In The Levant 30

In The Levant 30

Ba'albek, like Zahleh, has no inn, and we lodged in a private house near

the ruins. The house was one story; it consisted of four large rooms in

a row, looking upon the stone-wall enclosure, each with its door,

and with no communication between them. The kitchen was in a separate

building. These rooms had high ceilings of beams supporting the flat

roof, windows with shutters but without glass, divans along one side,

and in one corner a fireplace and chimney. Each room had a niche

extending from the floor almost to the ceiling, in which the beds are

piled in the daytime; at night they are made up on the divans or on the

floor. This is the common pattern of a Syrian house, and when we got a

fire blazing in the big chimney-place and began to thaw out our stiff

limbs, and Abd-el-Atti brought in something from the kitchen that was

hot and red in color and may have had spice on the top of it, we found

this the most comfortable residence in the world.

 

It is the business of a dragoman to produce the improbable in impossible

places. Abd-el-Atti rubbed his lamp and converted this establishment

into a tolerable inn, with a prolific kitchen and an abundant table.

While he was performing this revolution we went to see the ruins, the

most noble portions of which have survived the religion and almost the

memory of the builders.

 

The remains of the temples of Ba'albek, or Hieropolis, are only elevated

as they stand upon an artificial platform; they are in the depression of

the valley, and in fact a considerable stream flows all about the

walls and penetrates the subterranean passages. This water comes from

a fountain which bursts out of the Anti-Lebanon hills about half a mile

above Ba'albek, in an immense volume, falls into a great basin, and

flows away in a small river. These instantaneously born rivers are a

peculiarity of Syria; and they often disappear as suddenly as they

come. The water of this Ba'albek fountain is cold, pure, and sweet;

it deserves to be called a "beverage," and is, so far as my experience

goes, the most agreeable water in the world. The Moslems have a proverb

which expresses its unique worth: "The water of Ba'albek never leaves

its home." It rushes past the village almost a river in size, and then

disappears in the plain below as suddenly as it came to the light above.

 

We made our way across the stream and along aqueducts and over heaps of

shattered walls and columns to the west end of the group of ruins. This

end is defended by a battlemented wall some fifty feet high, which

was built by the Saracens out of incongruous materials from older

constructions. The northeast corner of this new wall rests upon the

ancient Phoenician wall, which sustained the original platform of the

sacred buildings; and at this corner are found the three famous stones

which at one time gave a name, "The Three-Stoned," to the great temple.

As I do not intend to enter into the details of these often described

ruins, I will say here, that this ancient Phoenician wall appears on the

north side of the platform detached, showing that the most ancient

temple occupied a larger area than the Greek and Roman buildings.

 

There are many stones in the old platform wall which are thirty feet

long; but the three large ones, which are elevated twenty feet above the

ground, and are in a line, are respectively 64 feet long, 63 feet 8

inches, and 63 feet, and about 13 feet in height and in depth. When I

measured the first stone, I made it 128 feet long, which I knew was an

error, but it was only by careful inspection that I discovered the joint

of the two stones which I had taken for one. I thought this a practical

test of the close fit of these blocks, which, laid without mortar, come

together as if the ends had been polished. A stone larger than either of

these lies in the neighboring quarry, hewn out but not detached.

 

These massive constructions, when first rediscovered, were the subject

of a great deal of wonder and speculation, and were referred to a remote

and misty if not fabulous period. I believe it is now agreed that they

were the work of the Phoenicians, or Canaanites, and that they are to be

referred to a period subsequent to the conquest of Egypt, or at least

of the Delta of Egypt, by the Hittites, when the Egyptian influence was

felt in Syria; and that this Temple of the Sun was at least suggested,

as well as the worship of the Sun god here, by the Temple of the Sun

at Heliopolis on the Nile. There is, to be sure, no record of the great

city of Ba'albek, but it may safely be referred to the period of the

greatest prosperity of the Phoenician nation.

 

Much as we had read of the splendor of these ruins, and familiar as

we were with photographs of them, we were struck with surprise when

we climbed up into the great court, that is, to the platform of the

temples. The platform extends over eight hundred feet from east to west,

an elevated theatre for the display of some of the richest architecture

in the world. The general view is broad, impressive, inspiring beyond

anything else in Egypt or Syria; and when we look at details, the ruins

charm us with their beauty. Round three sides of the great court runs a

wall, the interior of which, recessed and niched, was once adorned

with the most elaborate carving in designs more graceful than you would

suppose stone could lend itself to, with a frieze of garlands of vines,

flowers, and fruits. Of the so-called great Temple of Baal at the west

end of the platform, only six splendid Corinthian columns remain. The

so-called Temple of the Sun or Jupiter, to the south of the other and

on a lower level, larger than the Parthenon, exists still in nearly its

original form, although some of the exterior columns have fallen,

and time and the art-hating Moslems have defaced some of its finest

sculpture. The ceiling between the outer row of columns and the wall

of this temple is, or was, one of the most exquisite pieces of

stone-carving ever executed; the figures carved in the medallions seem

to have anticipated the Gothic genius, and the exquisite patterns

in stone to have suggested the subsequent Saracenic invention. The

composite capitals of the columns offer an endless study; stone roses

stand out upon their stems, fruit and flowers hang and bloom in the

freedom of nature; the carving is all bold and spirited, and the

invention endless. This is no doubt work of the Roman period after the

Christian era, but it is pervaded by Greek feeling, and would seem to

have been executed by Greek artists.

 

In the centre of the great court (there is a small six-sided court to

the east of the larger one, which was once approached by a great flight

of steps from below) are remains of a Christian basilica, referred to

the reign of Theodosius. Underneath the platform are enormous vaults,

which may have served the successive occupants for store-houses. The

Saracens converted this position into a fortress, and this military

impress the ruins still bear. We have therefore four ages in these

ruins: the Phoenician, the Greek and Roman, the Christian, and the

Saracenic. The remains of the first are most enduring. The old builders

had no other method of perpetuating their memory except by these

cyclopean constructions.

 

We saw the sunset on Ba'albek. The clouds broke away and lay in great

rosy masses over Lebanon; the white snow ridge for forty miles sparkled

under them. The peak of Lebanon, over ten thousand feet above us, was

revealed in all its purity. There was a red light on the columns and

on the walls, and the hills of Anti-Lebanon, red as a dull garnet, were

speckled with snow patches. The imagination could conceive nothing more

beautiful than the rose-color of the ruins, the flaming sky, and the

immaculate snow peaks, apparently so close to us.

 

On our return we stopped at the beautiful circular temple of Venus,

which would be a wonder in any other neighborhood. Dinner awaited us,

and was marked by only one novelty,--what we at first took to be

brown napkins, fantastically folded and laid at each plate, a touch of

elegance for which we were not prepared. But the napkins proved to be

bread. It is made of coarse dark wheat, baked in circular cakes as thin

as brown paper, and when folded its resemblance to a napkin is complete.

We found it tolerably palatable, if one could get rid of the notion that

he was eating a limp rag. The people had been advertised of our arrival,

and men, women, and boys swarmed about us to sell copper coins; most of

them Roman, which they find in the ruins. Few are found of the Greeks';

the Romans literally sowed the ground with copper money wherever they

went in the Orient. The inhabitants are Moslems, and rather decent in

appearance, and the women incline to good looks, though not so modest in

dress as Moslem women usually are; they are all persistent beggars, and

bring babies in their arms, borrowing for that purpose all the infants

in the neighborhood, to incite us to charity.

 

We yielded to the average sentiment of Christendom, and sallied out in

the cold night to see the ruins under the light of a full moon; one

of the party going simply that he might avoid the reproach of other

travellers,--"It is a pity you did not see Ba'albek by moonlight." And

it must be confessed that these ruins stand the dim light of the moon

better than most ruins; they are so broad and distinct that they show

themselves even in this disadvantage, which those of Karnak do not.

The six isolated columns seemed to float in the sky; between them snowy

Lebanon showed itself.

 

The next morning was clear and sparkling; the sky was almost as blue as

it is in Nubia. We were awakened by the drumming of a Moslem procession.

It was the great annual _fête_ day, upon which was to be performed the

miracle of riding over the bodies of the devout. The ceremony took

place a couple of miles away upon the hill, and we saw on all the paths

leading thither files of men and women in white garments. The sheykh,

mounted on horseback, rides over the prostrate bodies of all who throw

themselves before him, and the number includes young men as well as

darwishes. As they lie packed close together and the horse treads upon

their spinal columns, their escape from death is called miraculous. The

Christians tried the experiment here a year or two ago, several young

fellows submitting to let a horseman trample over them, in order to

show the Moslems that they also possessed a religion which could stand

horses' hoofs.

 

The ruins, under the intense blue sky, and in the splendid sunlight,

were more impressive than in the dull gray of the day before, or even in

the rosy sunset; their imperial dignity is not impaired by the excessive

wealth of ornamentation. When upon this platform there stood fifty-eight

of these noble columns, instead of six, conspicuous from afar, and the

sunlight poured into this superb court, adorned by the genius of Athens

and the wealth of Rome, this must have been one of the most resplendent

temples in existence, rivalling the group upon the Acropolis itself!

 

Nothing more marks the contrast between the religions of the Greeks and

Romans and of the Egyptians, or rather between the genius of the two

civilizations, than their treatment of sacred edifices. And it is all

the more to be noted, because the more modern nations accepted without

reserve any god or object of veneration or mystery in the Egyptian

pantheon. The Roman occupants of the temple of Philæ sacrificed without

scruple upon the altars of Osiris, and the voluptuous Græco-Romans of

Pompeii built a temple to Isis. Yet always and everywhere the Grecians

and the Romans sought conspicuous situations for the temples of