When Romans Moved Obelisks

For regular videos on ancient cultures and forgotten civilizations, please subscribe. Several emperors, including Augustus and Caligula, had giant granite obelisks transported from Egypt all the way to Rome. A notable event in those days. But as time passed, more and more obelisks from Egypt were brought to Rome. First century historian Pliny the Elder describes the transport this way, But the most difficult enterprise of all was the carriage of these obelisks by sea to Rome, in vessels that excited the greatest admiration. Indeed, the late emperor Augustus consecrated the one that brought over the first obelisk, as a lasting memorial of this marvelous undertaking, in the docks of Putioli. But it was destroyed by fire. As to the one in which, by order of the emperor Caligula, the other obelisk had been transported to Rome, after having been preserved for some years and looked upon as the most wonderful construction ever beheld upon the seas, it was brought to Ostia by order of the late emperor Claudius, and towers of Putiolan earth being first erected upon it. It was sunk for the construction of the harbor he was making there. The Pantheon in Rome, built during the reign of the emperor Hadrian, sports these magnificent granite columns, 40 Roman feet high, 5 Roman feet in diameter. They came all the way from Egypt. The eight light gray ones in the front, from Mons Claudianus, and the pink ones in the middle and back rows, from Aswan. One of these columns is estimated to weigh about 50 to 55 metric tons. A granite column such as found at Baalbek, being shorter and less wide than one from the Pantheon, would have weighed less. The emperor Maxentius had marble columns weighing more than a hundred tons each, along with thousands of tons of additional marble, transported from the island of Proconisus. 1,500 miles to the Roman Forum. Water transport, by the way, is much easier than land transport, so the bulk of the journey would have been a relative cinch. The largest cargo ships in Roman times could carry loads up to 250 tons, but sometimes special ships were constructed. A granite obelisk weighing 510 tons was transported from Thebes in Egypt, down the Nile to the Mediterranean by Constantine the Great. A gigantic ship had to be built to carry it. Ancient Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus recounts what happened with this massive monolith. Whereas Octavianus Augustus had brought over two obelisks from the city of Heliopolis in Egypt, one of which was set up in the Circus Maximus, the other in the Campus Martius, as for this one recently brought in, he neither ventured to meddle with it nor move it, overawed by the difficulties caused by its size. Let me inform those who do not know it that that early emperor, after bringing over several obelisks, passed by this one and left it untouched because it was consecrated as a special gift to the sun god, and because being placed in the sacred part of his sumptuous temple, which might not be profaned, there it towered aloft like the peak of the world. But Constantine, that is Constantine the Great, making little account of that, tore the huge mass from its foundations. And since he rightly thought that he was committing no sacrilege if he took this marvel from one temple and consecrated it at Rome, that is to say, in the temple of the whole world, he let it lie for a long time, while the things necessary for its transfer were being provided. And when it had been conveyed down the channel of the Nile and landed at Alexandria, a ship of a size hitherto unknown was constructed to be rowed by 300 oarsmen. Constantine died before he got it to Rome, and his son Constantius II completed the task. We have written documentation from Egypt that animals, camels usually, were used in the transportation of stone from the quarries to the Nile River. One papyrus speaking of a 50-foot column being transported in this way. A 50-foot column would have weighed about 150 tons. It's been calculated that a column weighing 207 tons would have exerted a pressure of 6.9 kilograms per square centimeter on the wheels of a 12-wheeled wagon. That's not an excessive load. One camel is capable of hauling one ton, so a 150-ton column would need 150 camels to move it. Is that unrealistic? Well, we have a record that speaks of 64 mules being used to haul a sarcophagus. The Roman poet Tobolus, musing about the life of a merchant, wrote, His fancy turns to foreign marbles, and through the trembling city his column is carried by one thousand sturdy pairs of oxen. This may be hyperbole, but clearly large teams of animals were used to move heavy items. There's no doubt that moving columns would have been expensive. Still, it would have been more expensive to move a bunch of column sections than one whole column because of the extra time involved or extra wagons and extra drivers needed. The raising of columns employed a variety of equipment, including cranes and lift towers. Vitruvius, a Roman engineer and architect, in the 10th book of his work On Architecture, describes how Greeks invented machines that could move and lift heavy blocks and columns in the construction of temples. If you want to read it, I'll leave a link below the video. Ammianus Marcellinus describes the erection of the 510-ton granite obelisk in the middle of the city of Rome during the reign of Constantius II. Now, there remained only the raising, which it was thought could be accomplished only with great difficulty, perhaps not at all. But it was done in the following manner. To tall beams, which were brought and raised on end like a grove of derricks, were fastened long and heavy ropes in the likeness of a manifold web to hide the sky with their excessive numbers. To these were attached that veritable mountain, and it was gradually drawn upon high through the empty air. And after hanging for a long time, while many thousand men turned wheels resembling millstones, it was finally placed in the middle of the circus. Today it stands before the Basilica of St. John Lateran.