On the other hand, despite their brilliant ability to move about burdens as
unprecedented as the Trilithon, the unknown architects lost their nerve at
the very end, the big block looming almost ready. There was no attempt to
move the practically finished block. This just does not behoove the solid
Roman engineers, especially the creme de la creme entrusted with the task by
the Emperor himself. Why did they leave behind a monument to their
engineering limits and human weaknesses, and by extrapolation - Roman
emperor's limitations? Again, this would be very un-Roman of them, and even
more so in view of what the same engineers saw at Aswan. It is a fact that
the big block still in a Baalbek quarry seems to weigh about the same as the
famous abandoned obelisk at Aswan, Egypt. Here, the question begs itself if
this really is by chance.
How could the two biggest ever blocks of quarried stone coincide in weight,
despite being made in different eras, by different techniques, and abandoned
for different reasons? Not likely, is it?
This thread gets funnier, when we learn that the fifty-four enormous columns
for the Jupiter's temple actually came from Aswan! There the Roman engineers
could not have missed witnessing the abandoned 1,170 ton obelisk, which the
Egyptians had obviously intended to move, prior to discovering that it was
cracked, a fatal flaw.
Did the obelisk somehow inspire Romans to quarry a block of the same weight
(albeit not proportion) at Baalbek, and then abandon it, when almost
complete, mimicking the Egyptians ad absurdum, every inch of the way? Monkey
see, monkey do? Is this not insane?
Another theory holds that work on the block stopped, when Rome suddenly
became Christian, and stopped all construction on the site. That is of
course impossible, because the retaining wall with the big blocks was long
complete by then, and where else would the big block go, other then the
retaining wall? So, none of the explanations makes sense
Then there is that utter lack of documentation for these stunning exploits,
which should have been proudly noted by Roman historians, politicians, and
so on. It's a little like if American history books skipped the fact that
America went to the Moon. Meanwhile, local legends ascribe the stones to the
time of Genesis. The big blocks were part of a fortress built there by
So, did Romans move the Trilithon blocks? Absolutely not! Romans had no
desire to move such weights, because they knew just as well as we do that
they could not move even substantially smaller blocks. History supports our
notion with solid evidence from the same time period.
When Augustus, emperor of Rome had conquered the region in 27 BC, he ordered
that the massive obelisk towering above others at the Karnak temple in Egypt
be brought to Rome, but the effort was aborted, when the trophy proved too
heavy. Sources give varying estimates of its weight, from 323 tons to 455
The discrepancy must stem from the fact that the original obelisk was 36
meters long, and had weighed 455 tons. Now that it is 4 meters shorter at
the base, it must be correspondingly lighter, and because obelisks are
always considerably thicker at the base than higher up, the loss of a
hundred tons would be realistic. So, the discrepancy is self-explanatory.
It seems to suggest a reason to why some 300 years later, Emperor
Constantine I (reigned A.D. 306-337) had succeeded where Augustus had
failed, namely, in taking the obelisk out of Egypt. But, in the process, the
pedestal and a large part of its base were destroyed. Well, since we are
talking about the otherwise indestructible Aswan granite, we have to deem
the obliteration of the thickest, strongest part of the obelisk deliberate.
Unable as they were to move the whole obelisk, the Romans had taken only as
much as they could carry. After all, Constantine's workers had similar
troubles with the obelisk of Tuthmoses III now standing in
Istanbul. Here is
a quote I found at Andrew Finkel's site:
"The decision to import the structure was taken by
Constantine himself. Rome
had at a dozen obelisks. His city