baalbek (lebanon)

On my third and last day in Lebanon, I decided to throw in my lot with Varun, public transport, and the ruins of the temple complex of Baalbek, one of the largest temple complexes of the Roman empire. I had been torn between wanting to see something (more) of Beirut and going outside Beirut with friends (different friends were going in different directions for the day), and ultimately I chose the latter partly because I do get enough time traveling alone anyway! :-)

We took a shared taxi or "service" (ser-vee-s) to a mini-bus stop at what seemed to be somewhere on the periphery of the city - I felt I could've been somewhere on the outskirts of Bombay along the western express highway, except that there was something like a tank underneath the nearby flyover. Hopped into a mini-bus (basically a big van) for Baalbek. Baalbek is at an altitude so we passed into mountains from where we could see parts of Beirut spread out below us along the Mediterranean sea - a beautiful sight! It had snowed in the mountains and the air was crisp.

Baalbek was wonderful... we'd had an early start and so we were one of the few people at the site when we got there. Spent a good 3-4 hours there... while Varun did his architectural historian thing, I just aimlessly wandered about, looking at the ruins and the snowy mountain peaks beyond from every angle possible.

the row of columns seen in the distance (in the middle of the photo) are the
only remains of the Temple of Jupiter

Temple of Bacchus on the right (the best preserved temple at the site)

Temple of Bacchus (for the colossal scale of the temple, look at the people standing near the dark entrance-way on the left of the temple - not even sure you can see them unless you blow up the photo)
(Also check out this Library of Congress photograph of the temple from around the 1910s, before
restoration work was carried out)

Baalbek is a listed World Heritage site and to write more about it here, I decided to re-read some of the history I'd probably read at the site. But the internet is really fascinating when one starts searching for stuff, and so I've just spent a good hour or two reading about Baalbek - I'm sure I didn't read any of the stuff at the site with half this interest. Rather was just lost in the actual atmosphere of the ruins and the mountains beyond. Anyway, so I'm going to go on about the history a bit below (Sorry to those not interested. This is where my nerdy bit comes out, and given that I have a rotten memory this is my chance to put down some of what I read for later reference. You can always stop at this blog-post here or skim down to the last paragraph which might be of some interest to those less interested in architecture and ancient/Roman/medieval history, and more interested in contemporary politics).

Couple of historical tit-bits from the UNESCO World Heritage website:
"The origin of the name Baalbek is not precisely known. The Phoenician term Baal means 'lord' or 'god' and was the title given to the Semitic sky-deity. The word Baalbek may therefore mean 'God of the Beqaa valley' (the local area) or 'God of the Town', depending on different interpretations of the word." During the Phoenician period, Baalbek was an agricultural village where a triad of fertility gods were worshipped. It came to be known as Heliopolis during the Hellenistic period (the period following the conquests of Alexander the Great, i.e., approx. 320 BC onwards). The Romans arrived in Phoenicia in 64 BC, following which this temple complex, one of the Roman empire's largest, was built over a period of more than two centuries. "The Romanized triad of Heliopolis (Jupiter, Venus and Mercury) came to replace the Phoenician triad (Baal-Shamash, Anta and Alyn)."

Now on other websites, Mercury isn't mentioned, and I certainly don't remember reading of Mercury when I visited the site. There is indeed a small temple to Venus somewhere in the complex. Also other websites mention different names for the earlier dieties: Baal, Hadad (Dionysus) and Atargatis (Astarte). One of these websites goes on to say that: "Baal-Hadad was worshipped under the Roman name Jove [thats's Jupiter], Astarte was worshipped under the Roman name Venus, and Dionysus was worshipped under the Roman name Bacchus. This sort of religious integration was common for Romans: wherever they went, the gods they encountered were either incorporated into their own pantheon as newly recognized deities or they were associated with their current deities but as simply having different names. Because of the cultural and political importance of people's deities, such religious integration helped smooth the way for cultural and political integration as well."
Interesting stuff.

Couple of architectural tit-bits from the UNESCO World Heritage website:
"At Baalbek-Heliopolis, the phenomenon of religious syncretism, which amalgamated the old Phoenician beliefs with the myths of the Graeco-Roman pantheon, was prolonged by an amazing stylistic metamorphosis. The Syro-Phoenician formulae of the Seleucid period were fused with the classic decorative grammar of the Ara Pacis Augustae. There resulted an architecture of a considerable expressive force which was combined, without redundancy, in the ornamental motives of the colonnades, niches and exedras and was also freely expressed in the ceilings with sculpted coffered panels and the framework of the doorways."

Unfortunately I didn't take many photos of the ornamental carvings and most of those that I did are blurry. But here are some.

Entrance to the Temple of Bacchus

The UNESCO World heritage website also mentions some subsequent histories: "During Byzantine Christian times the temple was used as a church and was dedicated to the Christian martyr St Barbara." And "in 634, Muslim armies entered Syria and besieged Baalbek. A large mosque was built within the walls of the temple compound, which was converted into a citadel."
Interestingly, another website (also see this and there are many others) mentions the Byzantine history of the site differently, and refers to the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius having torn down the alters of Jupiter's Great Court and having built a basilica using the temple's stones and architectural elements. I wonder why the UNESCO World Heritage "official history" narrates the Byzantine Christian takeover of the site in less than violent terms than it does the Islamic takeover of the site. Am I reading too much into it? You tell me...

Finally, I might note that today Baalbek is a stronghold of the Hezbollah. After seeing the ruins we walked into the actual city along with some friends from the conference we'd bumped into. At a number of places we could see Hezbollah's presence in the form of these particular black flags. Wanting to know a bit more, I surfed the internet: In the 2006 Israeli attack on Lebanon, Baalbek was one of the cities targeted because of Hezbollah's huge presence there. Some innocent people also got killed. Here is a link to a NYTimes article on it. A UNESCO mission later looked into the damage the war did to Lebanon's cultural heritage. It found that the fissures on the lintels of the temples of Jupiter and Bacchus had probably widened because of vibrations from bombings nearby and recommended close monitoring. Also the souk/market and some old houses in the Old City of Baalbek, not part of the property inscribed on the World Heritage List, were damaged by bombs. The souk was one of the areas we'd walked through - and most of it looked good as new (and touristy and uninteresting to me), and it was here that we'd seen some of the black flags. Hezbollah was involved in the post-war reconstruction of parts of Beirut so it would not be surprising if it had had a hand in reconstructing Baalbek's souk as well.

Came back to Beirut via mini-bus. Unlike when we went, the mini-bus stopped at various points (check-points) along the way back to Beirut. The driver would slow down to almost a stop, guys in military wear would peer inside and sometimes we'd be flagged on and sometimes we had to stop. The sliding door of the mini-bus would be opened and the guys would stick their head in, asking some for their papers (some sort of identification). Once they looked at our passports too. I kept wondering what it was all about - what were they really checking. Don't know enough of the politics in the region to figure this one out.