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Tagged “obelisk”

• HIGH WONDER

  Stelae of Aksum

  How did Aksumite workers quarry, carve, transport, and raise single granite-like monoliths of up to 500-plus tonnes — including the Great Stele, the largest single stone humans are known to have ever attempted to stand upright — using only muscle, timber, and rope?

  3rd–4th century CE, Kingdom of Aksum · Axum (Aksum), Tigray, EthiopiaAdded July 2026
• HIGH WONDER

  The Unfinished Obelisk of Aswan

  How did New Kingdom quarrymen, using nothing harder than dolerite hammerstones, set out to free a single 1,090-tonne granite monolith from solid bedrock — and what does the crack that stopped them reveal about the limits, and the method, of ancient hard-stone quarrying?

  c. 15th century BCE (New Kingdom, reign of Hatshepsut) · Northern Quarries, Aswan, EgyptAdded July 2026