Unfinished Obelisk, Aswan: Why It Was Abandoned and How to Visit

The Unfinished Obelisk in Aswan is the largest obelisk ancient Egypt ever attempted: a shaft of granite about 42 m (137 ft) long that was never lifted out of the rock. Its carvers cut a trench around it, found cracks running through the stone and walked away, leaving the giant lying in the quarry where you can still see it today. That makes it one of the best places in Egypt to understand how obelisks were made. This guide explains what the obelisk is, why it was abandoned, how big it really is, how it was carved, and how to fit a visit into a day in Aswan.

Planning a trip? See our Egypt travel guide and our guide to Abu Simbel and Aswan.

The Unfinished Obelisk at a glance

What is the Unfinished Obelisk?

The Unfinished Obelisk is a huge obelisk that ancient Egyptian quarrymen began cutting directly out of the bedrock in Aswan and never finished. Its top and sides were shaped and a trench was dug around it, but its underside is still joined to the rock, so it lies where it was carved, at a slight angle in an open quarry.

Obelisks were among the great symbols of ancient Egypt. Called tekhen in the Egyptian language, each was a single piece of stone with a four-sided shaft and a pyramid-shaped tip, the pyramidion, which was covered in gold to catch the sun. They were linked with the sun god and usually stood in pairs at temple entrances. Kings had their names and dedications carved on the four sides.

Aswan was where many of them began. The city’s quarries supplied the hard red and pink granite (the ancient Greeks called it syenite, after Syene, the old name of Aswan) used for colossal statues, shrines and obelisks across Egypt. Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities believes this obelisk was commissioned by Queen Hatshepsut for the Temple of Amun at Karnak in Luxor.

When was it found?

The obelisk lay under sand and quarry debris for thousands of years and was rediscovered in the early 20th century. When Sultan (later King) Fuad visited in the winter of 1920–21, only about 22 m of it was visible; the rest was buried under a heap of granite chips and blocks. He asked for it to be cleared, and the work was finished in the winter of 1921–22. The Egyptologist and engineer Reginald Engelbach studied it and published The Aswân Obelisk in 1922, which is still the main source on the site.

Why was it never finished?

The Unfinished Obelisk was abandoned because the granite cracked. As the quarrymen worked down into the rock, fissures appeared in the stone, and an obelisk with a crack through it could not survive being lifted, moved and raised upright.

Engelbach found that the workers did not give up at the first sign of trouble. They tested each crack by pounding along it to see whether it faded out or grew larger. Several fissures turned out to be serious, including one that would have forced them to cut the tip back and another that cut off a corner of the base. Faint guide lines on the rock show that they then tried to lay out a shorter, slimmer obelisk that would avoid the worst cracks. Engelbach noted that these lines are so faint that they are easiest to see just after sunrise or before sunset. In the end the project was abandoned, and the trench on the base side was left even less complete than those along the sides.

How big is the Unfinished Obelisk?

The Unfinished Obelisk is 41.75 m (about 137 ft) long and would have weighed about 1,168 tons. Those are the figures from Engelbach’s 1922 survey, which the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities repeats (it rounds the height to about 42 m). Some other references give a lower weight of around 1,090 tonnes, but every source agrees on the main point: it would have been taller than any obelisk ancient Egypt ever raised.

• Base: 4.2 m (about 13.8 ft) on each side.
• Pyramidion: planned at 4.5 m tall, on a base 2.5 m wide.
• Compared with standing obelisks: the largest ancient Egyptian obelisk still standing anywhere, the Lateran Obelisk in Rome, is about 32 m (105 ft) tall. It, too, was made for Karnak, and today it stands in the square beside the Lateran Basilica. The Unfinished Obelisk would have been nearly one-third larger than any obelisk ever erected.

How the ancient Egyptians carved it

The Unfinished Obelisk shows that the ancient Egyptians freed obelisks from the granite mainly by pounding the rock away with balls of an even harder stone. Because the work stopped halfway, every stage is still visible, which is why the site matters to archaeologists.

The trench and the pounders

Around the obelisk runs a narrow trench, about 78 cm (31 in) wide, that the workers dug down to separate it from the surrounding rock. Its walls are scalloped into a row of rounded hollows, as if scooped out. Engelbach found no chisel marks in the trench and no copper tools, but plenty of round balls of dolerite, a tough greenish-black stone, scattered around the obelisk and across the Aswan quarries. He concluded that these “pounders,” about 8 to 13 inches across and weighing 9 to 15 pounds, were the tools that ground out the trench.

Lines, measurements and teamwork

Look closely at the trench walls and you can still see faded red lines. Engelbach thought the vertical ones were dropped with a plumb line dipped in red ochre, and they are spaced at a very regular interval of about 30 cm, which suggests the work was measured out in fixed units. The floor of the trench shows that the men worked from both sides in turn. Other red and black lines on the walls seem to have been used to check how deep the trench had reached.

How long would it have taken?

Engelbach estimated that pounding out the full trench would have taken around seven months of 12-hour days. That fits a record left by Hatshepsut herself, who stated that the work on her pair of obelisks for Karnak took seven months in the quarry. It is an estimate, but it gives a sense of the scale of the job before the much harder task of moving the stone even began.

More unfinished work in the quarries

The Unfinished Obelisk is not the only abandoned project here. In 2005 an unfinished, partly worked obelisk base was found in the Aswan quarries, along with rock carvings and remains that may mark where other obelisks were worked. The quarries are protected by the Egyptian government as an archaeological site, and Aswan’s granite quarries are still worked today.

Visiting the Unfinished Obelisk

The Unfinished Obelisk is easy to visit: it sits inside the city of Aswan on the east bank, about 1 km east of the Nile, so it is a short drive from most hotels and cruise docks. In 1922 Engelbach described it as lying beside the old medieval cemetery, about a twenty-minute walk from the Cataract Hotel, but today most visitors arrive by taxi, private car or with a guided tour.

• Opening hours: the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities lists the site as open daily from 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Hours can change, especially during Ramadan, so check before you go.
• Tickets: check current ticket information on the Ministry’s page for the Unfinished Obelisk.
• What you will see: walkways and roped paths run around the quarry, so you can look down on the obelisk from above and along its length.
• Time needed: it is a compact site, and guided tours routinely visit it together with the High Dam and Philae Temple in a single morning.

Tips for your visit

• Go early. The quarry is bare granite with little shade, and it opens at 7:00 AM. Morning light also brings out the tool marks and guide lines.
• Wear sturdy shoes. The paths cross uneven rock and steps.
• Bring water, a hat and sunscreen, even in winter, when Aswan is at its most popular with travelers. See the best time to visit Egypt for the weather month by month.
• Look for the details: the cracks across the shaft, the scalloped trench walls and any traces of red guide lines tell the story better than the overall view.
• Go with a guide if you can. The site makes far more sense when someone explains what you are looking at.

What to combine it with in Aswan

Most travelers combine the Unfinished Obelisk with Philae Temple and the Aswan High Dam, which lie south of the city and are usually visited in the same half day. With a full day or two in Aswan you can add the islands, the Nubian Museum and a sail on the Nile. Our Abu Simbel and Aswan guide covers all of them in more detail.

• Philae Temple: the island temples, dedicated above all to the goddess Isis, which were dismantled and rebuilt on the higher island of Agilkia between 1977 and 1980 to save it from the rising Nile. You reach it by motorboat.
• The Aswan High Dam: built between 1960 and 1970, it created Lake Nasser and prompted the UNESCO campaign to rescue the monuments of Nubia from the rising water.
• The Nubian Museum: opened in 1997 to hold finds from the Nubia rescue campaign, it won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2001.
• Elephantine Island: the ancient frontier town in the middle of the Nile, with ongoing excavations and the Aswan Museum.
• A felucca on the Nile: sail past Kitchener’s Island toward the Mausoleum of the Aga Khan; Simsem’s felucca tour sails at sunrise to watch the birds of the Nile.
• Abu Simbel: the great temples of Ramesses II, about 290 km (180 mi) south of Aswan. Plan this as a separate early-morning trip.

If you are traveling the length of the country, a Nile cruise between Aswan and Luxor is the classic way to link Aswan with the temples of Karnak, where the Unfinished Obelisk was meant to stand. Our guide to getting from Cairo to Luxor and Aswan covers trains, flights and road travel.

Travel with a local guide

Simsem’s local hosts in Aswan run these trips. Khaled Zaky’s Nile cruise starts with the High Dam, Philae and the Unfinished Obelisk on its first day:

Meet every host on our local guides in Egypt page.

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