Cleopatra's Needle is not such a needle as we use to sew with: it is a great stone--sometimes called an obelisk--nearly seventy feet long, and about seven feet square at the base on which it stands. Its sides gradually taper from the bottom until at the top it ends in a small pointed four-sided pyramid. It is of red granite, and the sides are covered all over with pictures of birds, animals, and other things, cut into the stone. It is called a needle because it is so long and slender. But why it should be called Cleopatra's Needle is not quite so clear. Cleopatra was a famous Queen who lived in Egypt a little while before the birth of Christ. She was a very beautiful woman, and well educated; but she did many foolish things, and some very wicked things; and, as such people often are, she, though a great Queen, was at last so very unhappy that she wickedly put an end to her own life. This obelisk was at first erected by Thothmes III., one of the old Kings of Egypt, at Heliopolis, about 3600 years ago. It was taken from that place to Alexandria, where Cleopatra lived, not long after her death, by the Roman Emperor Augustus Cæsar, as a trophy of his victory over the Kings of Egypt, and it was called "Cleopatra's Needle," we suppose, merely in compliment to the late Queen. Egypt is supposed to be the oldest nation in the world. The Kings used to be called Pharaohs, and many of them were very great and powerful. Some were great warriors, others were great builders--builders of pyramids, cities, temples, and obelisks. They were very vain of their glory, and they were great boasters, fond of inscribing their names and deeds on stone. Cleopatra's Needle is one of two great obelisks which one of these Pharaohs erected, and placed one on each side of the entrance to the Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis. The Egyptians worshipped the sun as their god under the name of Ra, and the name of Pharaoh, by which the Egyptian Kings were known, means "a son of the sun." The Pharaohs did great honor to their sun-god, as they thought they were his children. The Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis was the greatest in all Egypt, and its ruins now cover nearly a mile in extent. Thothmes erected these obelisks at the entrance to this Temple of the Sun, partly in honor to the sun-god, and partly to honor himself, as he wrote his own history up and down the sides of the obelisk, not in letters such as we use, but in pictures of birds, animals, and other things, which kind of writing these old Egyptians used, and we call them hieroglyphics. This obelisk stood a great many years near the door of this temple at Heliopolis--or, as it is called in the Bible, "the city of On"--where it was at first erected.