German archaeologists discovered the largest stone ever cut by man in ancient times. It dates back perhaps more than 2,000 years.
Still partially covered, the monolith measures 19.6 meters long, 6 meters wide and at least 5.5 meters high. Its weight is estimated at 1,650 tons, making it the largest stone block of antiquity.
It was found by a team from the German Archaeological Institute in a stone quarry in Baalbek, Lebanon. Known in Roman times as Heliopolis, "the city of the Sun", Baalbek was home to one of the largest sanctuaries in the empire.
The quarry was located about 400 meters from the city's temple complex and houses two other enormous blocks: one weighing 1,240 tons; the other, known as "Hajjar al-Hibla" (The Stone of the Pregnant Woman) of about 1,000 tons.
Right next to the Hajjar al-Hibla and underneath it, archaeologists discovered a third block.
“The level of smoothness indicates that the block would have been transported and used without being cut,” the German Archaeological Institute explains. “It is therefore the largest boulder known from antiquity.”
The team worked under the local supervision of Jeanine Abdul Massih, a collaborator in the Baalbek project of the Eastern Section of the German Archaeological Institute. The main goal was to find new information about the extraction techniques and transportation of megaliths.
Archaeologists believe that the limestone blocks date back to at least 27 BC, when Baalbek was a Roman colony and the construction of three major and several smaller temples had begun. “Huge 20-meter-long stone blocks were used for the podium of the great Temple of Jupiter in the sanctuary,” the archaeologists say.
Today, only parts of the temple remain, including six large columns and 27 gigantic limestone blocks at the base. Three of them, weighing 1,000 tons each, are known as the “Trilithon.”
How these monoliths were transported and precisely positioned during the construction of the temple remains a mystery. Some even speculate that the block was prepared by a culture that predated Alexander the Great, who founded Heliopolis in 334 BC.
The stone block was probably cut for use in the temple, but was abandoned because it was untransportable.
The nearby Hajjar al-Hibla block provides some clues: it was probably left in the quarry because the quality of the stone on one side was found to be poor. “It would have probably broken during transportation,” the archaeologists said. Further excavations will attempt to establish whether the larger stone also suffered from the same problem.
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