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Unfinished Obelisk

Aswan, Egypt

Aswan's Northern Quarry is home to the famous Unfinished Obelisk - a 41-meter-long and four-meter-wide chunk of stone that was probably abandoned because of a crack in the rock. It's estimated that if completed, the obelisk would have weighed 1,168 tons and would have been the largest ever hewn. On the surrounding rock faces, you can also see the many traces of the work of ancient stonecutters. The blocks here would have been detached from the rock by boring holes along a prescribed line, driving wedges into these, and then soaking the wedges with water to detach the block.

You can easily walk to the Northern Quarry area from Aswan's downtown area. It is just east of the Fatimid cemetery and the Nubian Museum.

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