The Pompey’s Pillar has been wrongly known since the Crusades as the “Pompey” column. This error is due to the fact that the Europeans thought that the head of Pompey (the Roman commander who fled to Egypt to escape from Julius Caesar and was killed by the Egyptians) thought that his head had been placed in a precious funerary urn and placed over the crown of the column as The column was known as “Theodosian Column (in the Byzantine era).
The pillar is made of red granite. The body of the column is a single piece, 20.75 meters long, 2.70 meters in diameter at the base, and 2.30 meters in the crown. The total height of the column, including the base, is about 26.85 meters.
