Obelisk

Can you imagine standing in one spot for thousands of years. I can. I feel the warm sun on my stone skin and watch tiny cars and people buzz around my feet like busy little bees. I live in a very big city, but I am much older than anything around me. I am made from a single, giant piece of pink stone, and my body is covered in special picture-writing that tells ancient stories from long, long ago. My top is pointy, and I stretch high into the air like a needle pointing to the sky. I am an Obelisk.

My story began over 3,000 years ago, in the 13th century BCE, in the warm land of Egypt. A great and powerful king, Pharaoh Ramesses II, wanted to build something amazing to honor the sun and show everyone how wonderful his kingdom was. So, he ordered his workers to carve me from a quarry, which is a place where giant rocks are found. They cut me out of the ground as one single, enormous piece of granite. Then, they carefully carved pictures all over me. These pictures are called hieroglyphs, and they tell the stories of the pharaoh’s great deeds. For thousands of years, I stood proudly with my twin brother at the entrance to the magnificent Luxor Temple, watching parades and priests under the bright Egyptian sun.

A new adventure began for me in the 1830s. A ruler in Egypt decided to give me as a special gift to the people of France to celebrate their friendship. Moving me was a very big job. It took many clever people a long time to figure out how to carefully lay me down without breaking me. They built a special boat just for me, strong enough to carry my heavy stone body. I sailed slowly across the big, blue Mediterranean Sea, leaving my sunny home and my twin brother behind. My journey to a new city called Paris took more than two long years.

On October 25th, 1836, a huge crowd gathered to watch as I was slowly and carefully lifted into the sky again. It was a very exciting day. I now stand in the center of a beautiful square in Paris called the Place de la Concorde. I watch people from all over the world look up at my ancient pictures, trying to imagine my first home in Egypt. In 1998, they even gave me a shiny new golden cap, called a pyramidion, that glitters in the sun. I may be far from where I was born, but I connect two great countries and two different times. I am a bridge made of stone, reminding everyone that great stories and beautiful creations can last forever, sharing wonder across the world.