DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11636#0148
120 TRAVELS IN UPPER
pedestal. I had not the means of measuring its
height, and travellers who have gone before me
are not perfectly agreed on this point. Savary as-
signs to it a height of a hundred and fourteen
feet * ; whereas Paul Lucas, who declares he had
taken an accurate measurement of it, makes its
height no more than ninety-four feet This last
opinion was generally adopted by the Europeans
of Alexandria. The height of the column was
admitted there to be from ninety-four to ninety-
five feet of France. The pedestal is fifteen feet
high; the shaft with the socle seventy feet j finally,
the capital, ten feet; in all, ninety-five feet. The
mean diameter is seven feet nine inches. Admit-
ting these proportions, the entire mass of the co-
lumn may be estimated at six thousand cubic feet.
It is well known that the cubic foot of red Egyp-*
tian granite weighs a hundred and eighty-five
pounds. The weight of the whole column, there-
fore, is one million one hundred and ten thousand
pounds, eight ounces to the pound.
However hard the substance of the column may
be, it has not escaped the corroding tooth of time.
The bottom of the shaft is very much damaged on
the east side, and it is very easy to separate, on the
same side, thin laminae from the pedestal. It has
* Letters on Egypt, vol. i. p. 36.
•f- Journey of Paul Lucas, in 1714, vol. ii.p. 22.
been
pedestal. I had not the means of measuring its
height, and travellers who have gone before me
are not perfectly agreed on this point. Savary as-
signs to it a height of a hundred and fourteen
feet * ; whereas Paul Lucas, who declares he had
taken an accurate measurement of it, makes its
height no more than ninety-four feet This last
opinion was generally adopted by the Europeans
of Alexandria. The height of the column was
admitted there to be from ninety-four to ninety-
five feet of France. The pedestal is fifteen feet
high; the shaft with the socle seventy feet j finally,
the capital, ten feet; in all, ninety-five feet. The
mean diameter is seven feet nine inches. Admit-
ting these proportions, the entire mass of the co-
lumn may be estimated at six thousand cubic feet.
It is well known that the cubic foot of red Egyp-*
tian granite weighs a hundred and eighty-five
pounds. The weight of the whole column, there-
fore, is one million one hundred and ten thousand
pounds, eight ounces to the pound.
However hard the substance of the column may
be, it has not escaped the corroding tooth of time.
The bottom of the shaft is very much damaged on
the east side, and it is very easy to separate, on the
same side, thin laminae from the pedestal. It has
* Letters on Egypt, vol. i. p. 36.
•f- Journey of Paul Lucas, in 1714, vol. ii.p. 22.
been