dawn of history. You pass lumbering, grunting camel trains laden with roughly quarried building stone from the hills or huge bales of cotton from the interior; flocks of sheep guided by bearded, patriarchal shepherds garbed in the Biblical coats of many colors; slow moving oxen plowing the field with a sharpened crooked stick; Fella women working in the fields, grotesque in their blue cloth robes and bright red trousers, hideous with their tatooed faces, blackened teeth and red stained fingernails. As you go winding through little villages of square adobe or dirty
brownstone houses, unadorned save where a primitive artistic impulse has painted them blue or pink, you are taken back to the beginning of human endeavor. The primitive beginnings, the crudities, and yet withal the humanness of life that underlies civilization and culture as we boast it, are most vividly brought to mind.
So that by the time the great Temple City of Baalbek rises to your view, you are, as I was, in a truly sympathetic state of mind to trace its history down through the ages.
History fails us and archaeology helps but little to solve the riddle of its origin, but undoubtedly the spot had had a sacred significance from the dawn of man, due to the presence there of an ever-flowing, life-giving spring called Ras-el-Ain. Primitive religions placed local gods or Baals (masters) over this precious spring and
though cult followed cult its sacred significance was never lost to the desert people. Certain it is that Baalbek was a shrine from the beginning of human occupancy and as man’s power of expression developed, so we find greater and more pretentious shrines expressing his reverence to a protecting deity. A persistent native tradition mentions Cain as the founder of the first city, saying he built himself a refuge there after fleeing from the wrath of God. His fear must have been great if he laid the massive foundation stones existing today, but archaeology ascribes that work
to the indefatigable efforts of the early Phoenicians dating perhaps as far back as 2700 B. C.
Early Egyptian and Assyrian records refer to the sacred city of Balbiki. Solomon is reputed to have built a temple there for his heathen wives. Early Greek and Roman coins show the temple of Jupiter and are stamped Heliopolis—city of the Sun God.
Today, little remains to tell of its ancient, pristine glory. Yet that little, surviving centuries of fire and sword; conquest and iconoclasm; earthquake and the disintegration of neglect; stands a majestic monument to early ideals and stupendous achievement.
As you approach the city, six Corinthian columns topped by a beautiful entablature rise to view and fling themselves, like a triumphant bar of music against the sky. They are part of the
Temple of Bacchus, View of Front
brownstone houses, unadorned save where a primitive artistic impulse has painted them blue or pink, you are taken back to the beginning of human endeavor. The primitive beginnings, the crudities, and yet withal the humanness of life that underlies civilization and culture as we boast it, are most vividly brought to mind.
So that by the time the great Temple City of Baalbek rises to your view, you are, as I was, in a truly sympathetic state of mind to trace its history down through the ages.
History fails us and archaeology helps but little to solve the riddle of its origin, but undoubtedly the spot had had a sacred significance from the dawn of man, due to the presence there of an ever-flowing, life-giving spring called Ras-el-Ain. Primitive religions placed local gods or Baals (masters) over this precious spring and
though cult followed cult its sacred significance was never lost to the desert people. Certain it is that Baalbek was a shrine from the beginning of human occupancy and as man’s power of expression developed, so we find greater and more pretentious shrines expressing his reverence to a protecting deity. A persistent native tradition mentions Cain as the founder of the first city, saying he built himself a refuge there after fleeing from the wrath of God. His fear must have been great if he laid the massive foundation stones existing today, but archaeology ascribes that work
to the indefatigable efforts of the early Phoenicians dating perhaps as far back as 2700 B. C.
Early Egyptian and Assyrian records refer to the sacred city of Balbiki. Solomon is reputed to have built a temple there for his heathen wives. Early Greek and Roman coins show the temple of Jupiter and are stamped Heliopolis—city of the Sun God.
Today, little remains to tell of its ancient, pristine glory. Yet that little, surviving centuries of fire and sword; conquest and iconoclasm; earthquake and the disintegration of neglect; stands a majestic monument to early ideals and stupendous achievement.
As you approach the city, six Corinthian columns topped by a beautiful entablature rise to view and fling themselves, like a triumphant bar of music against the sky. They are part of the
Temple of Bacchus, View of Front