Created: 13 Mar 2025
Working document, updates will be noted in change log.
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In 1881, Lt. Commander Henry Honychurch Gorringe (1841-1885) famously transported an ancient Egyptian obelisk, popularly known as “Cleopatra’s Needle,” to New York. The obelisk made front-page news for years and became a point of national pride. Gorringe was, for a time, one of the most celebrated men in America, touring the country to exhibit artifacts and writing an important book in 1882, Egyptian Obelisks.
Remarkably, though, for all the research and popular interest in the obelisk, one important detail has been nearly forgotten:
During the 1879-80 excavation, Gorringe reported finding a group of Cleopatra’s bronze coins “under the obelisk” (1882: 73). He published photos of four of their obverses in his book [note]:
Edited from the published plate
Such a “foundation deposit” (if that’s correct) would have significant implications. But coin finds were little understood in the 19th century. And, just a few years later, Gorringe died at age 43. The coins, which he had been permitted (astonishingly) to keep in his private collection, fell into obscurity for 140 years.
Until now. In February 2025, one of the Cleopatra bronzes published by Gorringe reappeared at auction. (Top left.) It is now in my collection:
BACKGROUND
In fact, there are two “Cleopatra’s Needles.” The other is in London on the Thames (wiki). For nearly 3,500 years they were a pair, separated only in the 1870s.
Their shared history: First erected in the 15th century BCE in Heliopolis, by Thutmose III. Re-inscribed in the 13th by Ramses II. In the 6th, they were toppled & burned by invading Persians. Then, circa 13 BCE, relocated to Alexandria by Augustus, eighteen years after conquering Egypt’s last Pharaoh, Cleopatra VII. They were raised outside the Caesareum, Cleopatra’s temple for Julius Caesar, reconsecrated by Augustus (to himself). Around 1300, one obelisk was toppled again by an earthquake, where it lay until 1877, when the fallen obelisk was taken to London.
Finally, in 1881, the standing obelisk was brought to the United States by Commander Gorringe, with funding from W.H. Vanderbilt (1821-1885), and raised in Central Park across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Key actors listed below.)
Having arrived at the peak of American “Egyptomania” (wiki), for better or worse, the New York Obelisk has been the subject of 145 years of scholarship and diplomacy, illustrated in children’s books and cigarette ads, filmed for documentaries and TikToks, commemorated in medals and ceremonies, gazed upon by the unceasing font of tourists, and served as a navigational landmark for hundreds of generations of NYC pigeons.
Sources Linked: The Obelisks in Alexandria (c. 1737-8), in New York (c. 1881) & (c. 2013)
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One more famous detail about “Cleopatra’s Needles”:
The events above happened either before the great Queen’s birth or after her death. Thus, the nickname is a misnomer; Cleopatra had nothing to do with the obelisks… Or did she?
THE FIND
Any ancient coin find with a known location is valuable data, but the most important and rarest are “foundation deposits,” ceremonially buried at the start of a building’s construction [note]. Crawford’s (2003) bibliography of “Thesauri, Hoards and Votive Deposits” cited only 30 foundation deposits, just one of them in Egypt:
“ALEXANDRIA. H. H. Gorringe, Egyptian Obelisks, New York, 1882, p. 72-3 (four bronze coins of Cleopatra) – obelisk: Augustus.” (Crawford [2003]: Appendix I)
By the 1870s, there was a consensus that Augustus transported the obelisks to Alexandria and erected them in front of the Caesareum only after Cleopatra’s death, having defeated her in war and effectively conquering her kingdom (30 BCE). That fact remains uncontested. (Gorringe was in full agreement.)
What would it mean, then, for coins of Cleopatra to be discovered underneath obelisks raised by Augustus? Why so important?
THE IMPLICATIONS
If the coins were a foundation deposit, the implications would be significant. At least three possibilities are worth considering:
- Cleopatra may have laid the foundations (planning to bring the obelisks to Alexandria).
In this scenario, Cleopatra was prevented from transporting and raising the obelisks by war with Octavian. This seems to have been Gorringe’s opinion. [note] - Augustus laid the foundations, but the builders may have been loyal to Cleopatra’s memory.
Although Augustus initially suppressed her worship and destroyed her images, the cult of Cleopatra persisted. Might the deposit suggest posthumous devotion or even an act of resistance against Augustus and Rome? - Gorringe was wrong.
He needn’t have been dishonest, but could have misinterpreted “stray finds” as deliberate deposit, or been misled by someone else, or made any number of other mistakes. Alternatively, Gorringe may have reported things accurately, but was misinterpreted by his readers, myself included.
While remaining agnostic, I’ll share some bits of context about the find. The evidence regarding its nature is distinctly equivocal.
Forty years later, Gorringe’s assistant, Lt. Seaton Schroeder gave a corroborating account in his memoir, hinting at a larger find of coins, of which these were only the four clearest (1922, A Half Century of Naval Service: 145): “Among the foundation stones of the pedestal a number of coins were found, most of them very much defaced and corroded ; but some were in good enough condition to be recognized as coins of Cleopatra’s reign.“
Yet, when Gaston Feuardent exhibited the coins at the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society (now ANS) in 1883, he did not mention a foundation deposit (per W. Poillon’s account). He showed 449 coins “found in the excavations round the obelisk,” described as “pieces of money lost and dropped at different times” from the 4th cent. BCE to 1868 and itemized in some detail [note]. The Cleopatras were presumably among the “Thirteen coins struck during the reigns of the of the various Ptolemies, B.C. 300-30” (apparently all bronze). But the only coins characterized as a deliberate deposit were 77 Tetrarchic Folles, described in some detail [note].
At least one contemporary, Alexander del Mar (1885: 143), suggested that Gorringe “seems to have been mistaken.” The basis for his opinion may have been correct at the time, that no other Ptolemaic numismatic foundation deposits had been found. It is worth noting, though, that there have been recent reports of a foundation deposit consisting of the same types of coins at the nearby Taposiris Magna (excavated since 2005 by K. Hernandez et al.).
DISCUSSION
We are left today with an unsatisfying picture. Given the significance of the excavation, though, it is worth searching out and organizing what information remains now.
The untimely death of Commander Gorringe also made things harder (he fell from a train in 1885). Over the next thirty years, the coins passed to a series of heirs before a vacationing archaeologist learned they were stored in a local attic, along with many other artifacts from the site (Mercer 1914 & Mercer 1916).
At that time, the coins numbered only about 300 (out of 449 reported excavation coins, plus Gorringe’s other Greek and Roman coins, of which he was an avid collector). What remained of the collection was held by Worcester Art Museum (WAM), 1915-2015, but the excavation coins seem not to have been recognized or separated from the rest of the collection [note].
At least 68 coins were then sold by Kaminski Auctions in eight lots in November, 2015. At least three of the coins appear identifiable as coins from the excavation, including one of the four Cleopatra bronzes, now mine and two Tetrarchic Folles from the hoard of 77. The whereabouts of the other three Cleopatras and 75 Tetrarchs remain a mystery, at least for the moment.
APPENDIX: OBJECT BIOGRAPHY
- c. 47-40 BCE (?): Struck at Alexandria for local circulation in Egypt.
- c. 44-13 BCE (?): Left at site of the Caesareum in Alexandria, possible obelisk “foundation deposit” (?).
- 1879: Excavated by Lt. Cmd. Henry Honychurch Gorringe (1841-1885) w/ three other Cleopatra AEs (possibly more).
- 1882: Published by Gorringe, Egyptian Obelisks: p. 72-3, photograph by Edward Bierstadt (1824-1906) & portrait by French artist Louis Mounier (1852–1937) based on the coins.
- 1881-1885: Examined by Gaston Feuardent (1843-1893), exhibited in NY (ANS & other institutions), Detroit, Philadelphia, etc., as mentioned in various proceedings, journal & news articles, and exhibition catalogs & reports [biblio on file].
- 1885-1914: Gorringe died suddenly in 1885; his collection fell into obscurity while in possession of the heirs.
- 1914: Collection found in an attic; notice published by U. Toronto Egyptology professor Samuel Mercer (1914, 1916).
- 1915-2015: Worcester Art Museum (Worcester, MA). Some artifacts exhibited, most kept in storage, little attention to coins.
- 2015: Collection auctioned, artifacts at Christie’s (NY) & coins and artifacts at Kaminski (MA & CA). Two groups of coins acq. by Washington DC collector & ophthalmologist, Briggs Bralliar: Kaminski, Nov. 2015, Lot 2106 (10 Coins incl. this coin & one other I bought) and Lot 2108 (10 Coins). [Alt: Lot 2106 & Lot 2108]
- 2025: Auctioned by Naville on 23 Feb (almost 144 years to the day after NY Obelisk raised in Central Park), provenance given as: “From the Gorringe collection and from the Dr. Briggs Bralliar collection.”
ENDNOTES
Notes: Cleopatra Plate (Gorringe 1882: p. 72-f.) [return]
Louis Mounier (1852–1937 [PDF bio, SoJourn 5.2, p. 17]), a French-American artist, was commissioned to create a composite portrait of Cleopatra from the four coins, which were captured by renowned photographer and printer Edward Bierstadt (1824-1906), who owned the American rights to the collotype process for printing halftone photos (all his Gorringe photos labeled “Artotype,” but usually “autotype” in the USA; sometimes “Albertype,” for his business partner and brother, himself a famous painter [see also Kirby 1976]). These are surely among the first ancient coin photos in a book. (Perhaps the earliest for an excavation report?)
In the 1880s and 1890s, most publications still used line drawings to illustrate coins. The earliest adopters of coin photography were dealers and auctions houses; a handful of American sale catalogs had illustrated ancient coins between 1869 and 1882 (Fanning noted about ten; there were two or three more in Europe).
The influence of Gaston Feuardent (1843-1893), French coin dealer-archaeologist who handled the coins, may be visible in one telling detail: the coins are photographed from plaster casts. In the United States, the coins themselves were usually photographed, while the European practice until the mid-20th century was to photograph casts (thus capturing the details of the coin without being distracted by color variations and other surface qualities).
Notes: Hoards and Deposits [return]
Technically, one may distinguish between hoards and deposits, as the former were intended to be recovered later (e.g., a “savings hoard”), while the latter were meant to remain buried, typically for ritual reasons (e.g., a “votive deposit” was a gift to the gods). “Losses” represent a third category, ranging from spectacular treasures in shipwrecks to the common “stray finds” at archaeological sites, usually the lower-value coins dropped in daily life at the market or other public spaces.
Each kind of find offers different possibilities for informing us about the past. In practice, of course, the type of find is always an empirical question, and open to interpretation or potential challenge. Details of the context are always what matter. Unfortunately, the difficulties outlined by Crawford apply very much in this case:
“The problem can be very simply posed, namely that almost without exception, as far as I know, our archaeological evidence comes from secondary deposits, after the coins and other votives had been removed from their original place of deposit … before the days of scientific recording; and the excavations…remain for all practical purposes unpublished.” (Crawford [2003] “Thesauri, Hoards and Votive Deposits“)
Notes: Foundations [return]
Gorringe elaborated (Egyptian Obelisks, 1882: 72): “…archaeologists have assumed that she had nothing to do with removing them, as she had been dead about eight years [corr.: 18 years] when they were re-erected. Traditions cannot be disposed of by assumptions ; there is every reason to believe that Cleopatra ordered the removal of the obelisks.”
Sir William Erasmus, who transported the other obelisk to London, wrote similarly (Cleopatra’s Needle…, 1878: 12): “It is not, however, at all improbable that … the setting-up of the obelisks may have been part of her plan.”
Notes: Excavation Coins [return]
From William Poillon’s (1883: 21-24) account of Gaston Feuardent’s exhibition at the 25th Annual Meeting, 20 March 1883, published in the Proceedings of the American Numismatic and Archaeological Society of New York, vol. 25. (There were previous exhibitions of coins from the Gorringe cabinet, but this is the only published list of the excavation finds to my knowledge.)
449 coins “found in the excavations round the obelisk,” from 4th BCE to 1868. “They represent, with the exception of seventy-seven coins, to which he called special attention, the pieces of money lost and dropped at different times by the visitors who went to examine, at Alexandria, that venerable monument which now adorns Central Park. The metal of these coins is bronze, with the exception of ten small silver coins struck by Arabians.” Note that the “bronze” coins doubtless include billon Tetradrachms (e.g., the Commodus lighthouse Tetradrachm). (I suspect a few others may have been silver, but a bit more investigation is needed to be confident.)
3 Greek AE (Athens, Roman-era Smyrna & Troas, Alexandria); 13 Ptolemaic AE (300-30 BCE); 21 Early Roman (Augustus to Commodus); 1 Severan; 77 Tetrarchic (below) & 55 Late Roman (220-400 CE, incl. two Serapis-Nilus “Festival of Isis” attributed to Julian II, now sometimes assigned to Maximinus II); 227 Byzantine (from Anastasius “to the family of the Ducas, A.D. 1000”); 46 Islamic (10 AR, 36 AE, c. early 1700s [?] to Sultan Abdul Mejid [1839-1861]); 6 European/British (George IV penny 1826, “a piece of 8 reis of Ferdinand VII of Spain, dated 1829,” Greek 10 Lepta 1847, Italian 10 Centisimi 1852, 5 Centisimi Victor Emmanuel 1861, Queen Victoria Farthing 1868).
The 77 Tetrarchic coins were given special attention due to being a deliberate hoard, of which Gorringe reported “the lot specified was one found by him all together, and at a distance of twenty feet from the obelisk, on the north side.” They were “not lost or dropped, like the other coins, but that they certainly composed the treasure of some person who, between the years 292 and 305 A.D., selected the obelisk as a landmark where he might bury his treasure in safety.” Contents: All with a single reverse type (GENIO POPVLI ROMANI), from Alexandria (54), Antioch (9), and Siscia (3), struck contemporaneously, representing all four Tetrarchs: Diocletian, Augustus (38), Maximianus, Augustus (16), Constantius I, Caesar (10), Galerius, Caesar (13). Two of them appear to have been auctioned at Kaminski in 2015, parts of Lot 2101 (Galerius) & Lot 2104 (Diocletian, Alexandria). [return]
Notes: Collection [return]
I have an additional bibliography with more information about Gorringe’s collection(s), which he formed both before and after transporting the obelisk. He sold a previous collection of Kyrene coins to Feuardent c. 1876-9. His taste seems to have been for high-value ancient gold and other rarities. Thus, I suspect most of the 68 coins sold at Kaminski in 2015, having spent a century in WAM storage, were largely excavation coins. The Roman AR Denarii and several others are excluded by Poillon’s (1883: 21-24) account summarized above, though. The three Ptolemy Tetradrachms (one now in my coll., Naville 94-228) certainly look to be from a single find (two of them roughly separated from an encrusted conglomeration); were they a hoard, from where?
KEY ACTORS
Bierstadt, Edward (1824-1906) (wiki): Photographer & printer in business with brothers, then owner of American rights to the collotype process (“artotype” or “Albertype”). Produced the plates for Gorringe’s book.
Erasmus, Sir William (1809-1884) (wiki): Wealthy London surgeon who financed transport of London obelisk. Author of 1878 Cleopatra’s Needle: With Brief Notes on Egypt and Egyptian Obelisks.
Feuardent, Gaston (1843-1893) (NNP): French archaeologist and numismatist, NY branch of Feuardent Frères (Paris), partner with father Felix (1819-1907) & brother Léon-Félix Feuardent (1849-1931). Purchased an earlier collection from Gorringe. Examined the coins and artifacts from the excavation and published important monograph on the inscribed bronze crabs from the base of the obelisk.
Gorringe, Henry Honychurch (1841-1885) (wiki; USN obit): Lieutenant Commander in the US Navy. Served in the Civil War and national hydrographic service. Discovered the “Gorringe Ridge.” Responsible for excavation and transporting the obelisk from Alexandria to NY. Authored Egyptian Obelisks (1882, reprinted 1885) [from HEIDI ; from Archive].
Hurlbert, William H. (1827-1895) (wiki): American journalist briefly at New York Times, most of career at New York World. Spearheaded the effort to secure an obelisk for New York City. Presumed author of important Civil War account, “The Diary of a Public Man.”
Mounier, Louis (1852–1937) (PDF bio): French-American portrait painter & sculptor. Created the portrait of Cleopatra used in Gorringe’s book, based on the bronze coins from the excavation. Published an essay in Vineland Historical Magazine (1933) on “Trials and Hardships of Immigrants,” reproduced with bio in SoJourn 5.2, pp. 17f (to PDF).
Pasha, Ismail (1830-1895) (wiki): The Khedive of Egypt, 1863-1879. Presided over the transport of the London Obelisk and, following diplomatic negotiations, “gifted” the NY Obelisk to the USA.
Schroeder, Seaton (1849-1922) (wiki): Lieutenant in the US Navy. Assisted Gorringe with the excavation and transport of the obelisk. Author of 1922 memoir, A Half Century of Naval Service [on Archive].
Vanderbilt, William H. (1821-1885) (wiki): American railroad magnate. Financier of the project to transport the NY Obelisk (approximately $100,000 plus various overage costs).
IMAGE SOURCES
“The Late Commander Gorringe,” The New York Public Library Digital Collections (public domain). Cleopatra Portrait (Mounier 1881) & coin photos (Bierstadt), published in Gorringe 1882, high quality image from Rijksmuseum Digital Collection RP-F-2001-7-1549-25 (public domain). Wikipedia: Obelisk in Alexandria (c. 1737-8) & New York (c. 2013). Gorringe 1882, Obelisk in New York (c. 1881) & Cleopatra coins. Naville Numismatics Auction 94 (23 Feb 25), Lot 236.
SELECTED REFERENCES &
BACKGROUND READING
Note: This is a very abbreviated list. I have additional bibliographies covering various related topics, including exhibitions of the Gorringe coins and reports in newspapers and journals.
Brier, Bob. 2002. “Saga of Cleopatra’s Needles.” Archaeology, Vol. 55, No. 6 (November/December 2002), pp. 48-54 [on JSTOR]
Christie’s (NY), Auction: 9 Dec 2015. Lots from the Gorringe Collection [Christie’s archive; see “Lot Essay“]
Crawford, Michael. 2003. “Thesauri, hoards and votive deposits,” pp. 69-84, in Sanctuaires et Sources…, de Cazanove & Scheid, eds. [“Appendix I: Foundation Deposits,” on openedition]
D’Alton, Martina. 1993. The New York Obelisk, or, How Cleopatra’s Needle Came to New York and What Happened When It Got Here. [on Archive]
Erasmus, Sir Wilson. 1878. Cleopatra’s Needle: With Brief Notes on Egypt and Egyptian Obelisks [on Archive]
Feuardent, Gaston. 1881. “The Bronze Crabs of the Obelisk.” Paper read at 1881 Am. Num. & Arch. Soc. Meeting, published 1881 ANS Proceedings [reportedly, but I don’t actually find it there, though other papers by Feuardent & relevant to Gorringe & obelisk are present; on Hathi]
Gorringe, Henry. 1882. Egyptian Obelisks. New York [from HEIDI ; from Archive]
Habachi, Labib. 1977. The Obelisks of Egypt : Skyscrapers of the Past. pp. 176-182 [on Archive]
Kaminski (MA), Auction: 28 Nov 2015. Catalog intro. [on prweb] Gorringe Coin Lots, w/ bio [on liveauctioneers]
London, Capt. John J. 1943. “How ‘Cleopatra’s Needle’ Was Brought to America.” US Naval Institute Proceedings Vol. 69/8/486 [from USNI]
Mercer, Samuel A.B. 1914. “The Gorringe Collection of Egyptian Antiquities.” Recueil de Travaux… XXXVI: 176-178 [on HEIDI]
Mercer, Samuel A.B. 1916. “The Gorringe Collection.” Ancient Egypt (Issue 1): 49-52 [on Archive]
Merriam, Augustus C. 1883. “The Caesareum and the Worship of Augustus at Alexandria.” Transactions of the American Philological Association (1869-1896), Vol. 14: 5-35 [on JSTOR]
Naville Numismatics (London), Auction 94: 23 Feb 2025. “Gorringe”: 6 Lots [on Biddr], see also Lot 152 (Miletos Drachm) & Lot 228 (Ptolemy Tetradrachm), both ex-Gorringe [Kaminski 2106] but not noted as such
Schroeder, Seaton. 1922. A Half Century of Naval Service [on Archive]
Wikipedia articles: