New York’s Ancient Egyptian Obelisk Will Be Cleaned

NEW YORK, NEW YORK—The Central Park Conservancy has announced that the so-called Cleopatra’s Needle, an ancient Egyptian obelisk given to the United States by the Egyptian government in the late nineteenth century, will be cleaned with lasers as part of a conservation project that will “promote its long term preservation and enhance the public’s understanding of the ancient artifact,” according to a Conservancy statement published in Gothamist. The 3,500-year-old, red-granite obelisk left Egypt in 1880, and was carried from the Hudson River to Central Park by a special railroad over a period of 40 days. The monument was re-erected in 1881.