The biggest draw for me in the Embankment are was Cleopatra's Needle, a large
obelisk flanked by a pair of sphinxes right along the River Thames:
Cleopatra's Needle and a back of a sphinx
Cleopatra's Needle (tilted for maximal detail in frame)
southern sphinx, the London Eye behind it
northern sphinx, the Waterloo Bridge behind it
The plaques along the sides of the Needle's base relate the spire's long
history:
| "This obelisk, quarried at Syene, was erected at On (Heliopolis) by the Pharaoh Thothmes III about 1500 BC. Lateral inscriptions were added nearly two centuries later by Ramses the Great. Removed during the Greek dynasty to Alexandria, the royal city of Cleopatra, it was there erected in the Year of Augustus Caesar, BC 12. / This obelisk, prostrate for centuries on the sands of Alexandria, was presented to the British nation AD 1819 by Mahommed Ali, Viceroy of of Egypt. A worth memorial of our distinguished countrymen, Nelson and Abercromby. / Through the patriotic zeal of Erasmus Wilson F.R.S., this obelisk was brought from Alexandria encased in an iron cylinder. It was abandoned during a storm in the Bay of Biscay. Recovered and erected on this spot by John Dixon C.E. in the 42nd year of the reign of Queen Victoria, 1878." |
I also got a picture of one of the nearby interesting lampposts that line the Thames.
Wandering around the Embankment Gardens a bit, I came across a couple of interesting WWI memorials, one from the people of Belgium and a Camel Corps memorial, "To the glorious and immortal memory of the officers, NCOs, and men of the Imperial Camel Corps - British, Australian, New Zealand, Indian - who fell in action or died of wounds and disease in Egypt, Sinai, and Palestine, 1916-1917-1918"