Cleopatra's Needle: A History of the London Obelisk, with an Exposition of the Hieroglyphics

In 1877, a 2000-year-old Egyptian obelisk was dragged across the desert, loaded onto a steamship, and erected on the Thames embankment. This is the story of that stone, and the ancient Egyptians who first carved it. Written by a Victorian clergyman who walked the sands of Heliopolis and felt the weight of hieroglyphs that had fallen silent for millennia, this book captures a remarkable moment when Britain claimed a piece of Pharaonic Egypt and planted it in the heart of Empire. King traces the needle from its origins in the sun-worshipped temples of Thothmes III and Ramesses II, through its later years in Alexandria's Caesareum, to its dramatic resurrection in Victorian London. But this is more than antiquarian chronicle. The hieroglyphs become a lens into the spiritual world of ancient Egypt, their cartouches spelling out the names of pharaohs whose stories intertwine with Biblical narrative. The result is a curiously moving work: part adventure story, part scholarly meditation, and part Victorian spiritual inquiry into what these silent stones might tell us about God, time, and the enduring human need to build monuments that outlast us.