We flagged down a taxi outside our hotel and told the driver we were going to Baalbeck. He drove us to a line of service taxis and led us to the right one. The service taxis were old beat-up vans that seated 12 people plus the driver. They drove east from Beirut across the country through countless little towns. Whenever the driver saw someone standing by the road he would slow down, and his companion would lean out the window shouting, “Baalbeck! Baalbeck!” We picked up or dropped off a passenger about every ten minutes that way. Between Beirut and Baalbeck, I think we completely cycled through the van's occupants twice.
The van dropped us off in the center of Baalbeck, and we found a hotel pretty easily. The Pension Jamaal was run by middle-aged doctor who also owned a clinic across the street. He was nice guy, but he was a hell of a tout. He showed us the way to the ruins with a stop at his friend's souvenir shop. He drove us to a restaurant that was nice but also very expensive and owned by a good friend. He offered us to make us breakfast the next morning, but he didn't tell us it cost $5 apiece until after we were finished. We could have gotten the same food for under a dollar.
The temple of Baal in the Bekka Valley gave the town of Baalbeck its name. The temple (and its younger, smaller neighbor, probably dedicated to Bacchus) was famous around the ancient world. The site was built and rebuilt over 2,000 years and then disappeared into history. The first temples to Baal, the Phoenician god of fertility, were built sometime after 1,000 BC, long before the Greeks discovered it and named it Heliopolis. The Romans colonized it and built temples to Jupiter over the original temple to Baal. The Byzantines converted the site to a church. The Mamelukes changed it into a fortress. By that time, however, the cultural centers of the world had moved to other cities, the temple had been abandoned, and Baalbeck had become the small town that it is today.
The site of the ruins is massive. You might think, like I did, that a site with just two temples would be small. After all, Pompeii has three temples, and they take up less space than the city basilica. But the temples at Baalbeck would hold Pompeii's basilica and its temples and half the city as well. The temple to Bacchus is so massive that it's hard to believe that it's the smaller of the two. The temple of Jupiter was so huge that....well, it was too big to last. It was damaged and dismantled and nearly destroyed. Earthquakes took what looters couldn't steal, and the temple today is a broken plain of foundations and alcoves and broad staircases. Six huge columns still stand as testament to how massive the temple was. It's astounding to stand next to them and realize how huge they are. It's overwhelming to look around the court and realize that 49 other columns stood alongside these six, and a vast concrete dome covered the whole court.
I can't say much more about such an amazing place. Either go there yourself or go to my photo site at http://expat.fotopic/net and see for yourself.
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