CHAPTER VI.—Baalbec.
Baalbec, more correctly, we believe, Baalbak, is situated about forty-five miles north of Damascus but slightly to the west, on the lowest slope of Anti-Lebanon, near the source of the Leontes or Litany. The Litany and Orontes rivers rise six miles west from Baalbec within one mile of each other. The Litany runs west down the Bukâa or Cœlesyria, and falls into the sea between Sidon and Beyrût. The Orontes, El Asi or rebellious river, so called because it changes its course in a remarkable manner, flows north and falls into the Gulf of Antioch. Baalbec is the point where the great roads from Damascus, Tyre, Beyrût and Tripoli converge, hence probably its great ancient importance, and it was also the entrance gate to Padan Aram or Upper Syria where Terah lived, whence Abram emigrated and whither Jacob went to seek a wife among the daughters of his uncle Laban, who was also his cousin and subsequently his father-in-law, a very mixed up series of relationships; even more puzzling than that which befell the proverbial American who married his stepmother’s mother, and was driven to despair, insanity and death, because he never could make out what relation he was to himself.
The ancient city of Baalbec must have been between two and three miles in circumference. Some learned writers attribute its foundation to Solomon, arguing that the colossal stones used in the substructure, of which we will speak more in detail hereafter, are similar in size and bevel to those in the temple foundations at Jerusalem. They identify it with Baalath, which Solomon is recorded in I. Kings, IX., to have built at the same time as Tadmor (by them supposed to be Palmyra), in the wilderness. Now it must be noted that Solomon lost Damascus to the Syrians, which David his father had taken from them. It is not likely that having so lost Damascus, he held Baalbec to the north of it, and built Palmyra six days journey in the desert beyond it, neither would he if he dominated the cedar country have troubled Hiram to send him cedars for the Temple. We may also observe that Baalaath and Tadmor are described as being built along with Gezer, Megiddo, and other cities in the land, i.e., Solomon’s own land of Israel, where these last cities undoubtedly were, in the plain of Esdraelon, &c. Baalaath is more likely to have been Banias, and as for Tadmor, the city of palms, there are plenty of palm trees and wildernesses in Palestine without locating Tadmor in the great Syrian desert, then held by the hostile kings of Syria; and further, we are informed that Solomon gave Hiram, king of Phœnician Tyre, certain Galilean cities which he named “Cabul,” Solomon could surely have much better spared, if he had had them to give, Baalbec and Phœnician cities, further beyond his base of operations, but equally conveniently situated for Hiram and much more acceptable to him. Baalbec was probably a Hittite fortress anterior to the time of Hiram, who however might have added to it. The similarity of some of the stones to those in Jerusalem is easily explained by the historical fact that Solomon employed Hiram’s Phœnician workmen to prepare the Temple materials, the woodwork of which was undoubtedly, and the stonework perhaps too, obtained from the Anti-Lebanon mountains of Tyre, and floated down along the coast on rafts to Joppa. But we will now visit the celebrated ruins, the grandest probably in the world, only approached in sublimity of position, but not equalled by those on the Acropolis at Athens. We first see just outside the village a beautiful little Temple of Venus, called by the natives Barbara el Ahkah, quite a gem of architecture, semicircular in shape, the architraves, cornices, &c., richly ornamented with the fair goddess, doves, and flowers. It has a peristyle of eight Corinthian columns, each made of a monolith. It was last used as a Greek church, to which era the trace of frescoes still remaining must be attributed. Near by are the remains of a large mosque, which looks very like having been built from the ruins of Constantine’s basilica and other temples previously existing—the capitals and columns being terribly mixed up, one or other being always too large or too small. Some of the porphyry pillars must have been very fine.
The great Trilithon Temple, the Acropolis of Baalbec, and its massive, mighty ruins are now before us—they have been so often pictured by the painter that their external appearance must be familiar to many. We enter from the east, where once was the principal entrance, a noble flight of steps ascending to a colonnade supported by twelve mighty columns. This grand approach was destroyed by the Turks when they converted the Acropolis into a fortress. Passing under this, through a portico, we find ourselves in a long lofty corridor, richly ornamented; facing us are three large doors, the centre, 23 feet wide, brings us into an outer court of hexagonal form about 190 feet long and 240 wide; three gates again from this leading to the grand court, about 440 feet long and 370 wide; on the north and south sides are vast somewhat semicircular alcoves, with three Exedrae, rectangular recesses on each side with arched roofs, but open to the central court; these are elaborately decorated with niches, Corinthian pillars, shrines, &c., the various designs of ornament on the latter scrolls, birds, flowers, &c., being very beautiful and still in fine preservation, so numerous and varied that it has been said that it would take an artist a lifetime to copy them in detail. This court leads us up to what was once the great Temple, at first dedicated to Baal and then to all the gods, so as not to offend any. The only remains of this Temple are six magnificent columns of the peristyle, each 60 feet high and 7½ feet in diameter; they are visible at a great distance in the plain below, and have a very grand impressive effect, especially when seen from below at a distance standing out boldly in an evening sky.
Baalbec—General View of Ruins.
This temple was probably about three hundred feet long, and stood upon the old Phœnician foundation, built of Cyclopean masses of stone, many of which are thirty feet long and ten feet thick; but there are three stones (which gave the name of Trilithon to the Temple) each over sixty feet long, thirteen feet high, and as many thick. How they could have been carried from the quarry, and raised to the height they now occupy, it is difficult to explain, unless they were hauled up great inclined planes of earth which were afterwards carted away, as represented in the bas reliefs of Birs Nimroud. To the left of the great Temple, on a somewhat lower level, having formerly an approach of its own from the plain, probably a noble flight of steps, is the Temple of the Sun (by some called that of Jupiter), one of the best preserved and finest ruins in the world; the ornamentation somewhat florid, but very beautiful and varied. It was surrounded by forty-six columns, about sixty-five feet high and six feet in diameter; the portico, twenty-five feet deep, was supported by a double row of columns; the door itself was forty-two feet high and twenty-one broad, and on each side of it were lofty hollow pillars containing spiral staircases leading to the roof. The cornices are rich in design and elaborate in execution, the Cella or interior is in fair preservation, and at the end of it is a raised platform where the altar stood. Underneath the altar was a vault whence concealed priests sent up Delphic responses to unsuspecting votaries who imagined that they were listening to the voice of inspiration. The symbol of the Syrian Eagle, sacred to the Sun as the bird which flies highest and is supposed to be able to look at the Sun unflinchingly, predominates everywhere about these ruins. The temple area is undermined by vast vaulted corridors, now used as approaches in the same way as the Temple platform at Jerusalem. The emperors Constantine and Theodosius converted the great Temple into a Basilica; at the Moslem conquest it was used as a fortress. When some five hundred years later the tide turned again in favour of Christianity, it was converted back by the Crusaders into a church, and when the Saracens under Saladin wrested it from them, it became again a fortress, and it probably remained so until its final decay in about the 15th century, when it was destroyed by Tamerlane the Tartar when he raided through Syria. While at Baalbec, we witness an extraordinary hailstorm, the stones being larger than pigeons’ eggs—almost as large as a walnut; very pretty elliptical in shape, the centre about the size of a large pea was cloudy ice, then a large, clear, crystal-looking ring, the outer ring again cloudy ice. The storm lasts about an hour, and the stones do not melt for some time; it is accompanied by a sharp thunderstorm. We now bid farewell to Baalbec, and wend our way across the plain of the Bukâa, bound for Beyrût.
The Bukâa, supposed to be the Bikath Aven of the Hebrews (Amos i, 5), is a long plain extending about one hundred miles between the Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon mountains, leading down to the Jordan valley, and the Mediterranean. It was anciently called Cœlesyria or Hollow Syria, and was the natural highway of the invading armies of Egypt, Persia, Assyria, &c., from all time. It is mentioned in the Bible as the “entering in of Hamath,” but was only for a short time in the possession of the Kings of Israel. Along this plain commander Cameron projected a railway between Damascus, viâ Baalbec, Homs, Hamah and Aleppo northwards, with a branch from Homs to Tripoli westwards, and to Jerusalem along the western side of the Jordan valley—all possible enough to make, but scarcely probable to pay. The railway was to be commenced at Tripoli, taking a détour to Damascus to avoid the mountains. This enterprising project was to embrace, eventually, a Euphrates valley line to Bombay, viâ the Persian Gulf, and to Northern India, viâ Persia and Afghanistan, and the system was to be connected with Constantinople by a line through Asia Minor, viâ Diarbekir to Ismid, where it would join the railway to Scutari and the Bosphorus, opposite Stamboul. It is a pretty project on paper, a magnificent prophecy of the future, and we hope that commander Cameron will live to see his great scheme a paying reality. Soon after leaving Baalbec we come across an isolated ruin, the shrine of some Moslem saint reared evidently out of the ruins of the Acropolis.
Beyrût—and The Lebanon.
The Bukâa plain is fertile, but the absence of trees renders a journey through it rather monotonous for some hours. We lunch at a small Arab Khan, and passing several villages reach at length that of Kerak Nûh, where we are shown the tomb of Noah, one hundred feet long, eight feet wide and three deep, very like a length of an ancient aqueduct, so this ante and post diluvian patriarch must have been slightly out of proportion. How he was accommodated in his own ark, which was smaller than the Great Eastern, only about fifty feet high, and then divided into three decks, my Moslem guide did not inform me. Noah’s ark, by-the-bye, is said to have been built at Jaffa, where we first entered the Holy Land. The next largest ship of ancient times spoken of by Lucian is that of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and was probably about 1,100 tonnage—it seems however soon to have come to grief. According to Moslem tradition, Hezekiah is said to be buried near Noah. We next pass through Mulaka, a prosperous Moslem town, full of Manchester prints, which is almost joined to Zahleh, a large Maronite Christian town on the frontier of the Lebanon; it is a manufacturing town, finely situated at the entrance of the Sannin gorge, in an amphitheatre of high mountains; it was the headquarters of the Druses during the 1860 massacres. We now ride through many miles of vineyards and mulberry trees to Shtôra, the principal station on the Damascus diligence road, and put up for the night at the little inn there. Our last day’s ride is to Beyrût, about nine hours along the diligence road over the Lebanon. We soon have to take our last look at Hermon, the Baalbec plain and the Anti-Lebanon, and ascending to the summit of the pass catch a first glimpse of the sea. The Lebanon mountains here are nearly 7,000 feet high, and Beyrût shrouded in pine forest, lies nestled at the foot of them on the low coast line.
