BAALBEK THE WONDERFUL
I am in the Valley of Lebanon, the high, narrow plain which lies
between the two ranges of the Lebanon Mountains. The word Lebanon means
“white,” perhaps because of the walls of chalk or limestone which are
a feature of the whole range. Just now the highest peaks are white
with snow. These ranges extend north and south parallel with the coast
of the Mediterranean Sea. Beginning a little below the border of Asia
Minor, they lose themselves in the Holy Land. In reading of them I have
always thought they were only hills. They are higher than any mountains
of our country east of the Mississippi, and the average height of the
range nearest the coast is a thousand feet greater than that of Mount
Washington. Mount Hermon is more than nine thousand feet high and Jebel
Makmel measures ten thousand two hundred feet. The elevation of the
Valley of Lebanon itself is twice that of the topmost peaks of the Blue
Ridge of Virginia, and it slopes from here to the north as far as Aleppo
and to the south beyond Dan, where rises the Jordan.
In this little valley, which is less than one hundred miles long and from
five to eight miles wide, walled by these mighty mountains, lie the ruins
of Baalbek, once the most wonderful temples known to the ages. I have
spent hours in wandering through them, and their immensity and beauty
steadily grow upon me. I despair of being able to describe them and can
only hope to give you bits of the details.
I have seen most of the world’s mighty ruins. In the past year I have
wandered through the tombs of the Mings outside Mukden, Manchuria; I
have stood upon the Temple of Heaven in Peking, and have climbed the
great Chinese wall. I have gone through the Temples of Karnak at the
hundred-gated city of Thebes far up the Nile; I have taken photographs of
the Colossi of Memnon, and have measured the stones of the Pyramids with
a two-foot rule. Not long ago I visited the Temple of Boro Boedor in the
heart of Java to describe its three miles of unique carvings, and last
year I spent some time in the forts of the Moguls at Delhi and wrote of
the Taj Mahal and its marvellous beauties. I have also seen Timgad, the
excavated city on the edge of the Sahara, and have lately gone through
the Colosseum at Rome and inspected the equally imposing amphitheatre at
El Djem in the heart of the Tunisian desert. All these are wonderful, but
Baalbek is their superior.
These ruins have never been so impressive as they are now. For centuries
most of them have been as much buried as is Herculaneum, and it was only
when the Emperor of Germany made his tour through this part of the world
that they began to be brought to the light of day.
I have marched in the Kaiser’s footsteps through Palestine and have seen
there the churches and other monuments which he had erected. Before he
came to Syria he stopped at Constantinople with the Sultan Abdul Hamid,
who gave him a permit to do about as he pleased. As the Kaiser travelled
he flattered the Mohammedans, the Christians, and the Jews. He was alive
to every possibility, and he stamped “Made in Germany” upon every city
he visited. In Damascus he laid a golden wreath on the tomb of Saladin,
the famous soldier who fought the Crusaders; and about Jerusalem he built
hospitals, schools, and a great sanatorium. Here at Baalbek the Sultan
gave him permission to do anything he liked. In the Temple of the Sun
is a tablet bearing an inscription in German and Arabic testifying his
regard for the Sultan and his pleasure at visiting the ruins. Shortly
after leaving he sent German scientists, who organized an army of natives
and put them to work excavating the temples. The Germans laid down a
railroad track for the dirt cars to carry away mountains of earth and
débris. As a result of their work and modern machinery for lifting huge
stones into place we have at last a view of these most wonderful temples
more as they were in their glory.
But first let me tell you something about the origin of these structures
and the gods to whom they were dedicated. The Arabs claim that this,
rather than Damascus, is the oldest city in the world. They say that Adam
lived here, and that it was between here and the Mediterranean that Cain
killed Abel. One of Adam’s favourite residences was Damascus, and Seth
lived at Nebi Schitt in the Lebanon Mountains. They will show you where
Noah was buried and the town in which Ham lived. They also think that
Nimrod reigned in this valley, and they have a tradition that when an
angel called upon him he threw the holy one into a blazing furnace from
which he came out unharmed. They locate the Tower of Babel at Baalbek
and believe that Nimrod built it. According to another legend, Abraham
reigned at Damascus and came here frequently. It is also well known that
Solomon had a city named Baalath, in which other gods than Jehovah were
worshipped. Indeed, it is said that Solomon, in order to please his
concubines, built a temple here and that he had a castle which he gave as
a present to Balkis, the Queen of Sheba.
Baalbek was well known in the days of the Phœnicians and was a great
city in the time of Christ. It was about a hundred years after that
that the finest of the temples, the ruins of which we see to-day, were
constructed. Then the Roman civilization was in the height of its glory,
and the emperors were building cities in north Africa, in Asia Minor,
and in other parts of the world. The Romans put up the temples here in
honour of Jupiter (Baal), which had in them smaller temples to Venus and
Bacchus. They worshipped Baal, the god of the sun, as one of the greatest
of their deities, although they had other gods without number.
As to the worship of Baal, there have been gods of that name almost
since the beginnings of history. It is a question, indeed, whether the
word Baal did not mean “lord,” being a general term for male gods of
various kinds. Later on the Greeks considered Baal the god of the sun,
classing him with the god represented by Helios, in whose honour the city
of Heliopolis in Egypt was built. The worship of Baal runs through the
Bible. Samuel rebuked the Israelites for bowing down to him, and Jezebel
had four hundred priests of Baal who were confounded by Elijah. Indeed,
it is a question whether Beelzebub, or the devil, was not Baalzebub.
Here at Baalbek the finest statue was that of this god. It was of gold
and represented a beardless young man clad in armour standing between two
golden bulls. He held a whip in his right hand and a thunderbolt and some
ears of corn in his left. There were also statues of Mercury and Venus,
a Hall of Bacchus, and statues and statuettes of exquisite workmanship.
These images were destroyed by the early Christians, who threw down parts
of the temples and broke up the carvings in their detestation of all
pagan art.
It is impossible to give pictures of the ruins and of the mighty temples
as they were in their wonderful beauty. The ruins cover more than ten
acres, and the Great Temple alone was about three hundred feet long by
one hundred and sixty feet wide. It had a roof upheld by Corinthian
columns only, six of which are now standing. These columns are eighty
feet high and twenty-two feet in circumference. In entering the temples I
went up a gigantic staircase, a great part of which has been destroyed,
and came into what is known as the forecourt, which is about two hundred
feet wide, and the floor of which was paved with mosaic.
We next went through another court, known as the Court of the Altar,
which must cover five or six acres. It is a mass of marble and granite,
gigantic columns and delicate carvings being thrown helter-skelter
together. Beyond this and up a series of steps are the ruins of the
Great Temple itself. At the left is the exquisite Temple of Bacchus, and
everywhere are great shafts of marble so wonderfully carved that they
would be treasures in any museum.
[Illustration: The nomadic Bedouins live in brown tents so low that the
people have to stoop to get into them. They camp wherever they find good
grazing for their stock]
[Illustration: The desolation of the once heavily wooded mountains of
Lebanon is emphasized by the lonely grove of cedars. This grove, far up
among the snows, is protected by a wall and contains four hundred very
old trees]
All this, however, gives no idea of the construction. People wonder
how the mighty stones of the Pyramids were put into place, and books
have been written to show how the obelisks were taken from the quarries
to the sites where they were erected as monuments. The building of the
temples of Baalbek was a far greater mechanical triumph. The materials,
including columns weighing hundreds of tons, had to be brought up the
steep Lebanon Mountains and carried over passes higher than the tops
of the Alleghanies. There is granite here which came from far up the
Nile; there are marbles from Greece, and great limestone blocks from
the quarries near by. The temple has walls sixty feet high, and the
mighty columns—seven feet in diameter, and, including the pedestals and
capitals, as tall as an eight-story building—rest upon a platform which
is more than fifty feet high. These mighty pillars are put up in three
sections each twenty feet or more in height and seven feet in diameter.
They are so put together that each column looks like one solid block.
In the walls of the temple foundation are what are, I venture, the
biggest building blocks ever quarried. One of the walls has three great
limestone blocks each of which measures sixty-four feet long, thirteen
feet wide, and twelve feet thick. If such stones were placed end to end
it would take only about eighty of them to make one mile. These stones
were brought from a quarry about a mile away. Some of them have been
placed upon the walls at a distance of thirty or more feet from the
ground, and are so accurately laid that a knife blade cannot be driven
between them.
I got an idea of the size of these blocks by visiting the quarries. Just
outside that from which the stones came is one which was cut out of the
rock, but for some reason or other was not carried to the structure. It
was dragged only a few feet away from the virgin rock, and to-day lies
there on its side, half buried in the earth. Upon its top I walked over
it. It is so wide that you could drive two motor cars abreast upon it
without risk of falling over the edges, and an English traveller here
says that a cricket match might be played upon its face, putting the
stakes at the right distance apart and giving the bowler at least two
feet at the end for his run. This block is as smooth as a marble column
and accurately square. Each side of it measures fourteen feet and it
is about seventy feet long. If it were stood on end inside a modern
ten-story apartment house it would fill ten rooms one above the other,
each room fourteen feet square and seven feet high. It has been estimated
to weigh fifteen hundred tons and if cut up would make a good load for
thirty flat cars.
Think of moving stones like that out of the mountains and up and down
hill for a mile without the aid of steam, electricity, or any kind of
machinery! That is the kind of work the Romans did eighteen hundred years
ago. All through the temples you may see examples of such huge masses
moved about and lifted into place.
There are carvings more beautiful than anything seen on our buildings
to-day. On some of the blocks still in the structure I saw bunches of
grapes no bigger than my thumb as beautifully cut as though made by
nature. There were also Cupids and cherubs exquisitely carved. It was
said of the artists who built the great temples of Delhi and Agra in
India that they worked like Titans and finished like jewellers. The same
was true of the Romans of the reigns of Antonius, Caracalla, and Nero.
I have taken photographs of some of the broken columns with myself
standing beside them to give an idea of their size. I am five feet eight
inches tall and the large columns are fully two feet more in diameter.
Some of the wonderful carvings are those which form the frieze above the
great pillars two or three hundred feet high up in the air. Among them
are the heads of gigantic lions, each head as big as a flour barrel but
polished like a fine marble mantel. Through the mouths of these lions
emptied the drains of the roof.
The beauties of the temples will be preserved from now on. They are under
official guard, and tickets which cost a dollar apiece are required of
all who go in. I was shown through by Dr. Michel Alouf, an archæologist,
who explained just how the temples looked in the past. He showed me where
the early Christians had erected a church inside one temple, defacing
the carvings and breaking the noses of the beautiful statues. They took
pleasure in destroying the work wrought by heathen artists in honour of
pagan gods. Next came the Arabs, who used the place as a fort, throwing
great round chunks of marble as big as footballs from its sheltering
walls. There are piles of these marble balls inside the temple to-day.
They were probably cut from the columns. The Arabs made a mosque in the
temple. They wiped out every trace of the Christian religion and used a
part of the church for a bath. After them came an earthquake, so that the
ruins were mostly covered up until the Germans began their excavations.
I am stopping here in the little town of Baalbek, which stands right
on the edge of the ruins. It has an excellent hotel, and its people
are hospitable. Its population of five or six thousand is made up of
Mohammedans and Christians. Besides a small garrison of soldiers, there
are two Greek Catholic monasteries and several girls’ schools. The
children followed us as we walked about through the ruins, selling purses
made of Syrian silk into which they had woven a design of the six great
columns of the temple. They also asked for _baksheesh_, and the begging
palm was everywhere thrust out.
I am surprised at the scanty forestation of these mountains of Lebanon.
I had expected to find them covered with woods, whereas they are almost
treeless. Their lower slopes are well cultivated and some of them are
terraced almost to the top. Thousands of acres, made up of little
patches, rise step-like one above another, covering the hills for miles
and miles. These patches contain mulberry orchards and vineyards. There
are also peaches and apples, and in the valleys are rich fields of wheat,
barley, and clover. The chief formation is limestone, and though there
are rocks everywhere, the soil seems wonderfully rich.
The cedars of Lebanon may have been great in the past, but they have now
almost disappeared. The only ones left are situated about nine or ten
hours from Baalbek. The trees grow in the thin soil, which covers the
white limestone, the ground being coated with spines, cones, and leaves.
Five are very ancient and of great girth, but the tallest is not more
than eighty feet high. The largest of all is about fifteen feet thick,
so you see they are mere sprouts in comparison with the Big Trees of
California and quite small as compared with the giants of Washington and
Oregon. The cedars which were taken for the temple at Jerusalem probably
came from the region where the old cedars stand, although other parts of
the Lebanon Mountains may then have been covered with woods. The logs
must have been cut in the forests and carried over the mountains forty
or fifty miles to the seacoast. The rafting was done under the direction
of King Hiram of Tyre, and the logs were probably towed down to Jaffa,
and thence carried up the mountains of Judea to Jerusalem, a distance of
about forty miles. The cedars bear cones about as large as a goose egg.
The leaves or spines of the cones are solid rather than detached, as
those of our cedars at home. The wood is whitish in colour; it is soft,
and for building is far inferior to cypress or pine.
[Illustration: Of the great cedars of Lebanon which Solomon used in
building his temple, only a few are left. The ancient Israelites regarded
these trees as the ornaments of the mountains and the types of manly
strength and beauty]
[Illustration: The plain of Beirut is covered with luxuriant gardens, and
tree-lined avenues lead out of the city. Beirut, one of the oldest cities
on the Phœnician Coast, is the metropolis of Syria and Lebanon and the
seaport of Damascus]