 A 3500-year-old Egyptian obelisk stands at 69 feet tall in New York City. The 220-ton obelisk was carved from a single piece of stone from Aswan in Upper Egypt. Upon completion, ancient Egyptian engineers transported it to Heliopolis. This symbolized the living deities absolute power, energy, immortality, duality, and balance. The central park's obelisk is one of two obelisks, Pharaoh put most of the third place at the gate of the temple of the sun in ancient Heliopolis, east of the modern-day city of Cairo. Heliopolis is considered one of the most ancient Egyptian cities and the worship hub of the Sun God Ra. The second obelisk, also called Cleopatra's Needle, stands on the Thames Embankment in London, England. In 12 BC, the Egyptian queen Cleopatra brought the two obelisks from the ancient city of Heliopolis to Alexandria. Since then, the two obelisks have been known as Cleopatra's Needles. The Greek engineers added bronze crabs to support the damaged bases to erect the two giant obelisks. In Greek mythology, crabs are linked with Apollo, the Sun God. In 10 BC, Emperor Augustus transported two obelisks to Rome. By the 17th century, obelisks were placed in front of many Catholic churches in Rome to symbolize the church's power and authority. Even Vatican City has its 4,500-year-old obelisk at the center of St. Peter's Square. Today, Rome is the Egyptian obelisk's capital of the world. In 1877, while the Egyptians struggled to raise money to construct the Suez Canal, Cadewi Ismail Pasha, the monarch of Egypt, donated the two Cleopatra's Needles to England and the United States. The Americans spent $100,000 to transport the obelisk to Central Park, and $18,000 was paid to the Englishmen who persuaded Ismail Pasha to donate it to America. The 9,000 miles to Central Park was a complex engineering operation. Unlike the British, who secured the obelisk inside a steel cylinder and used a tugboat to tow it to England, the Americans used a specially modified steamer to transport the obelisk across the ocean to New York. The American engineers used parallel beams supported by roll boxes and a piledriver engine. The engineers loaded the obelisk through the ship's hull with cannonballs. It took almost three weeks to sail from Egypt to America, and nearly four months from when the ancient obelisk arrived at the banks of the Hudson River until it reached its final destination in the middle of Central Park. In January 1881, Cleopatra's Needle moved to its new home in the heart of New York City.