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Our two-ton obelisk goes for a ride.
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Gifts of the River
by Peter Tyson
March 19, 1999
Herodotus, the father of history, said famously that Egypt was
the "Gift of the River." The same could be said of obelisks,
that they are a gift of the Nile, for without the river, the
task of shuttling these massive pillars of stone hundreds of
miles from quarry to temple would have been orders of
magnitude more challenging. Today, our team set out to
investigate such river transport of obelisks using a one-tenth
scale model of the obelisk barge pictured in relief at
Hatshepsut's mortuary temple (see
The Queen Who Would Be King).
While the First Cataract at Aswan has always hindered boat
traffic south of here, the Nile north of Aswan is a conveyor
belt that runs unobstructed some 750 miles to the
Mediterranean. As a measure of how vital the north-flowing
river was to the Egyptians, the hieroglyph for traveling north
is a boat with no mast, while that for heading south is a boat
under sail. Fortunately for the obelisk raisers, the granite
quarries lay upstream of the major capitals, so those in
charge of shipping obelisks could harness the Nile to do most
of the work of conveying.
As we've seen, scholars have one significant clue as to how
the Egyptians transported obelisks on the Nile. The obelisk
barge pictured in Hatshepsut's relief has two obelisks on it,
laid end to end, and is thought to have been over 200 feet
long. Other evidence for such prodigious size exists. Aneni,
an high official under Tuthmosis I who saw to the erection of
his two obelisks at Karnak, claimed in his tomb that he "built
the 'august' boat of 120 cubits (207 feet) in length and 40
cubits (69 feet) in breadth for transporting these obelisks."
Indeed, one scholar has estimated that such barges might have
reached over 310 feet in length, exhibited a beam of 105 feet,
and displaced 7,300 tons. For sheer size, obelisk barges were
the Pyramids of ancient boats.
Some scholars have suggested that the two obelisks in the
relief actually traveled side by side on one barge, but in
order to show both, the artist had to depict them end to end.
Owain Roberts
believes the relief merely indicates that two obelisks were
moved by boat, and he designed his model to carry one.
Mark Lehner,
for his part, likes to think that "what you see in
Hatshepsut's relief is what they used."
While the relief is open to wide interpretation—it is
only, says Reginald
Engelbach,
"an impressionist view"—scholars generally agree that it
portrays a boat with three separate sets of crossbeams for
added strength, as revealed by three levels of what might be
deck beam ends poking through the hull. The barge also had
several hogging trusses, rope-and-wood structures arching over
the deck that prevented the bow and stern from collapsing
under the monoliths' enormous weight. Roberts designed his
model with these aspects in mind.
"The power of rope" could easily have been our motto
today.
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When we arrived on the west bank of the Nile this morning, the
model was moored bow-first against the shore, wavelets lapping
against its yellow plywood hull. A ramp of mortared stones,
with a track of buried timbers sunk in its upper surface,
extended from the ground up to deck level. On the track rested
a wooden sledge with a two-ton granite obelisk tied to it.
The plan called for testing one proposed method for how the
Egyptians loaded obelisks aboard barges: pulling it lengthwise
up a ramp and onto the deck. Experts have suggested other ways
the Egyptians might have done it (which, like so much else
about their engineering achievements, remains a mystery). One
of the most prevalent theories is that they dug a channel
inland from the Nile and floated the barge directly beneath a
spot where the obelisk waited on its sledge. As the Nile rose
during its annual flooding, the barge would rise, too,
eventually shouldering the sledge and obelisk, which then
could be shipped downstream. (In his
Natural History, Pliny describes how King Ptolemy
Philadelphus transported an obelisk to Alexandria using this
method.)
Roberts and his son Iolo rigged an elaborate system of ropes,
with which a group of pullers standing on either side of the
ramp could haul the obelisk sledge up the slope and onto the
barge. Hopes were high as Roberts spaced about 20 hired
students along ropes stretched out on each side of the ramp.
With the NOVA film crew at the ready, a wiry, mustachioed man
named Moustafa began yelling out the cadence:
"Hela hop! ... Hela hop! ... Hela hop!"
Some scholars believe this chant, which doesn't mean anything
in Arabic, may actually be a surviving pharaonic work chant.
Each of Moustafa's cries rose in a crescendo, with the
emphasis falling on "hop!," which served as the mens' cue to
lean back on the rope with all their might.
Moments before the tugging began, Moustafa had greased the
track's surface with moistened tufla, a clay that becomes very
slippery when wet, just as his forebears might have done. And
it paid off: With each "Hela hop!," the sledge glided forward
a few feet. When it settled on the barge deck, a great cheer
went up among the Egyptians. It was
Pulling Together
all over again, albeit on a smaller scale.
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The "unity of Egypt" emblem on the seated statue of
Ramses II at Luxor Temple, shot after dark.
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Later, to see how the barge moved with the obelisk on it, we
towed it behind an Aswan riverboat. Hatshepsut's relief
indicates that three rows of nine or ten boats apiece towed
her barge, with another boat, presumably holding the pilots,
leading the way. Nearby floated three more boats, on which
priests performed ceremonies celebrating the wondrous event.
Think how many thousands of villagers would have lined the
riverbank to watch that football field of a barge pass on its
way north.
In Hatshepsut's day as in ours, the key element in
successfully manipulating obelisks was rope. Lehner today kept
stressing the "the power of rope," and the father-and-son
Roberts team demonstrated the truth of his statement over and
over. They repeatedly relied on "swigging," a means for
tightening rope that the ancient Egyptians clearly knew and
that we might also use to help raise the big obelisk. They
expertly lashed the obelisk to the sledge and rigged the ropes
for the ramp pull and for the hogging truss, which they
assembled prior to the tow. And they gave a demonstration of
the role rope played in holding together the 4,600-year-old
Khufu boat (see
The Solar Barque).
In the midst of the action this afternoon, Lehner reminded me
of the so-called "unity of Egypt" emblem. New Kingdom pharaohs
liked to inscribe the emblem on their monuments; I've seen at
least two on this trip, one on the seated statue of Ramses the
Great before Luxor Temple, and another on the Colossi of
Memnon. In the emblem, the droopy-breasted Nile god Hapi
stands on either side of a post, pulling tight the long stems
of a papyrus reed and a lotus plant, which signify northern
and southern Egypt, respectively. Striking in its simplicity,
the emblem symbolizes the country's unification under the
pharaohs.
It strikes me that obelisks, brought from Aswan in Upper Egypt
not only to Thebes but as far as Heliopolis and other archaic
capitals in Lower Egypt, might have symbolized that unity for
the pharaohs as well. A unity that is yet another "Gift of the
River."
The NOVA obelisk at its new resting place atop the
ramp.
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Update on obelisk raising: The fully shaped obelisk now
rests on the earthen ramp, ready for the wooden assembly,
which timber-framers Rick and Wyle Brown will attach to the
butt end and which will aid in rotating the obelisk into an
upright position. Tomorrow, we will test several theories of
obelisk raising using miniature models.
Peter Tyson is Online Producer of NOVA.
Obelisk Raised! (September 12)
In the Groove (September 1)
The Third Attempt (August 27)
Angle of Repose (March 25)
A Tale of Two Obelisks (March 24)
Rising Toward the Sun (March 23)
Into Position (March 22)
On an Anthill in Aswan (March 21)
Ready to Go (March 20)
Gifts of the River (March 19)
By Camel to a Lost Obelisk (March 18)
The Unfinished Obelisk (March 16)
Pulling Together (March 14)
Balloon Flight Over Ancient Thebes (March 12)
The Queen Who Would Be King (March 10)
Rock of Ages (March 8)
The Solar Barque (March 6)
Coughing Up an Obelisk (March 4)
Explore Ancient Egypt
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