Long before the Romans conquered the site and built their enormous temple of Jupiter, long even before the Phoenicians constructed a temple to the god Baal, there stood at Baalbek the largest stone block construction found in the entire world. The origin of the name Baalbek is not precisely known and there is some difference of opinion among scholars. Ancient legends assert that Baalbek was the birthplace of Baal. Some scholars have suggested that Baal the Assyrian Hadad was only one of a triad of Phoenician deities that were once venerated at this site - the others being his son Aliyan, who presided over well-springs and fecundity, and his daughter Anat Assyrian Atargatis.
Arguably the most important deity of the Romans and taking over the role of Zeus in the Greek pantheon, Jupiter was probably chosen to replace the much earlier worship of the Phonecian god Baal who had many characteristics in common with the Greek Zeus. Many Roman emperors were of Syrian birth, so it would not have been unusual for them to have promoted the worship of the country's indigenous deities under their adopted Roman names.
Whatever the nature of the pre-Roman worship at Baalbek, its veneration of Baal created a hybrid form of the god Jupiter, generally referred to as Jupiter Heliopolitan. The Romans also assimilated the worship of the goddess Astarte with that of Aphrodite or Venus, and the god Adonis was identified with Bacchus.
The origin and development of Baalbek may be considered from two quite different paradigms of prehistory, one the conventional approach that views civilization as having only begun in middle Neolithic times and the alternative approach which suggests that developed cultures existed in what is archaeologically known as the Paleolithic period. Let us first examine the chronology of Baalbek from the conventional interpretation, following which I will discuss some amazing site anomalies that can only be explained by recourse to a far older and now lost civilization.
According to theories stated by the mainstream archaeological community, the history of Baalbek reaches back approximately years. Because the great stones of Baalbek are similar, though far larger, than the stones of the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, archaic myths had arisen that Solomon erected both structures. If Solomon had really erected the site of Baalbek, however, it is astonishing that the Old Testament has mentioned nothing of the matter.
After the time of Solomon, the Phoenicians became masters of Syria and chose the site of Baalbek for a temple to their Sun-god Baal-Hadad. Little is known of Baalbek from this period. The late 11th century BC witnessed the arrival of an Assyrian army on the Mediterranean coast but because Baalbek is not mentioned alongside the names of other Phonecian cities, it has been assumed that Baalbek was an obscure religious center with no political or trading importance.
The first-century AD Jewish historian Josephus tells of Alexander's march through the Beqa'a on his way to Damascus, during which he encountered the city of Baalbek. Following the death of Alexander in BC, Phoenicia was ruled successively by the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt and the Seleucid kings of Syria until the arrival of the Romans.
The name Heliopolis, by which Baalbek was known during Greco-Roman times, derives from Greek association with the site beginning in BC. A sacred site with this same name already existed in Egypt and the new Ptolomaic rulers may have found it provident to link the ancient sky-god of Baalbek with the Egyptian god Re and the Greek Helios in order to establish closer religious and cultural ties between their newly established Ptolomaic dynasty in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean world.
In the historical writings of Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius, a Latin grammarian who lived during the 5th century AD, the god of the holy place was called Zeus Heliopolitanus a Greek god and the temple was mentioned as a place of oracular divination, similar to such sites as Delphi and Dodona in Greece and the temple of Amun at Siwa in Egypt.
During the next three centuries, as emperors succeeded one another in the imperial capital of Rome, Heliopolis would be filled with the most massive religious buildings ever constructed in the far reaching Roman Empire. These monuments functioned as places of worship until Christianity was declared the official religion of the Roman Empire in AD, following which the Byzantine Christian emperors and their rapacious soldiers desecrated thousands of pagan sanctuaries.
At the end of the 4th century, Emperor Theodosius destroyed many significant buildings and statues, and constructed a basilica with stones from the Temple of Jupiter. This signaled the end of Roman Heliopolis. The city of the sun declined and lapsed into relative oblivion. In the year , Muslim armies entered Syria and besieged Baalbek.
A mosque was built within the walls of the temple compound, which was itself converted into a citadel. Over the next several centuries, the city and region of Baalbek were controlled by various Islamic dynasties including the Umayyads, Abbasids and Fatamids as well as the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks.
During these years, Baalbek was ravaged by the Tartars in , Tamerlane in and was also shaken by numerous powerful earthquakes. Following the lead established by the Germans, extensive archaeological excavations were carried out by the French government and later the Lebanese Department of Antiquities. While a great deal of much needed restoration work was performed by these archaeologists, the analysis of the ancient origins and use of the site was limited by the prevailing academic view of prehistory which does not recognize the possibility of sophisticated civilizations in early Neolithic or pre-Neolithic times.
In terms of architecture the greatest temples at the site are the Temples of Jupiter, Bacchus and Venus. The sheer magnitude of these have created something of a puzzle for archaeologists as they continuously theorize as to how rocks of this grandeur could have been carved and assembled. For example, the temple of Jupiter is surrounded by 54 columns which stand at nearly 23 meters high and are considered some of the largest in the world.
The temple of Bacchus stands out from the rest as it is so well preserved and is adorned with beautiful carvings that date back to the Roman Empire. The place is always alive with music festivals and folklore-related activities. Tourists and locals alike flock for the chance of seeing the picturesque sunset behind those ancient columns.
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Urquhart concludes that the temple must have been built by contemporaries of Noah, using the same technological prowess that enabled the construction of the ark. Work was halted because of the flood, which swept away all the similar sites, leaving the enigma of Baalbek alone on the face of the earth. Scholars today like to laugh at Urquhart, particularly at his alleged belief that mastodons transported the stones. But archaeologists are still trying to solve the riddles that he posed.
Margarete van Ess, a professor from the German Archaeological Institute, told me that the purpose of the investigation that turned up the new stone block was precisely to ascertain how the three temple blocks were transported, and why two others like them were left in the quarry.
One of these previously discovered megaliths, known as the Hajjar al-Hibla, or Stone of the Pregnant Woman, turned out to have a crack that would have impeded its transport.
Van Ess added that the blocks were probably cut in much the same way as the masonry used in the Pont du Gard, a Roman aqueduct in southern France, with each piece split from a larger expanse of limestone along natural fissures between the rock strata.
Too heavy to lift, the blocks would then have been dragged from the quarry, probably using a capstan, a kind of human-driven winch—though the possibility of a sledge is also under discussion.
According to van Ess, the temple of Jupiter was definitely built by the Romans, in at least four phases. Construction began around 15 B. But perhaps the biggest mystery is the question of size. In fact, Baalbek is one of a series of ancient projects that are under rigorous study by the Germans for being unnecessarily large.
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