Baalbek
Location in Lebanon
Baalbek (Arabic: بعلبك) is a town in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, altitude 1,170 metres (3,800 ft), situated east of the Litani River. It is famous for its exquisitely detailed yet monumentally scaled temple ruins of the Roman period, when Baalbek, known as Heliopolis was one of the largest sanctuaries in the Empire. It is Lebanon's greatest Roman treasure, and it can be counted among the wonders of the ancient world. The largest and most noble Roman temples ever built, they are also among the best preserved.
Towering high above the Beqaa plain, their monumental proportions proclaimed the power and wealth of Imperial Rome. The gods worshipped here, the Triad of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury, were grafted onto the indigenous deities of Hadad, Atargatis and a young male god of fertility. Local influences are also seen in the planning and layout of the temples, which vary from the classic Roman design.
Baalbek is home to the annual Baalbeck International Festival. The town is located about 85 km (53 mi) north east of Beirut, and about 75 km (47 mi) north of Damascus. It has a population of approximately 72,000.
History
Prehistory
The history of Baalbek dates back around 5000 years[citation needed]. Excavations near the Jupiter temple have revealed the existence of ancient human habitation dating to the Early Bronze Age (2900-2300 BC). The Phoenicians settled in Baalbek as early as 2000 BC and built their first temple dedicated to the God Baal, the Sun God, from whom the city gets its name[citation needed].
19th century Bible archaeologists wanted to connect Baalbek to the "Baalgad" mentioned in Joshua 11:17, but the assertion has not been taken up in modern times. In fact, this minor Phoenician city, named for the "Lord (Baal) of the Beqaa valley" lacked enough commercial or strategic importance to rate a mention in Assyrian or Egyptian records so far uncovered, according to Hélène Sader, professor of archaeology at the American University of Beirut. Nevertheless, it must have been the site of an oracle from earliest times, for oracles are not lightly founded, and retained such a function during Roman times.
Heliopolis, the City of the Sun
When Alexander the Great conquered the Near East in 334 BC, Baalbek was renamed Heliopolis, Helios Greek for sun and Polis Greek for city. The city retained its religious function during Greco-Roman times, when the sanctuary of the Heliopolitan Jupiter-Baal was a pilgrimage site. Trajan's biographer records that the Emperor consulted the oracle there. Trajan inquired of the Heliopolitan Jupiter whether he would return alive from his wars against the Parthians. In reply, the god presented him with a vine shoot cut into pieces. Theodosius Macrobius, a Latin grammarian of the 5th century AD, mentioned Zeus Heliopolitanus and the temple, a place of oracular divination. Starting in the last quarter of the 1st century BC and over a period of two centuries, the Romans had built a temple complex in Baalbek consisting of three temples: Jupiter, Bacchus and Venus. On a nearby hill, they built a fourth temple dedicated to Mercury.
The city, then known as Heliopolis (there was another Heliopolis in Egypt), was made a colonia by the Roman Empire in 15 BC and a legion was stationed there[citation needed]. Work on the religious complex there lasted over a century and a half and was never completed[citation needed]. The dedication of the present temple ruins, the largest religious building in the entire Roman empire, dates from the reign of Septimus Severus, whose coins first show the two temples[citation needed]. The great courts of approach were not finished before the reigns of Caracalla and Philip[citation needed]. In commemoration, no doubt, of the dedication of the new sanctuaries, Severus conferred the rights of the ius Italicum on the city. Today, only six Corinthian columns remain standing. Eight more were disassembled and shipped to Constantinople under Justinian's orders, for his basilica of Hagia Sophia.
Temple of Bacchus
Details inside Temple of Bacchus
The greatest of the three temples was sacred to Jupiter Baal, ("Heliopolitan Zeus"), identified here with the sun, and was constructed during the first century AD. At the time it was the largest temple in the empire[citation needed]. With it were associated a temple to Venus and a lesser temple in honor of Bacchus (though it was traditionally referred to as the "Temple of the Sun" by Neoclassical visitors, who saw it as the best-preserved Roman temple in the world - it is surrounded by forty-two columns nearly 20 meters in height). Thus three Eastern deities were worshipped in Roman guise: thundering Jove, the god of storms, stood in for Baal-Hadad, Venus for ‘Ashtart (known in English as Astarte) and Bacchus for Anatolian Dionysus. The original number of Jupiter columns was 54 columns. In the early 20th century an earthquake reduced the 9 remaining columns to six. The architrave blocks weigh up to 60 tons each, and the corner blocks over 100 tons, all of them raised to a height of ca. 19m above the ground. This was thought to have been done using Roman cranes. Roman cranes were not capable of lifting stones this heavy; however, by combining multiple cranes they may have been able to lift them to this height. If necessary they may have used the cranes to lever one side up a little at a time and use shims to hold it while they did the other side.
The Roman construction was built on top of earlier ruins and involved the creation of an immense raised plaza onto which the actual buildings were placed. The sloping terrain necessitated the creation of retaining walls on the north, south and west sides of the plaza. These walls are built of about 24 monoliths at their lowest level each weighing approximately 300 tons. The western, tallest retaining wall has a second course of monoliths containg the famous "trilithon": a row of three stones, estimated to weigh over 750 tons each. A fourth, still larger stone called "the stone of the south" (Hajar el Gouble) or "the stone of the pregnant woman" (Hajar el Hibla) lies unused in a nearby quarry about 1 mile from the town. - its weight, often exaggerated, is estimated at 970 tonnes. Another of the Roman ruins, the Great Court, has six 20m tall stone columns surviving, out of an original 128.
Jupiter-Baal was represented locally (on coinage) as a beardless god in long scaly drapery, holding a whip in his right hand and thunderbolts and ears of wheat in his left. Two bulls supported him. In this guise he passed into European worship in the 3rd century and 4th century AD. The icon of Helipolitan Zeus (in A.B. Cook, Zeus, i:570-576) bore busts of the seven planetary powers on the front of the pillarlike term in which he was encased. A bronze statuette of this Heliopolitan Zeus was discovered at Tortosa, Spain; another was found at Byblos in Phoenicia. A comparable iconic image is the Lady of Ephesus (see illustration) (Robert Graves, The Greek Myths I.4).
Other Emperors enriched the sanctuary of Heliopolitan Jupiter each in turn. Nero (54-68 AD) built the tower-altar opposite the Temple of Jupiter, Trajan added the forecourt to the Temple of Jupiter, with porticos of pink granite brought from Aswan in Egypt. Antoninus Pius built the Temple of Bacchus, the best preserved of the sanctuary's structures, for it was protected by the very rubble of the site's ruins. It is enriched with refined reliefs and sculpture. Septimus Severus added a pentagonal Temple of Venus, who as Aphrodite had enjoyed an early Syrian role with her consort Adonis ("Lord", the Aramaic translation of "Baal."). Emperor Philip the Arab (244-249) was the last to add a monument at Heliopolis: the hexagonal forecourt. When he was finished Heliopolis and Praeneste in Italy were the two largest sanctuaries in the Western world.
The extreme licence of the Heliopolitan worship of Aphrodite was often commented upon by early Christian writers, who competed with one another to execrate her worship. Eusebius of Caesarea, down the coast, averred that 'men and women vie with one another to honour their shameless goddess; husbands and fathers let their wives and daughters publicly prostitute themselves to please Astarte'. Constantine, making an effort to curb the Venus cult, built a basilica in Heliopolis. Theodosius I erected another, with a western apse, occupying the main court of the Jupiter temple, as was Christian practice everywhere. The vast stone blocks of its walls were taken from the temple itself. Today nothing of the Theodosian basilica remains.
Theories about the Trilithon and other megaliths
Roger Hopkins and Vince Lee have both theorized about how the megalithic stones were moved. They were both consulted about various megalithic moves around the world.
Roger Hopkins is a stone mason and sculptor who was consulted to do experiments in the movement of megaliths in Egypt (with Mark Lehrner) and other locations. He has suggested that the trilithon stones and 300 ton blocks were all moved with wooden rollers, demonstrating how this could be done by using steel rollers and levers to move a five to six thousand pound stone on a concrete platform by himself. He also participated in other experiments with larger stones, including some that may have been over 10 tons. These experiments required many more people. For 2 ton stones he was able to tow them with as few as 10 people at times and for faster results up to 20 people. Most experiments which have been done by Roger Hopkins and others to move stones 10 tons or more required well over 100 people.
Vince Lee is an architect, explorer and author. He has suggested that these stones were moved by flipping them with levers. According to this hypothesis a row of people would use 20 levers to pry up the trilithon blocks a little at a time. Each time they pried it up someone would put additional shims under the megalithic stones. After this was repeated enough times the stone would flip over on the next side. There would be a log on the other side that the stone would fall onto so that one side would already be lifted off the ground each time making it easier for the next flip. This would require over 300 flips for each of the trilithon stones and even more for the smaller 300 ton stones to cover the 1 mile distance from the quarry. Roger Hopkins and Mark Lehner also experimented with this technique on a smaller scale in Egypt during a NOVA pyramid building experiment. They found that they could flip stones up to about 3/4 of a ton with only 4 or 5 men, and they successfully flipped stones at least 2 and a 1/2 tons with more men; however, they found this was too slow to explain how the pyramids were built in so short a time.
Both Roger Hopkins and Vince Lee agreed that an earthen ramp would have been used to get the megaliths up the hill to the temple. They also agreed that the final placement would have involved flipping the megaliths and lowering it slowly by using sand to cushion the fall. The sand would have been placed where the trilithon stones were to be set, and when the stones were flipped into place the sand would be slowly removed. Additional experiments moving megaliths with ancient technology were done at other locations some of which are listed here.
[...]
[...]
Twin towns - Sister cities
-Bari, Italy
-L'Aquila, Italy
-Thrace, Greece
drafted by: wikipedia.org
Μπααλμπεκ
Απεστάλη: 06/09/2009, 04:03:50
