What is an obelisk? Detailed answer

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What is an obelisk? Detailed answer

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What is an obelisk?

An obelisk is a spire carved from stone with a pyramidal top. The first most famous of these monuments were made in Egypt. They are considered real because each of them is carved from a single stone. Some famous memorials in the United States, such as Banner Hill and the Washington Monument, are shaped like an obelisk, but they are made of many small stones.

The Egyptians believed that the obelisk was the seat of the spirit of the Sun. Obelisks were usually made in pairs and placed on either side of the gates in temples and tombs. The tops were usually covered with a shiny metal such as gold to reflect the sun's rays. Inscriptions made in hieroglyphs on four sides praised the pharaohs, at whose command these obelisks were erected.

All Egyptian obelisks are made of granite quarried near Aswan. Some of them were 24 meters high. How could the Egyptians move these huge blocks? Nobody knows for sure. It was estimated that more than 20 people would be needed to pull it. The obelisks were dragged from the quarries to the Nile, then loaded onto barges and transported to different cities. Throughout history, Egyptian obelisks have been scattered around the world. The ancient Romans were simply amazed by them. After the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 B.C. e. they moved about 15 obelisks to Italy.

Nobody knows how they did it. The obelisk that stands in front of St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome was moved to Rome at this time, and 16 centuries later, in 1585, it was installed in the square in front of the cathedral. This took about a year. In the 1836th century, three obelisks were brought from Egypt. The first was erected on the Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1880. The second obelisk was erected on the banks of the River Thames in London in 1881. The third - in the Central Park of New York City in XNUMX. The London and New York obelisks are called Cleopatra's Needle.

Author: Likum A.

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

What animals have learned to wash and salt their food?

In the 1950s, Japanese scientists began to study the macaques living on the island of Kojima, and one of the experiments was to leave sweet potato tubers on the river bank. Macaques usually just clean the mud with their hands before eating them, but one of the females after some time guessed to wash the sweet potato in the river. A few years later, the washing skill was passed on to most macaques in the population, and in 1965, scientists noticed that they had learned to wash the sweet potato in sea water, thereby salting it at the same time.

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The sleep of babies 14.12.2022

Consultant neurologist Topun Austin of the University of Cambridge has found out why babies sleep a lot in a new study.

The researchers took a new approach for experiments - they created a special hat, where they built in light sources and sensors. This helped to measure the blood circulation in the children's brains on the principle of a pulse oximeter attached to a finger.

This method had been used before, but it required a cap with electrodes attached to it. As part of the new study, the experts used 12 tiles placed in a hat and connected to a computer with a single cable.

In the end, they got a brain image 10 times better than the fiber-optic cable system they had used before. It turned out that infants are characterized by a cyclical passage of two phases of sleep: active, when the children are mobile, and calm, when the child remains motionless.

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