The Luxor Obelisk and Its Voyage to Paris

The extraordinary story of how an obelisk from the banks of Luxor was transferred to the Place de la Concorde in Paris in the early 19th century Transporting the Luxor obelisk from Egypt to Paris was one of the great engineering triumphs of the early nineteenth century. No obelisk this size (two hundred and fifty tons) had left Egypt in nearly two thousand years, and the task of bringing it fell to a young engineer, Apollinaire Lebas, a man of extraordinary resolve and ability. His is a tale of