Walk Like An Egyptian

Our post-War Rooms hurrying was all for naught, but it did, later, have a happy ending.  When we thought we had struck out, we walked along the Thames to the Egyptian obelisk.  

After our trip to Egypt earlier this year, we are a LOT more mindful of all things Egyptian.  Known as Cleopatra's Needle (along with the one in New York), the obelisk was erected around 1450 BC, approximately 1400 years before the birth of Cleopatra. (That is the equivalent of naming something from 600 AD after Barack Obama.  Seriously, check my math.)  

Created by Thutmose III, several hundred years later Ramesses II added inscriptions celebrating his military victories (of course he did -- Ramesses II added his name to just about everything in Egypt built before his reign, as well as having plenty of temples built in his honor.)

In 1819, Muhammed Ali (not THAT Ali) gave the obelisk to the United Kingdom in honor of the British victories at Alexandria and the Battle of the Nile.  It wasn't moved to England and erected on the Nile until 1878 because the Brits wouldn't spend the money to move it until then.  Parsimonious bastards.

The obelisk is flanked by two faux, yet cool-looking, Egyptian sphinxes designed by an Egyptian architect in the 1800s.  There is no truth to the rumor that Ramesses II came back from the dead and had inscriptions added to the faux sphinxes.

Hanging out with Thutmose III and 

Ramesses II, but NOT Cleopatra.

Here's a faux Sphinx.

And here's a real Sphinx.

"Call me Cleopatra, everybody

'cause I'm the Queen of Denial."

Bonus shot of Christopher

Wren's master piece, St.

Paul's  Cathedral.

And a bonus shot of Parliament/Big Ben