Identifiers: LCCN 2023024655 | ISBN 9780823454846 (hardcover)
Subjects: CYAC: Cleopatra’s Needle (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. | Obelisks—Fiction. | LCGFT: Historical fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PZ7.G9846 Mog 2024 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023024655
ISBN: 978-0-8234-5484-6 (hardcover)
To Elizabeth Law
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Dr. Bob Brier, Mary Galbaski, Bryan Godwin, Rich Jacobson, Frank Lovece, Andrew Ross, Karen Gray Ruelle, Amy Toth, John Simko, Laura Kincaid, Nina Wallace, Howard Wolf, and all the folks at Holiday House.
INTRODUCTION
Let me just say from the start that I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t want to have anything to do with this book.
To be honest, I don’t particularly like reading books and I’m not crazy about learning stuff or going to museums or becoming well-rounded or any of that other boring stuff that nice boys are supposed to like.
I didn’t ask to come here. I just wanted to stay home and watch a ball game on TV. My mom made me come.
So here I am—in Central Park, in New York City. It’s probably the most famous park in the world, and there’s lots of cool stuff to do here. Like, they’ve got a zoo and two skating rinks and a carousel and rocks to climb and ball fields and all kinds of other fun stuff. But no, my mom didn’t take me to see any of that cool stuff. She took me here.
Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park today.
We’re sitting on a wooden bench in front of this giant...thing. Mom calls it “Cleopatra’s Needle.” It’s this big monument made out of stone, I guess. It looks sort of like the Washington Monument, with that point at the top. I said that to my mother, hoping we could move on and be done with it. But she kept right on talking.
“Cleopatra’s Needle is an obelisk,” she told me. “The Washington Monument is not an obelisk.”
Well, excuse me! I never heard of an obelisk. I always called it a “pointy thing.” Apparently, you can’t call something an obelisk if it’s made from a bunch of blocks put together. An obelisk has to be just one solid piece of stone. Doesn’t seem like a big difference to me.
“Just look at it!” my mom said as she gazed up in wonder. “It’s the height of a seven-story building, but it was carved three thousand five hundred years ago! It’s the oldest outdoor monument in New York City and the oldest man-made object in Central Park, one of the oldest in the world! And we’re sitting right in front of it. Can you believe it? It’s like an ancient skyscraper.”
“I really don’t care, Mom.”
I know it was obnoxious. But spending a Saturday going to see some big old pointy rock is not exactly my idea of a good time.
Still. Three thousand five hundred years. That’s some old chunk of rock, I had to admit. I know that World War II was in the 1940s. That was less than a century ago. I know that the Civil War was in the 1860s. So that was like a hundred and fifty years ago. The Declaration of Independence was 1776. That’s about as far back as my mind can imagine. I can’t wrap my head around something that’s thirty-five centuries old.
Cleopatra’s Needle had some weird ancient symbols carved into the sides. So I guess it’s from prehistoric times or whatever. But I wasn’t going to ask any specifics, because my mom would go into a long history of the thing and I’d be stuck having to be here for hours.
“It was carved in 1461 BCE,” my mom told me.
So what? Just because something is old doesn’t mean I need to care about it. Mom’s always trying to get me interested in the stuff that she’s interested in. I’m not falling for that old trick. Nobody tells me what I should be interested in.
Mom takes us places. We live in New Jersey. It’s not that far to get on a train or bus into New York, so we go to the city from time to time. She means well, but unless it’s a game or the Thanksgiving Day parade or something cool, I just don’t care.
My sister had to go to a birthday party today, so Mom took me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I had to look at a bunch of sculptures and paintings and stuff—yawn. The place goes on forever. Afterward we got hot dogs from a vendor on the street and she took me to Cleopatra’s Needle. It’s right behind the museum, in Central Park.
“This obelisk weighs about two hundred and twenty tons,” Mom explained. “The pedestal alone is fifty tons.”
She started rattling off statistics, the way she does. She likes numbers.
“It’s sixty-nine feet high,” she said. “And each side is eight feet across.”
“That’s fascinating, Mom,” I said semi-sarcastically. “Can we go now?”
“Of course, there wasn’t a city here in 1461 BCE,” Mom continued. “This obelisk was carved in Egypt, in a place called Aswan. It’s about five hundred miles south of Cairo....”
Did I mention that my mom makes her living as a storyteller? She goes to schools and fairs and tells stories. Not just for kids. For everybody. She does the voices of all the different characters and everything. She really knows how to suck you into a story. Sometimes they’re true stories. Sometimes she just makes stuff up.
Anyway, I have to sit through her stories all the time. She considers it a challenge to try to get me hooked.
“Think about it,” she said. “People in ancient Egypt carved this giant obelisk out of solid granite. Then in 1880, somebody managed to load it onto a boat. Then they brought it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. Then they unloaded it at the Hudson River. Then they dragged it across Manhattan and stood it up right here. And remember, back then they didn’t have trucks, airplanes, computers...”
I had to fight my temptation to ask her how it was possible to do all that stuff with old technology.
“There’s a secret hidden inside Cleopatra’s Needle, you know,” Mom told me.
Okay, I’ll bite. I can’t resist a secret.
