The Stone of the Pregnant Woman or Stone of the South is a Roman monolith in Baalbek

Baalbek

Baalbek is a town in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon, altitude , situated east of the Litani River. It is famous for its exquisitely detailed yet monumentally scaled temple ruins of the Roman period, when Baalbek, then known as Heliopolis, was one of the largest sanctuaries in the Empire...

 (ancient Heliopolis), Lebanon

Lebanon

Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...

. Together with another ancient stone block nearby, it is among the very largest monoliths ever quarried by men. The two building blocks were intended for the close-by Roman temple

Roman temple

Ancient Roman temples are among the most visible archaeological remains of Roman culture, and are a significant source for Roman architecture. Their construction and maintenance was a major part of ancient Roman religion. The main room housed the cult image of the deity to whom the temple was...

 complex − possibly as an addition to the so-called trilith − which was characterized by a monolith

Monolith

A monolith is a geological feature such as a mountain, consisting of a single massive stone or rock, or a single piece of rock placed as, or within, a monument...

ic gigantism unparalled in antiquity

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

 and beyond.

Stone of the Pregnant Woman

The monolith is named after a pregnant woman who, as local legend has it, tricked the naive people of Baalbek into believing that she knows how to move the giant stone, if only they would feed her until she gives birth.

The Roman stone block still lies in the ancient

Classical antiquity

Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...

 quarry at a distance of 900 m from the Heliopolis temple complex. In 1996, a geodetic

Geodesy

Geodesy , also named geodetics, a branch of earth sciences, is the scientific discipline that deals with the measurement and representation of the Earth, including its gravitational field, in a three-dimensional time-varying space. Geodesists also study geodynamical phenomena such as crustal...

 team of the Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n city of Linz

Linz

Linz is the third-largest city of Austria and capital of the state of Upper Austria . It is located in the north centre of Austria, approximately south of the Czech border, on both sides of the river Danube. The population of the city is , and that of the Greater Linz conurbation is about...

 conducted topographical measurements at the site which aimed at establishing the exact dimensions of the two monoliths and their possible use in the construction of the gigantic Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

 temple. According to their calculations, the block weighs 1,000.12 t

Tonne

The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...

, thus practically confirming older learned estimations such as by the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 scholar Jean-Pierre Adam.

The established dimensions of the rectangular limestone

Limestone

Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....

 block are:

• 20.31–20.76 m length
• 4 m width at base
• 4.14–5.29 m width at top
• 4.21–4.32 m height
• 2.6–2.8 g
  Gram
  The gram is a metric system unit of mass....
  
  /cm³ density
  Density
  The mass density or density of a material is defined as its mass per unit volume. The symbol most often used for density is ρ . In some cases , density is also defined as its weight per unit volume; although, this quantity is more properly called specific weight...
  
  

Second monolith

A second ancient monolith was discovered in the same quarry only in the 1990s. With its weight estimated at 1,242 t, it even surpasses the dimension of the well-known Stone of the Pregnant Woman.

The established dimensions of the rectangular limestone block, on the assumption that it continues its shape in the hidden parts underground, are:

• 19.5–20.5 m length
• 4.34–4.56 m width
• 4.5 m height
• 2.6–2.8 g/cm³ density

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