Zahi Hawass, the prickly man in charge of Egypt’s antiquities, told Mayor Bloomberg off last week via letter. Cleopatra’s Needle has been poking out of Central Park since 1881 and the olde phallus is “severely weathered” according to the keeper of Giza and if the city won’t care for it, he will gladly take the obelisk back to “save it from ruin.”

The NYC Parks Department responded that there’s been no significant erosion since we’ve had the 3,500-year-old obelisk and that we didn’t rub off the Masonic hieroglyphs, ahem.

(Image: Asterix611)