After breakfast, we boarded the bus to see the unfinished obelisk at Aswan. The obelisk in an acient granite quarry used by the ancient Egyptians. On the way to the site, we passed an old cemetary from the Fatamid period. As Ramadan has now eneded, many people, mostly women, were visiting the cemetary.
The granite quarries in Aswan are the only ones used by the ancient Egyptians for monuments all over the country. The quarry was used for as much as 5,000 years. Blocks and obelisks were transported by boats on the Nile River, to the temple or monumental sites. The unfinished obelisk is a huge obelisk that was not finished because a crack was found in the rock. The obelisk would have been the largest ever erected in ancient Egypt. We learned about thow they cut granite and seperated the momnuments and blocks from the bedrock.
