Why 2,000-year-old Roman columns have been sitting in the Engineering Quad

Three 2,000-year-old pieces of history currently sit in the middle of the Engineering Quad. And hardly anyone even knows they exist.

“I can’t believe I’ve never noticed them!” said Engineering sophomore Caroline Atkinson when asked about the columns.

These items, two columns and an elaborate pillar head, were given to the City of Philadelphia by King Hussein of Jordan to mark America’s 1976 bicentennial. The pieces came from a column from the ancient city of Philadelphia, which was located in present-day Amman, Jordan. Despite the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology's promise to look after the artifacts for Philadelphia, these items have been left exposed to the elements for around 40 years, currently serving as a makeshift bench for mid-day diners and furniture for squirrels.

Why is Penn treating these pieces of history as such? 

After Julian Siggers, the current Williams Director of the Penn Museum, arrived in 2012, he said the conservators there suggested moving the columns inside the museum.

“In Jordan they would be outside but their climate is less brutal than ours," he said. "I don’t want Philadelphia winters to do any more damage than they already have."

The columns have remained outside without a sign even denoting what they are. 

“People remove a lot of signs on campus … it’s sort of a game. It’s possible that sign was removed at some point in the past,” Siggers said.

An additional problem is the lack of clarity as to who owns the columns — Penn or Philadelphia. 

“[The city] may not even know about it,” Siggers said. “Somebody at Penn is looking into it, tracking down the records they may have about the actual transaction."

The museum plans to renovate most of its galleries and, as it moves the exhibits into storage beforehand, will also try to bring the columns inside, Siggers said. 

“The only delay we have in that is that the museum has launched a renovation of 70 percent of our public galleries … it is a giant 3-dimensional chess game," he said. "In the short term we will store them off-site until we can move them into the museum."