Pompey's Pillar (column)
31.18108529.896545Koordinaten: 31 ° 10 ' 52 "N, 29 ° 53' 48" E
The Pompey's Pillar is a Roman triumphal column in Alexandria (Egypt). The freestanding column is the largest, which was built outside of the imperial capitals of Rome and Constantinople Opel: The column height is along with the base and the Corinthian capital 26,85 m. The monolithic column shaft made of red Assuangranit is 20.46 m high, the diameter at the base 2.71 m. The weight of the shaft is estimated at 285 t, of which it can be counted among the largest monolith of the ancient world and the world's largest monolithic columns. [A 1]
It is located in the southern part of the city, between the lake Mariut and the Mediterranean, near the catacombs and the Arab cemetery - an area that is now called Amoud El Sawary ( = " column of the rider ," as the Arabs the column an equestrian statue assumed). The Pompey's Pillar stands on the remains of an ancient wall, a covered with architectural fragments and debris Hill, over the ruins of the old, widely famous Serapeum.
Named after the column is Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus ( 106-48 BC), on whose grave it to have been built; Appian and Cassius Dio to find the information that Caesar is said to have buried the severed head of his enemy in Alexandria. According to Plutarch, the ashes of the head Cornelia was sent that she could be buried in the carrier Albanus.
Another grave of Pompey in Pelusium, where the burnt remains of his body to have been buried, was during the visit to Egypt of the Emperor Hadrian ( 130/131 AD) along with the votive offerings and statues, the followers and former companion of Pompey had placed there, restored. Fate, in a - today - to have found unknown grave in Alexandria the final resting divides Pompey the Great with another great of the world's history, with one, appeared to be similar Pompey and the people like to compare him in his lifetime: with Alexander the Great.
But it was not built in honor of Pompey, but in the year 297/298 AD by the governor of Egypt, [ Aelius ] Publius, in honor of the Emperor Diocletian, after this victory in 296 AD to the Christians Achilles which had the anti-emperor Lucius Domitius Domitianus title of appropriated won. It is uncertain whether the Pompey's Pillar was originally a statue of Diocletian. The so-called Nile mosaic from the 5th century, which was exposed in the Israeli city of Sepphoris, shows a scene from Egypt with several buildings, including a column with a statue on top.
As the only largely intact testimony of the Greek and Roman antiquity Alexandria in situ, included a tour of Pompey since the 18th century to the " mandatory program " of any Egypt travelers, which was reflected in the literature, such as in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, in which noted that a pile of huge means of a crane backbone ( spine ) of a Wales recall the Pompey's Pillar.