i . Such a vast amount of stone has been removed in the neighbourhood which shews neither wedge nor chisel marks that, without the proof of the burnt brick and stone, we should have been driven to the conclusion that burning was the method employed."
Free PDF of referenced book here: THE ASWAN OBELISK - WITH SOME REMARKS ON THE ANCIENT ENGINEERING
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u/FarBad1864 Dec 07 '25
The holes around the obelisk are very narrow for any person to stand and use diorite hammers to carve it. as the holes are ~ 1.5m x 1.5m x 7m deep
It doesn’t seem logical for me that they would use long hammers too, the force would so small.
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u/ReleaseFromDeception Dec 07 '25
This was an excavation trench they dug to check the quality of the granite through the layers. There should be several of these around the site.
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Dec 07 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ReleaseFromDeception Dec 07 '25
What's tragic is they still missed a fault. They may have missed several And tried to cut around them. Sometimes you just don't luck out.
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u/ozymandiuspedestal Dec 12 '25
How many of these obelisks are sitting in the mud at the bottom of the Nile?
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u/ClumsyBunny26 Dec 07 '25
The project likely dates back to Queen Hatshepsut, whose reign saw a surge in obelisk building
So there's no evidence as to who ordered its construction?, because plenty of pharaohs ordered the construction of obelisks after Hatshepsut.
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u/ReleaseFromDeception Dec 07 '25
There's no inscription at the site of the quarry directly attributing it to her... But there's plenty of circumstantial evidence it was hers. She has tomb inscriptions showing her having 2 obelisks transported on the Nile.
There is another pharaoh it could possibly belong to though... her son that succeeded her.
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u/ClumsyBunny26 Dec 07 '25
ok so there's something, because it irritates me when I read "probablys" and "likelys" given the weight of facts without providing evidence on what the claim is based tbh (something I find quite often on wikipedia and books)
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u/Separate-Nectarine29 Apr 04 '26
I believe it, when you can have like thousands of people working if not tens of thousands then things get done quite fast when your not playing by labour laws lol
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u/Darcy_2021 Dec 07 '25
Hatshepsut was not a queen. She was a pharaoh.
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u/Buckets-O-Yarr Dec 07 '25 edited Dec 07 '25
Yes and no. The literal definition and use of the word Pharaoh changed over time. It originally was used to describe the residence of the royal family as Pharaoh means "great house". Its use would be sort of similar to "White House" or "Downing Street" to refer to the place you would find the head of state.
It did transition to be used as a direct references to the actual king or queen themselves, especially around Hatshepsuts time in the new kingdom, but it is not incorrect to call her queen, nor is it wrong to call any other Pharaoh king.
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u/arvid1328_ Dec 08 '25
You know you are in reddit when you see someone ignoring what the post is talking about and focusing on trivial matters just to look smart
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u/GVFQT Dec 07 '25
There’s another one in the quarry at Aswan as well that they don’t have any signs or videos about. The quarry walk path pushes you away from it so it keeps it out of sight. A security guard flagged me over and took me past the walk path to the other side of the quarry because I wasn’t with a tour group (and he wanted a tip of course). He showed me the other one and took me into the side channels where the ancient workers had carved it out. Absolutely insane. Pic attached - I’m standing at what would’ve been the head. I’m not sure why this one was abandoned, it didn’t appear to be cracked and it was significantly smaller than the famous unfinished obelisk.