How Cleopatra’s Needle inspires to tell epic stories
The hidden gem in New York’s Central Park is all about verticality and reaching for the sky
Central Park is a place of bucolic beauty and historic wonders. Nestled behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art, on a scraggy and rocky hill named Greywacke Knoll, Cleopatra’s Needle rises majestically into New York’s blue sky.
Oftentimes pragmatically referred to as The Obelisk, poetically, it could be described as a marvel of three-thousand-year-old Egyptian hieroglyphic verses chiseled into a seamless skyward-pointing post of red granite.
Modern in its sleek appearance, yet ancient in its depiction of symbolic rhymes praising the King of Upper and Lower Egypt who made his home town of Heliopolis festive and abundant with food, the Obelisk presents writing on a grand scale.
As a majestic pillar, it is visible from a grand distance, but only up close can we see the intricate system of hieroglyphs, set in rows and columns, much like ideograms.
