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The Luxor Obelisks stood in Ancient Egypt for thousands of years A symmetrical pair, they were designed to mirror each other, twin columns of stone They were erected outside the Luxor temple along the Nile River, in what was once known as Thebes Time, and the elements, made their mark upon their hieroglyph-inscribed surfaces, but there, beside the Nile, they remained in place, enduring across epochs Until the French arrived Napoleon, ever conflicted about his small stature, decided he wanted a grand souvenir from Egypt, the largest he could get his hands on He requested the Luxor obelisks He just had to have them In 1830, then ruler of Ottoman Egypt, Muhammad Ali Pasha – by choice or by force who is to say – ‘gifted’ the obelisks to France In exchange, the Egyptians were given a mechanical clock that has been faulty since the day it arrived, its hands not ticking as they should Jean-Baptiste Apollinaire Lebas, a French engineer, devised an elaborate barge in which to take the ‘gifted’ obelisks to Paris, one at a time After the first arrived, and was installed theatrically at the centre of Place de la Concorde, it proved to be too expensive to move the second In One-Way Street (1979), Walter Benjamin writes of the Luxor Obelisk, stuck in Paris:    What was carved in it four thousand years ago stands at the center in the greatest of city squares Had that been foretold to the Pharaoh, what a feeling of triumph it would given him! The foremost Western cultural empire would one day bear at its center the memorial of his rule How does this apotheosis appear in reality? Not one among the tens of thousands who pass by pauses; not one among the tens of thousands who pause can read the inscription In such a way does all fame redeem its pledges, and no oracle can match its guile For the immortal stands like this obelisk, regulating the spiritual traffic that surges thunderously about him – and the inscription he bears helps no one   The obelisk’s hieroglyphics do not