The ‘Phocas pillar’ 5: reconstructions

D. M. Bailey has produced a reconstruction of parallel honorific columns in Egypt, showing how the two parts of the ‘Phocas pillar ’ might have looked when complete with the (probably) imperial statue which would have crowned it. It would have been roughly the same size as his Antinoe example (a site in Middle Egypt).

It is possible that the complete column was only one of four, the other three having vanished completely, which formed a tetrastylon; that is to say, the four columns stood grouped in a square at the crossing of two major streets of the city. The crossing streets might pass or actually cross through the middle of the four grouped columns.

D. M. Bailey, Excavations at El-Ashmunein IV (1991), pl.39

The Site