Baalbek
-
From The New Guilds — discuss here.
Hoofdstuk — Baalbek
Part II — Hoofdstuk
Trilithon in the west wall. Hajjar al-Hibla still lies in the quarry. Baalbek, Heliopolis in the Bekaa. Largest Jupiter sanctuary of Rome. Columns of almost twenty metres, diameter toward two and a half. That is Rome, three centuries of work.
Under it the other thing. West wall: three lying blocks, the Trilithon. Length around 19.0 to 19.4 metres. Height around 4.3. Thickness around 3.6 to a little over 4. Weight per piece on the order of 750 to 800 tons, in some surveys higher. Under that a ring of hundreds of tons per block. In the quarry, about 800 metres on: Hajjar al-Hibla, the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, a thousand tons and more, never departed. German campaigns found still larger, partly cut, probably for a third course that was never set.
The quarry lies a little higher. Sledge, roller, ramp: the Roman reading. Not ridiculous. Insufficient as a sentence without a number. 800 tons is not a wheelbarrow. The stonemasons’ guild measures the joints, the dressing, the transport path, and keeps open whether the podium is older than the columns.
What the guild does with this. Measure joints. Do not preach aliens. Do not swallow “just Romans” without the tonnage.
From The New Guilds by Job Joosten. Dossier, not a church. Posted in Kosmographia.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
