Beirut and Beyond
Lebanon and Beirut, the former ‘Paris of the Middle East’, have long held a special fascination for me. A temperate city on the sea backed by mountains with a fascinating culture and deep history are the ingredients for a dream location. Unfortunately, the dream turned into a nightmare with the wars with Israel and the Civil War. The territory Lebanon now encompasses has been a crossroad of trade and of peoples since Neolithic times. Its strategic location coupled with rich natural resources from the sea and forests have made its cities simultaneously wealthy and the cause of envy from neighboring peoples.
The coastal cities of Byblos, Sidon, and Tyre are all mentioned in 2nd Millennia BCE texts, and the latter two in the Amarna Letters of Pharaoh Akhenaton and in the Bible. Sidon is even mentioned in Homer’s great works The Iliad and The Odyssey. They were major centers of commerce in the Iron Age and the people who lived there were called Phoenicians, from the Greek word for purple. The people of the coast, especially around Tyre were famous for the purple dye they extracted from the Murex mollusk in the harbor areas. This rare color became associated with royalty as it was so expensive to produce, and the coastal areas of what is now Southern Lebanon had a monopoly on it. The Phoenicians were famous not only for the dye, but also for their sailing and trading skills as well as for their metallurgy, carpentry and cedar forests. In the Babylonian story of Gilgamesh, the hero and his counterpart leave Ur and cross the desert to get to the great cedar forests where they slay the guardian of the forest, Humbaba. In ancient Hebrew accounts, King David’s palace and King Solomon’s temple were both designed by Phoenician architects and built with Lebanese cedar. During Biblical times, the ancient land of Canaan extended up the coast to north of Sidon, named for the firstborn son of Canaan. The daughter of King Ithobad of Tyre, Jezebel, married King Ahab of the Hebrews and brought the worship of Baal to the Hebrew court, which the prophets naturally railied against. Strife between the Hebrews and those who worship other gods has been part of this region since Abraham’s time and, unfortunately, it still continues.
For my trip to these ancient regions, I decided to base myself in Beirut and do day trips from there to the archeological sites and museums I wanted to visit. This seemed the most sensible way to organize the trip as the bus system isn’t that great and there are no trains. The hotel let me hire a car for the three full day excursions with driver/guide for $100 pr. day, which, I found out later, was a very good deal. In town, I took taxis, which are fairly inexpensive, the bus, and walked as many of the highlights of downtown, except for the National Museum, are within walking distance of the Hamra district and Corniche. Walking around the shopping district is quite fun as there are a number of cafes, including Starbucks, amid the local shops and chain stores. The Hamra district is home to a couple of institutions of higher learning, including the American University of Beirut, and as is appropriate to a university town, there are lots of wonderful bookstores. I wanted to find a locally written book on Lebanese history in English and one of the storekeepers insisted that the ancient history I was looking for wasn’t nearly as important as the recent history of the country. He dusted off a thick paperback from one of the top shelves in his overloaded basement bookshop and handed it to me, saying that if I bought one book on Lebanon, it should be this one. It was Robert Fisk’s Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War published by Oxford Press. The preface to the book starts:
In the spring of 1978, on Easter Sunday, on a winding little hill road outside the village of Qana in southern Lebanon, I was interviewing two farmers in a tobacco field when an Israeli tank suddenly drove over the nearest ridge and opened fire on us. As if in a movie – and first experiences of such warfare tend to have a distinctly unreal air about them – we flung ourselves into the undergrowth as a series of great orange flames bubbled around us, the sound of the explosions so loud that the inside of my head hurt for hours afterwards. (ix)
Fisk gives an in-depth and as objective as possible account of the causes of the Israeli-Lebanese wars and the Civil War. The book ends, as it begins, with an investigation into the Israel strike on the U.N. Palestinian refugee camp at Qana as retaliation for a Hezbollah attack, which in turn was a response to an Israeli attack on a helicopter etc. etc. Action begets reaction, and it is the civilians who suffer. Their suffering is still apparent in the damaged bullet-ridden buildings that line the streets of Beirut and beyond.
Beirut is trying desperately to rebuild, however, and find a way to accommodate all the different elements of their society. Lebanon, according to 2016 U.N. figures, is 27% Sunni, 27% Shiite, & 40% Christian (incl. various denominations). The proxy war between Sunni Saudi and Shiite Iran in Yemen and elsewhere is also felt along the Mediterranean coast. Palestinian Hezbollah works closely with the Iranian government, while Palestinian Hamas is Sunni. Along the Corniche elegant new hotels and office buildings have been constructed along with a beautiful new harbor filled with very expensive yachts. These have been built with Saudi and UAE funds. On the backstreets, local cafes, shops and apartment buildings are being reconstructed and supported by Hezbollah, which to the people, is functioning like Catholic Charities or the Mormon Relief Society as there is otherwise no money for infrastructure. In the middle of this, the Sunni led government tries to walk a tightrope and keep everyone happy. The problems are compounded with the recent influx of Syrian, in addition to the close to a half million Palestinian, refugees. According to U.N. Dec. 20, 2016 figures, Lebanon now hosts over 1 million Syrian refugees, which amounts to one in five people in the country from Syria alone. These figures do not include the number of internally displaced people after the destruction of war-torn refugee camps, nor the number of stateless people, which includes the children of refugees or Lebanese women married to foreign or stateless men. Of the officially registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon, 52.3 % are female and over 50% of the million plus are under eighteen years of age. This presents the government with numerous social issues beyond simply housing and feeding the people, as the women often lack the resources to support themselves and their children, nor are they officially allowed to work, and the children need educational and health resources that are already stretched thin. And yet, through all of this, there is a spirit in the city that says hope does not and cannot die. It is a young population and they want to move beyond the tensions to enjoy life. There are street musicians, clowns, bungie jumpers, food vendors, joggers, lovers, friends, people of all ages and income brackets walking along the cornice enjoying the incredible views of sea and sky at all hours of the day and night. There is a sense that by working together the young people can build a better world for themselves and those around them. They are very well aware of the issues and the precarious nature of their world, but they seem determined to work together to solve the problems. If the past is any indication of the future, they will succeed.
Historically, Beirut was not the major city in the region. That honor vacillates among Sidon, Tyre and Byblos. Sidon was the first of the major cities, but from an archeological perspective there is not much left to see other than the Crusader fort in the harbor. Nearby, however, just outside of the modern commercial city, is a backroad that leads to the ruins of the Great Temple of Echmoun. Echmoun was the Sidonese name for Melqart, who Herodotus equates with Hercules. The ruins lay along a long corridor with isolated mosaic floor fragments still apparent through the sand. Perhaps the most amazing artifact in the site is a fairly large throne with two winged lions in the area said to be the Temple of Astarte.
By King Hiram’s time in the 10th C, Tyre eclipsed Sidon’s regional influence to become one of the first truly international ports. During the height of Tyre’s global influence, King Pygmalion’s sister Elissa/Dido fled with compatriots, to escape his tyrannical rule after he had killed her husband. They and their descendants subsequently ruled the Mediterranean trade routes for centuries from their cities of Cadiz and Carthage, until the jealous Romans finally conquered them. The people they left behind in Tyre outlasted the tyrant and the city continued to thrive. Originally, Tyre was two small rock islands off the coast, but by the 10th C famous King Hiram connected them. The city-state retained its independence from outside invaders, including from the Assyrians, for centuries. Alexander the Great even had trouble conquering it, and ended up building a causeway to the islands before he entered the city walls. During Roman times, the city was the Colony of Septimus Severus and the citizens were allowed all Roman rights. In mythology, Europa was the Tyrian Princess who was abducted by Zeus in the form of a bull. It was also the place of the first Christian basilica, and in 313 Eusebius gave the consecration speech. By 634 the Arabs came in and converted the city, but during the Crusades it went back and forth between Muslim and Christian forces. The legacy of this conflict lies in the demographic mix of the country today, while the majority of Tyre, known as Sur in Arabic, is today mostly Muslim and a stronghold for Hezbollah.
The archeological site of ancient Tyre is divided into two main sections, Al-Mina and Al-Bass. Al-Mina is by the coast and has a large necropolis on either side of the first of two long colonnaded pathways. The second, which leads directly to the sea, is lined with mosaic floors. Al-Bass is a bit inland and neighbors a large Palestinian refugee camp. It has the second largest Roman hippodrome in the world. While I was there to visit the ancient sites, the present day refugee camps and the signs for Hezbollah leaders are so prominent that they become the major focal points. This border region has a patina of normalcy, but it is clear through the varnish that there are problems with the structure. The poverty in the walled barb-wire topped camps is obvious, while the hillsides next to the camps support various kinds of housing, some clearly intended to be temporary and others remodeled temporary housing that are now supposed to be permanent, and still others nice newly constructed single family homes. The population is largely comprised of Palestinian refugees.
The third of the major ancient coastal cities is Byblos, which lies north of Beirut. The area around Byblos has been inhabited since Neolithic times, with evidence of settlements from around 5000 BCE. According to Joshua Mark in his 2009 article on Byblos, it:
was the ancient Phoenician port city of Gebal (called Byblos by the Greeks) on the coast of the Mediterranean sea in what is, today, Lebanon. According to the historian Durant, Byblos thought itself the oldest of all cities; the god El had founded it at the beginning of time, and to the end of its history it remained the religious capital of Phoenicia.” Because papyrus was one of the principal articles in its trade, the Greeks took the name of the city as their word for book – biblos – and form their word for books named our Bible – ta biblia- which means ‘the books’. Byblos is among the cities listed as candidates for the distinction of ‘oldest city in the world’ as it has been continuously inhabited for over 7,000 years. (http://www.ancient.eu/Byblos/)
The god El reigned supreme here along with the ancient mother goddess. Chalcolithic bone idols similar to those found in Cyprus have been uncovered in the ruins by the sea. By the Egyptian Old Kingdom period, evidence of the Egyptian pharaohs worshipping the same gods appear and Hathor, who is considered the Lady of Byblos, has her own Temple. It was also here that Isis found the body of her brother/husband Osiris in the trunk of a tree. During the Biblical period the Hebrew prophets vilified the god, Reshef, who was the god of war and battles. In Hellenic and Roman times, Byblos was the center of the cult of Adonis, who represented the annual turning of the seasons and the subsequent victory over death. The Byzantine period brought Byblos its own bishopric, and the place where the current Church of St. John is located may be the site of earlier Christian worship. As with the Sidon and Tyre, Byblos was the site of a Crusader fortress and today the Frankish Tower is the best place to view the archeological site. The ruins extend from the Crusader castle across a meadow to the sea. Visitors can climb up to the ramparts of the fortress passing museum exhibitions that explain the history of the region and the castle to get the best view of the coastline. This introduction is good to have as there are few signs in the archeological park itself, so one is left to imagine what the various footprints of buildings represent. Next to the archeological site is the medieval town, which is filled with nice cafes, small eateries and tourist shops. Behind the Fortress are a number of Roman ruins.
I really liked this site as it had far more vegetation, trees, shrubs and wildflowers than the starker Tyrian landscape. Both are steeped in history, but Tyre was so thoroughly re-constructed by the Romans, that it was only the elements from that period that came through. In Byblos, I could imagine the transition of time – perhaps Adonis still lives there.
Not far from Byblos is Harissa, which is the main Christian Marian pilgrimage site in Lebanon. The site is in the hills directly on the eastern side of the main highway that extends north to south from Tripoli to Tyre. Mary is said to have appeared on the hill and today a large very modern cathedral and the Marian shrine can be reached by a funicular. The shrine is shaped like a spiraled cylinder with a large statue of Mary on top looking down and blessing the people. She is the Lady of Lebanon and the protector of Lebanese Christians. The site was packed when I was there mid-week, so I can only imagine how busy it would be on a weekend day.
Lebanon has hosted pilgrimage sites from Echmoun to Harissa, but perhaps the most famous during the classical period were the three Temples of Baalbek (Heliopolis) near the modern day Syrian border. It is uncertain who originally built the temples. Many historians believe they were built by the Romans, but local scholars refute that and insist that the worshippers, not the emperors, were the ones to start the construction. Given the size of the structures, it is difficult to believe they were not at the very least heavily supported by governmental sources. The parents of Emperor Caracalla were Phoenician and his grandfather had been a high priest of Baal, so there is certainly cause for believing he supported this site.The three main temples are dedicated to the Phoenician/Roman triad: Baal/Jupiter, Atargatis/Venus (Magna Mater); and Adonis/Mercury, i.e, father, mother, son.
The Temple of Atargatis is sometimes called the Temple of Bacchus, but local scholars believe that this is an incorrect interpretation of the carvings on the building. After Emperor Theodosius outlawed pagan worship in 381, a portion of the Temple of Baal was remade into a sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Later still, during the Crusades, the Temples of Atargatis and Adonis were used as fortresses. The design of the temples follows a traditional Phoenician style with a propyleum (monumental gateway) to the site, a forecourt only for the faithful, a sacrificial court only for the priests and a roofed sanctuary where the deity resided in a separate chamber. Today, the best preserved is the Temple of Atargatis, although the huge columns from the Temple of Baal tower over the region. Renovations within the goddess’ temple, which was also later used as a church, were going on while I was there and the workers didn’t allow me to enter the scaffolded area. The rest of the hilltop site was free to explore, though, and while the City of the Sun may not shine today as it did in its heyday, it is still quite impressive.
Back at the hotel, I noticed that there were a fair number of Syrian guests. I was curious about this as everything I was hearing and reading was about how miserable the situation in that country was. I asked the registration staff to find out if one of the Syrians would be willing to speak with me about their experiences. It took a couple of days to find someone who would. An elderly physician who spoke English met me for coffee in the lobby. He was there with his wife and two daughters who were on their semi-annual shopping trip to Beirut. They live near the border, and he said that they had not had too much trouble. From the conversation, however, it was clear that he was uncomfortable with my questions and that I probably wasn’t going to get honest answers to them. He was being polite to speak with me, but that wasn’t going to lead to real information. Nonetheless, it was somewhat shocking to see the hotel almost full with Syrian tourists, while refugees from that country have overwhelmed the local population.
Lebanon is a land of contrasts. As the sea and mountains reach to the sky, the demographics of the population are a mix of Sunni, Shiite, and Christian, of native born and of refugees – both long and short term, and of young and not so young. The youth of Beirut convey a sense of hope and a joy for living that has the potential to rebuild the majesty of the ancient civilizations and make the country a leader in global commerce and culture once again. I wish them luck!
