The archaeoscope
WATANI International
16 January 2011
The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) has threatened to take back an iconic obelisk in Central Park unless New York City takes steps to restore it. The stone obelisk “has been severely weathered over the past century” with no effort made to conserve it, Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the SCA, wrote in a letter this week to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The obelisk, which commemorates King Thutmose III, dates back roughly 3,500 years and has stood behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1881, a gift from an Egyptian official. At 71 feet tall, it is known as “Cleopatra’s Needle” and is one of a pair. The other is in London.
“I have a duty to protect all Egyptian monuments whether they are inside or outside of Egypt,” Hawass wrote in the letter. “If the Central Park Conservancy and the City of New York cannot properly care for this obelisk, I will take the necessary steps to bring this precious artefact home and save it from ruin,” he wrote. The hieroglyphics have completely worn away in places, he said.
Jonathan Kuhn, director of art and antiquities for New York’s Parks Department, said there was no evidence of “any significant ongoing erosion.
A Metropolitan Museum study in the 1980s found the granite was “largely inert” and that damage to the inscriptions and the base of the monument occurred in the distant past, Kuhn said.