In the south of Egypt, on the banks of the river Nile at Aswan, is one of the strangest riddles of antiquity, an ancient quarry. In between the many bizarre quarry marks that are characteristic to the area, lies an enormous obelisk. A deep trench has been chopped away so that the profile of the obelisk is clearly recognisable. But the base is still attached to the rock floor. Obviously the obelisk was never finished and one suspects that the clearly visible crack is the reason. The obelisk lies embedded in the rock mass with little or no manoeuvring space around it. How would this giant structure have been removed from the quarry if it had indeed been finished? The obelisk is of granite, one of the hardest rocks making it almost inconceivable how workers in the narrow trench were capable of carving the obelisk. Were diorite hammers used? A test was once performed, but without any result (see Lehner). 

The strange marks that are visible here have visitors standing in awe. There are no marks of pickaxes or stone hammers. The tracks resemble the markings of a coal shovel in the snow, but that would mean that the rock was once (relatively) soft. Exactly the same type of markings also exists in Peru, for example at Ollantaytambo. Is it possible that the same technique was used, 12000 km away, and 3000 years apart in time?