Golden tip fixed atop Paris obelisk

PARIS

Though few onlookers have ever noticed, the famed golden-topped obelisk at the center of Place de la Concorde in Paris has stood without a tip for nearly 200 years - until June 20.

In a ceremony attended by VIPs, a trainee craftworker showed no signs of vertigo as she placed a new gold-plated point atop the 3,000-year-old monument, which was gift to France from Egypt in 1830.

The obelisk from the Luxor Temple "arrived in Paris without its tip which had been eroded over centuries," French conservation expert Isabelle Morin-Loutrel explained to AFP.

"The hieroglyphs and bas-reliefs [sculptures] at Egyptian tombs show the obelisks as pointed. We don't know how long the Luxor Obelisk has been without a tip, but probably for a very long time," she added.

Workers in charge of restoring the obelisk, a process which began last year, decided to correct the anomaly.

The new tip is made from gold-plated steel and was crafted by a specialized metalworking company near Versailles - the Ateliers d'art Saint-Jacques and the Fonderie de Coubertin - under the supervision of the culture ministry.

Egypt gifted the 23-meter obelisk to France in recognition of work by French Egyptologist Jean-Francois Champollion who deciphered hieroglyphs for the first time.