Baalbek

Last weekend Jeff and I spent the three-day holiday weekend (in honor of Eid al-Adha, which marks the end of the Hajj to Mecca) in Baalbeck, Lebanon's most famous archeological site.

We decided to make the most of our time by renting a car rather than using Lebanon's difficult and time-consuming public transportation. Taking public transportation would have meant grabbing a shared taxi to one of Beirut's bus stations, then finding a minibus that was heading toward the ruins, negotiating a price with the driver, and then waiting for the bus to fill up before leaving Beirut. It also would have meant skipping one of the sites we wanted to see: the ruins at Aanjar, which are off the main highway.

Instead, we piled into our little sub-compact rented Kia and drove stright to Aanjar, a little Armenian town in Lebanon's fertile Bekka valley. Aanjar has Lebanon's only ruins from the Umayyad perod, about 710 CE, in the early days of Islamic rule. It was a beautiful day--cool and sunny, and it felt nice to stroll around the ancient site.

After seeing Aanjar we got back in the car, broke out the sandwiches and red pepper slices we'd brought from home, and had lunch en route to Baalbeck. It was a little tricky navigating the winding, narrow, and sporadically-marked roads, even with the aid of a pretty good map. Before we knew it, though, we were in Baalbeck, with the impressive ruins suddenly visible near the road.

Also visible all along the roadside were yellow flags with Hezbollah's logo on them. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is a political party that has seats in parliament just like the other parties. Also like the other parties, it has its own militia. The Bekka Valley, a poor agricultural region, depends a lot on Hezbollah for social services and other support that it doesn't get from the government. I knew that the Bekka was Hezbollah country; what I didn't know was how well merchandized the party was. Hezbollah flags and billboards were everywhere. Touts selling Hezbollah t-shirts crowded around the ruins. We even saw souvenir lighters that projected an image of the face of Nasrallah (Hezbollah's leader). Wow.

We checked into our room at the Jupiter Hotel, right across from the ruins. As it was surpisingly cold in the high valley of the Bekka, we decided to pay an extra $30 US for a room with heat. As an added bonus, the room also had a lovely view of the ruins and the Hezbollah flags lining the street.

The sun set early in Baalbeck. Around 4:30 it dipped below the mountain range and the temperatures started to drop. We decided to save our visit to the the ruins for Saturday and instead take a quick walk to an ancient quarry containing what is supposed to be the world's largest cut stone. A sign on the gift shop nearby claimed that the stone increased the fertility of any woman who touched it. I stayed well away and watched while Jeff climbed it.

We grabbed a couple chicken shwarma sandwiches for dinner and then returned to our room. The room was "heated" by an oil stove. Diesel fuel dripped audibly from the tank into the burner all night long, like an IV drip in a hospital. It was cozy when we pulled the chairs right up to it, but it was a pretty chilly night nonetheless.

In the morning we headed straight to the Baalbek ruins. They were impressive indeed. About 1000 years BCE, a temple was built on this site in honor of Baal the storm god. When the Romans later conquered the area, they built the impressive complex of temples that are still visible today.

Interestingly, Mark Twain visited Baalbek in 1867. He describes the Temple of Jupiter this way: "The six columns are perfect...and six more shapely columns do not exist. The columns and the entablature together are ninety feet high--a prodigious altitude for shafts of stone to reach, truly--and yet one only thinks of their beauty and symmetry when looking at them" (Innocents Abroad, p. 447).

There is also a Temple of Venus,

and lots of ornately carved rubble. It is indeed pretty amazing to imagine the construction of such massive and artistically-designed buildings.

We spent most of the day at the ruins, and then went for a late afternoon lunch at one of the best Lebanese restaurants we've been to. Our hotel proprietor kept calling it "the Hezbollah restaurant," but aside from the restaurant's green and yellow logo, the only thing that seemed different about it was its excellent food. We went back there for breakfast Sunday morning and had a giant bowl of chick peas in some sort of spiced yogurt sauce, liberally sprinkled with pine nuts and olive oil. It was delicious.

After the courteous restaurant staff packed up our breakfast leftovers for us to take with us, we piled into our little rented car and headed back to Beirut. It is mid-semester for us (we'll continue until late January, with only about six days off for Christmas and New Years), and I knew I had a pile of grading waiting for me upon our return from Baalbek. Nevertheless, I was very glad to have taken some time away from work to see such amazing ancient sites. If ancient people can carve giant stones and erect ninety-foot columns, I figured I could grade a few papers! Funny how visiting places like Baalbeck helps put modern-day struggles into perspective.