The Unfinished Obeliskالمسلة الناقصة

Carved directly from the living rock, the Unfinished Obelisk would have stood around 42 metres tall and weighed well over a thousand tonnes — making it by far the largest obelisk ever attempted in ancient Egypt, perhaps intended for the temple of Karnak. It is often associated with the reign of the great pharaoh Hatshepsut. Its sheer scale is staggering, and its abandonment, mid-creation, freezes a moment of ancient ambition in stone.

Because it was never freed from the bedrock, the obelisk is a priceless record of ancient stone-working. You can clearly see the trenches the workers cut around it, and the marks left by pounding the granite with balls of harder dolerite stone to shape it. A large crack — the flaw that doomed it — is also visible. Few sites anywhere show so vividly how the ancient Egyptians quarried and carved the giant monuments that still amaze the world.

The Unfinished Obelisk lies in the northern granite quarries of Aswan, the very source of the prized red and grey granite used for temples, statues, and obelisks across Egypt. It is an easy, compact site to visit, often combined with Aswan's other monuments. Standing beside this sleeping giant, imagining the effort it took — and the disappointment when it cracked — is a memorable and very human encounter with the world of the ancient Aswan quarrymen.

• What it is: an abandoned, half-carved giant obelisk in Aswan's quarries.
• Arabic name: المسلة الناقصة (the Unfinished Obelisk).
• Size: about 42 m and over 1,000 tonnes — the largest ever attempted.
• Why abandoned: a crack appeared in the granite during carving.
• Reveals: exactly how the ancients quarried and shaped obelisks.
• Where: the northern granite quarries of Aswan.

Sources include standard Egyptology references. Some figures are approximate.