Stone of the Pregnant Woman

The Stone of the Pregnant Woman (Arabic: Hajar el Hibla‎‎) or Stone of the South is a Roman monolith in Baalbek (ancient Heliopolis), Lebanon. Together with another ancient stone block nearby, it is among the largest monoliths ever quarried. The two building blocks were intended for the nearby Roman temple complex, possibly as an addition to the so-called trilithon, and are characterised by a monolithic gigantism that was unparallelled in antiquity.

There are multiple stories behind the name. One says the monolith is named after a pregnant woman who tricked the people of Baalbek into believing that she knew how to move the giant stone if only they would feed her until she gave birth. Others say the name comes from the legends that pregnant jinn were assigned the task of cutting and moving the stone, while others say that the name reflects the belief that a woman who touches the stone experiences an increase in fertility.

The stone block still lies in the ancient quarry at a distance of 900 m from the Heliopolis temple complex. In 1996, a geodetic team of the Austrian city of Linz 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 temple. According to their calculations, the block weighs 1,000.12 t, thus practically confirming older estimations such as that of Jean-Pierre Adam.

The rectangular stone block is:

A second ancient monolith was discovered in the same quarry in the 1990s. With its weight estimated at 1242 t, it surpasses even the dimension of the Stone of the Pregnant Woman.

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