From The Manse Window

From the manse window

CLEOPATRA’S NEEDLE is the name given to the ancient Egyptian obelisk sited in the City of Westminster, on the Victoria Embankment near the Golden Jubilee Bridges.

The obelisk in London is one of a pair, as there is an equivalent “needle” in New York’s Central Park, near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which we have had the privilege of seeing up close.

The London version was originally erected in the Egyptian city of Heliopolis around 1450 BC, but in 1819 it was given to Britain.

It’s recorded that Queen Cleopatra brought the obelisk from Heliopolis to Alexandria just before the time of Christ, for the purpose of decorating a new temple, but it was never erected and lay buried in the sand on the seashore until it was presented to the British nation in 1819.

However, the shared name of the two obelisks is a bit of a misnomer, because history tells us that they were already over a thousand years old during the lifetime of Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt!

The London Cleopatra sits on Victoria Embankment, “guarded” by two sphinxes, also in the form of statues.

The sphinxes look towards Cleopatra, but they were wrongly positioned!

When the monument was erected here, the two sphinxes were fixed facing in the wrong direction.

Apparently they should have been sited looking outwards, in order to protect Cleopatra and to be ready to chase off anything or anyone who might attempt to threaten or attack.

Inward-looking instead of outward-looking was the thought that immediately struck me.

On occasion this is a fault levelled against all of us, because in truth we’re all a wee bit guilty of being too inward-looking from time to time.

We’re so taken up with our own concerns and worries that sometimes we tend to forget that there are so many other people out there whose problems and concerns put ours into the shade.

Not that we don’t have problems, worries and concerns – they are all part and parcel of life – but it’s perhaps a case of putting them into perspective.

Maybe we all need to be a bit more outwardlooking.

You may recall that it was Jesus who said to his disciples to go out into all the world and tell people everywhere about him and his love.

I’m sure that generally this is the direction we should all face, too.

And for those who are supportive of Jesus’s cause, be sure that this is the direction in which he would have you go – outwards into all the world to tell his story and to display his love! ■

Next week: David Mclaughlan asks what we do with love.