Jesuits, Romans, Ummayads oh my!

Thursday morning I rolled myself out of bed at 615, left with Chantal on her way to work and she dropped me at a hotel in the neighborhood where I would meet the bus for the tour company. By 8 the group was assembled (6 of us- 2 Belgian women, a Jordanian couple, and a Moroccan girl my age from Paris) and we drove off into the Bekaa valley (to the east, between the Lebanon Mountains and the Anti-Lebanon mountains on the border with Syria), which is actually closer to Damascus than Beirut. We stopped for breakfast (flatbread with labneh- thick yogurt) and by 930 we were at Ksara, Lebanon's oldest and most famous winery. It is a medieval fortress turned vineyard, bought by a Jesuit in the mid 19th century, with underground caves. We had a brief tour and ended with a wine tasting (the Muslim Jordanian couple opted out), though I found it to be a little too early, especially on a queasy stomach.

After the others bought a few bottles of wine we returned to the car and continued to Baalbek, home to the MidEast's most impressive display of Roman ruins. Our guide pointed out as we drove the yellow and green flags of Hezbollah and Amal, and vendors at the entrance to the site offered yellow t-shirts with the Hezbollah logo on it. But before we reached the site we stopped to see the largest stone in the world, also called 'the Stone of the Pregnant Woman,' though the souvenir shop attached to it attracted more interest from our group than the stone itself. The souvenir shop was run by a man who is credited with cleaning up the area around the stone, previously used as a town garbage dump. Since then he has set up a town garbage system in order to encourage locals to dispose of their trash responsibly and comes every day to keep the area clean.

This being my last day in a long chain of sightseeing adventures, I was feeling a little unappreciative of the historical and archaeological significance that lay before me in Baalbek. Woe is me. The centuries began running together in my head, and it didn't help that the Roman temples of Venus, Bacchus and Jupiter were surrounded by Mamluk fortresses and had been partially destroyed to make way for Christian churches built by emperor Theodosius.

Though Baalbek was not a particularly important city in history, it was chosen as a site for these impressive temples because of its position between important N-S and E-W trade routes, as well as two rivers. Additionally, the land on which the Jupiter temple is built is the highest point in the Bekaa valley. LP tells me that the temples were important also because they were an effort to remind the Baalbekian people of their devotion to pagan gods in the face of the oncoming threat of Christianity, and consequently Baalbek became one of the most important places of worship in the Roman Empire. As the empire converted to Christianity under Constantine, construction ceased (began in 60 BC, still uncomplete at this time in 324, never completed), then came pagan emperor Julian, then crazy Christian emperor Theodosius who converted the temples to churches.

I was impressed to see that so much of the temples and massive columns (some built from one piece of granite) still stood after centuries of devastating earthquakes (though only 6 of the 54 remain in the temple of Jupiter, the temple of Bacchus is better preserved). The site received little attention for a few hundred years until 1898 the German Kaiser Wilhelm II visited the site and sponsored its preservation and excavation (the Bacchus temple features graffiti from the 1880s, in both Arabic and English, though I don't know if its authentic or not). Baalbek is one of the sites I remember visiting with my family when we were there 11 years ago, though I remember it very differently-- much more spacious and removed from the city. When I arrived this time, I was surprised to see that is just off the road in the city.

[side note: my digital camera officially died. more pictures forthcoming on film.]

Anyway- lunch at a hotel in Zahle, the usual spread of dips and meats and veggies. The dining room had about 6 other tables filled with groups of 5 or so men, smoking cigars and drinking arak (the national drink), there was only one other woman in the room. Then we went to Anjar, a small Armenian town, previously the Syrian military base. We visited its extensive ruins of an Ummayad city (est. 8th century), the largest in Lebanon, as well as the Armenian jewelry/souvenir shop at its entrance (they are famous for their silver work, our group bought accordingly). The city has evidence of architectural elements from the preceeding Roman, Byzantine and Hellenistic eras in its columns, public baths, mosaics, carvings.

Back in the van, listening to the local Hezbollah radio broadcast (the Jordanian man translated a little, they were talking about how "Lebanon doesn't need another war right now") and it began to rain. I was dropped around 6 back at the hotel and thankfully the rain had stopped so I could walk back to the house. I was very tired, a little sick, and happy to have no more sightseeing plans for a while.

Since then, it has been raining every day (Thursday to Sunday) and I think it will continue tomorrow. But its all sunshine and clear skies in Damascus!