ABSTRACT
The Pantheon in Rome continues to stand as an architectural attestation of what was once a networked ancient empire. The superstructure that one encounters today is an updated version of its predecessors, and it is Hadrian’s reconstructed portico that is at the center of my chapter. Here, I focus specifically on the Pantheon’s column shafts that are carved from single blocks of stone that were extracted from two different quarries in Egypt: red granite from Aswan, and grey granite from Mons Claudianus. First, we must answer questions around acquisition and mobility: just how did the ancient Romans cut these fifty-foot monoliths, carry them across the desert, haul them onto ships, transport them to Rome, and then drag them up to the city center where they would be installed in the temple that was awaiting their arrival? Each piece of the process left behind traces of an ancient infrastructure, and tells us a story of Rome’s technics of resource extraction. Technology and systems in place during the second century CE afforded Roman emperors the ability to convey columns from the deserts of Egypt to Rome. But this chapter is also concerned with what this kind of infrastructure means. In the case of rose granite columns, this material had already been used for millennia as the intimate casing of inner tomb chambers for Egyptian rulers. By transporting red granite to Rome for the columns of the Pantheon’s portico, Hadrian positioned himself as a dynastic ruler of a vast and polychronic Mediterranean world.
