Camel Caravan

• The humpsAll four camels have two humps: they are Bactrian camels. This species lives in Central Asia; the camel typical of Egypt is the one-humped dromedary.
• The pyramid's stonesThe horizontal lines on its side mark the courses of stone.
• The palm treeAt the right edge of the needle's eye, its fronds spread like a fan.
• The wall of the needleThe whole scene stands inside the eye; nothing sticks out.

• MaterialGold, 6 separate pieces: 4 camels, 1 pyramid, 1 palm tree
• BaseThe eye of a sewing needle; an average sewing needle is 0.6–0.7 mm thick, and its eye is narrower still
• One camel's legAbout 5 microns, more than ten times thinner than an average human hair
• 1974Year created

All six elements are separate pieces of gold. Before they were fixed, a single breath or the slightest draught could have blown them away, so the artist made the most delicate movements between two heartbeats. He describes this himself in his essay “How I Do It”.

• In the Babylonian Talmud (Berakhot 55b), Rava, a 4th-century sage, teaches that no one is ever shown a golden palm tree or an elephant passing through the eye of a needle in a dream – because no one has ever seen such things while awake. Here you can see a golden palm tree wide awake, and inside the eye of a needle at that.
• You may have heard that the “Eye of the Needle” was a narrow gate in Jerusalem that a camel could pass through only by stooping, without its load. The story spread in the Middle Ages, but there is no evidence that such a gate ever existed.