Now it’s Santha’s turn, but with the ice broken, the officer only flips through the pages of her passport once before stamping it and directing us onward into the baggage hall.
Well of Souls
On the drive in from the airport to our hotel we pass the place where Rafic Hariri was assassinated. The damage was long ago cleared away, of course, everything seems very chic and despite the late hour there are still a great many people, mostly young, mostly fashionably dressed, promenading along the Corniche overlooking the glittering waters of the Mediterranean, in which the street lights and the stars are pleasingly reflected. Amidst such a scene, it’s hard to imagine the violence this city has witnessed during the past forty years and my thoughts turn again to the reasons we’ve come here.
While I’ve been researching Egypt, and the hints of an ancient civilizing mission after a global cataclysm described in the Edfu texts, I’ve found something odd that seems to suggest a possible link between the megalithic monuments of the Giza plateau and Lebanon.
A few thousand years ago Lebanon formed the northern sector of the land the Bible refers to as Canaan, which also included the region covered, roughly, by modern Israel, the Palestinian Territories, western Jordan and southwestern Syria. What interests me is that both in Israel and in Lebanon there are mysterious megalithic structures on a scale that not only rival those of Giza, but seem to express the same underlying purpose to create something that would last—sacred mounds, holy places, that would withstand the test of time and that would continue to be venerated down the ages, even if the religions and cultures associated with them changed.
The Temple Mount in Jerusalem is one such place. Both orthodox archaeology and Biblical testimony put the construction of the first great edifices there back to the almost mythical time of King Solomon—that renowned magician among monarchs, who supposedly ruled in the tenth century BC. The structure known as Solomon’s Temple, the “First Temple” of the Jews, was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BC and rebuilt by Zerubbabel in the 520s BC.3 A further ambitious restoration was undertaken by the Romanized Jewish monarch Herod the Great in the first century BC and completed around 20 BC.4 Some ninety years after his death, Herod’s Temple in its turn was destroyed by the Romans, along with much of the city of Jerusalem, in 70 AD.5
What survived was the immense trapezoidal platform, known today as the Haram esh-Sharif, where stand the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, the third and fourth most sacred places in Islam.6 We need not concern ourselves here with the recent history of this place, or how it came to be in Muslim hands, but the Dome of the Rock is so called because within it lies an enormous megalith, known to the Jews as the Shetiyah (literally the “Foundation”). When the Temple of Solomon was erected over this exact spot in the tenth century BC, the Shetiyah formed the floor of the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant, that enigmatic object which I have investigated extensively in another book, stood upon it.7
The Shetiyah is not the only megalith in Jerusalem that dates back, potentially, to what the Edfu texts would call “the time of the gods.” Of course this huge natural rock has been in this place, at the summit of a primeval mound, rather similar to the natural hill now enclosed within the Great Pyramid of Giza, for an incalculable period. But at some point, perhaps at the date in the tenth century BC that archaeologists accept for Solomon’s Temple, perhaps later, perhaps much earlier, it was modified by human beings and there is now a hole cut through it which sheds a beam of light into the natural cave, also modified by human hands and evocatively known as the “Well of Souls,” that lies directly beneath it.
I’ve been in the Well of Souls several times. If it doesn’t have the raw atmospheric power of the Subterranean Chamber beneath the Great Pyramid, it is only because local bad taste has allowed the Well to be tiled, carpeted, furnished and lit as a prayer room. But the way the great rock that covers it has been cut and shaped is highly reminiscent of patterns that are found on rock-hewn surfaces at Giza. My guess, in short, as at Giza with its underground chamber beneath a natural hill, is that the rock and the Well formed the original sacred shrine around which everything else on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount was built.
What came next was a platform, solidly founded, of gigantic stones, to create the level, elevated surface upon which all later temples (and mosques) would be built. It is not my intention to explore the mysteries of Jerusalem here, but before moving on to Baalbek, the main focus of the present chapter, I will simply register surprise that the huge megalithic blocks which have been discovered in the so-called Hasmonean Tunnel lying to the north of, and directly extending, the famous Wailing Wall—blocks weighing in some cases more than 500 tons8—have been so readily assumed to be Herod’s work.
In the same way, the very similar gigantic megalithic blocks of Baalbek are assumed to be of relatively recent date—spanning the late first century BC to the second half of the first century AD—and to be the work of the Romans, with perhaps some early contribution by Herod himself.9 But just as the history of the Giza plateau has been forced between narrow and restricting bounds so, too, with Baalbek. Parts of it may be much older than presently believed.
What led me to consider this possibility at all—indeed the entire reason I’m in Beirut in July 2014 and about to take a run over to the Bekaa Valley, Hezbollah and the Syrian border—is the weird connection that I’ve found linking Giza with ancient Canaan, and with the ancient Semitic people known in the Bible as the Canaanites.
The magician among the gods
Selim Hassan (1887–1961) was what a real Egyptologist should be—passionate, erudite, deeply versed in his subject and open-minded. He was also a hands-on excavator and, in the 1930s, carried out the most thorough and detailed investigation of just about every major structure on the Giza Plateau. In the process, while excavating the Sphinx enclosure, he came across evidence of a Canaanite presence at Giza—indeed a long-term Canaanite settlement—which, for some reason, had been particularly focused on the Sphinx and its megalithic temples. “How these people came to settle in Egypt, and why and when they left, we have not, as yet, any written inscription to tell us,” Hassan admits.10 That they were there from at least the Eighteenth Dynasty (1543 BC–1292 BC) is well attested, but the possibility cannot be ruled out that their stay in Egypt dates back long before that time.
At any rate, numerous votive stele and other marks of respect to the Great Sphinx of Giza, inscribed and offered by members of this Canaanite community, have been found. We have seen already that the Sphinx was identified with the Egyptian god Horus, who could appear in many forms but most often as a falcon. Of interest, then, is the fact that the Sphinx in the Canaanite inscriptions is called Hurna, and sometimes Hauron. These are not Egyptian words at all, but instead are the names of a Canaanite falcon deity.11 The reader will also recall from Chapter Ten that the Ancient Egyptians often called the Sphinx Hor-em-Akhet (“Horus in the Horizon”). It turns out that this name is directly linked with Hurna in a number of inscriptions, not only left by members of the Canaanite community that had settled near Giza, but also by the Ancient Egyptians themselves—for example, a plaque of Amenhotep II where the Pharaoh is referred to as “beloved of Hurna-Hor-em-Akhet.”12
Selim Hassan comments on “the assimilation of the names Hurna and Hor-em-Akhet” on Amenhotep’s plaque, which succinctly confirms the use of “the name of the god Hurna in Egypt and its association with Hor-em-Akhet and application to the Sphinx.”13 Likewise a stela found at Giza reads: “Adoration to Hor-em-Akhet in his name of Hurna … Thou art the only one who will exist till eternity, while all people die.”14 And a second Giza stela represents Hurna in the form of a falcon beside an inscription which reads: “O Hurna-Hor-em-Akhet, may he give favor and love…”15 Christiane Zivie-Coche, Director of Religious Studies at the Ecole pratique des hautes études in Paris, adds that the variant Hauron was also frequently used in the same way:
Hauron was so closely associated with Hor-em
-Akhet, name of the Great Sphinx of Giza … that one addressed him indifferently as Hor-em-Akhet, Hauron, or Hauron-Hor-em-Akhet.16
What really caught my attention, however, and put me on the plane to Beirut, was a further observation from Zivie-Coche. “An epithet on a Sphinx statuette,” she reported:
indicates that Hauron is originally from Lebanon.17
Intriguing, too, in light of the civilizing work of “Sages” and “Magicians,” of which there are so many traces in the Edfu texts and in the Mesopotamian inscriptions, is a baked clay tablet from the ancient city of Ugarit on the Mediterranean coast of what is now Syria, a little to the north of Byblos in Lebanon. Hauron is the subject of the tablet and, exactly like the Apkallu Sages of Mesopotamia, he is portrayed as a “conjurer”18—indeed, notes Egyptologist Jacobus van Dijk, as:
the magician among the gods …19
With further echoes of the Apkallu, Hauron’s “magic” consists of what sounds to the modern ear like advanced scientific knowledge, in this case providing anti-venom, extracted “from among the shrubs of the tree of death”20 that cured the victim of a deadly snakebite. The poison was neutralized, we read, so that it “became weak” and “flowed away like a stream.”21
And there is something else—something that points directly toward Baalbek with its mysterious megaliths—for not only was Hauron/Hurna worshipped at Giza and assimilated to the Sphinx and to the falcon Horus, but Baal, the Canaanite deity after whom Baalbek is named,22 also had a cult in Egypt where he was associated with Set, the god of deserts and storms.23
Last but not least, there is the fact that Baalbek was renamed “Heliopolis”—Greek for “City of the Sun”—after Alexander the Great conquered the Levant and Syria in 332 BC.24 The reader will recall from Chapter Eleven that Innu, the sacred city of the Ancient Egyptians, where stood the Temple of the Phoenix attended by the priesthood of Giza, was also called “Heliopolis” by the Greeks. They referred to it as such from at least the time of Herodotus in the fifth century BC,25 and the Romans followed suit. Likewise Baalbek continued to be called “Heliopolis” throughout Roman times.
Marching in Alexander’s footsteps, Pompey annexed the Levant and Syria in 64 BC and Roman power here reached its height in the first and second centuries AD, when a statue of “Jupiter the Most High and the Most Great of Heliopolis” stood in the courtyard of the great temple that the Romans built at Baalbek in honor of this god.26 As well as its usual Roman attributes, the statue, which may be seen today in the Louvre Museum in Paris, displays a winged sun-disc on its chest—a possible reference, argues Friedrich Ragette, formerly Professor of Architecture at the American University of Beirut, “to the god of Egyptian Heliopolis.”27
It was not until the Arab conquests in the seventh century AD that the original Canaanite name “Baalbek” began to reappear in Levantine annals, and it was only then that the city’s Graeco-Roman designation as “Heliopolis” fell entirely out of use. 28
Between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges
The morning after our late-night arrival in Beirut, Lebanese friends kindly join us at our hotel to drive us to Baalbek. Over coffee before we go, they tell us of our good fortune: there is a lull in the fighting in Syria, all is calm along the border, and they expect no trouble.
Seen in daylight the Lebanese capital is almost as charming and beautiful as it was at midnight. One hundred and twenty thousand people were killed in this country during the terrible and protracted civil war between 1975 and 1990, but the city which was the focus of so much of the fighting seems to have put that ghastly episode behind it. Most of the bullet holes, shrapnel and blast wounds in the buildings have been repaired, there’s a lot of new construction going on and the atmosphere is one of optimism and vigorous enterprise. Yes, there is sadness in the air—it’s unavoidable after so much murder and mayhem—but the sense I get is of a nation recovering from its trauma, not wallowing in it, filled with bright, intelligent young people who are determined to move ahead.
Figure 42
The traffic is heavy as we wind our way up the steep foothills of the Lebanon Mountains to the east of the capital. It’s only 86 kilometers (about 53 miles) to Baalbek but there are frequent military checkpoints, where we’re filtered through chicanes and inspected by attentive, heavily armed soldiers. Inevitably this slows us down. The views, however, get more and more spectacular with the Mediterranean gleaming behind us and the great, green, tree-strewn ridges of the Lebanon range rising ahead of us. The road wraps itself around multiple tight hairpin bends above vertiginous drops, the air becomes notably cooler and the landscape more barren. Then we’re over the top through the Dahar el Baydar pass at an altitude of 1,556 meters (5,100 feet) and motoring down the other side with the broad, intensively cultivated sweep of the Bekaa Valley opening out below us. We pass the edge of the urban sprawl of Zahle, famous for its Ksara Winery, and pretty soon we’re running through the Bekaa proper—although it is really a plateau rather than a valley since its average elevation is more than 1,000 meters (3,280 feet) above sea level.
Bounded on the west by the Lebanon Mountains over which we’ve just driven, and on the east by the Anti-Lebanon range, the Bekaa is watered by two historic rivers—the Litani and the Orontes. When the Romans colonized the region two thousand years ago, this fertile plateau was one of their breadbaskets, exporting grain to feed the empire. Today a more lucrative crop, though largely hidden from view, is cannabis. In the interests of keeping local farmers happy, the authorities generally turn a blind eye.
After another thirty or forty minutes of mainly level driving on a long, straight stretch of road with cultivated fields on either side, we enter the outskirts of Baalbek at the edge of the Anti-Lebanon foothills. It’s a shabby town of shops, offices and dilapidated low-rise apartment blocks, many festooned with the Hezbollah flag featuring an upraised arm at the end of which is a hand clenched into a fist around an AK-47 assault rifle. Hand, arm and Kalashnikov emerge from a line of calligraphy spelling out Hezbollah’s name—“Party of God.” Other lettering states “Then surely the party of Allah are they that shall be triumphant” and, separately, “the Islamic resistance in Lebanon.” The background color of the flags is a strident yellow, while the logo and calligraphy are picked out in green.
Fashions and preferences in gods come and go, but the sacred landscape endures. On an eminence above the town we can clearly see the spectacular remains, the soaring columns, and the lofty pediments of the group of three Roman temples that bestowed such renown upon Baalbek in the ancient world. Dedicated, supposedly, to Jupiter, Bacchus and Venus, they were built on a scale larger and more imposing than almost any other Roman structures, including those in Rome itself. What really interests me, however, is the megalithic wall that surrounds the Temple of Jupiter on three sides, and in particular the three gigantic blocks, known as the Trilithon, that are embedded in it. Much that I’ve learned about the Trilithon in my prior research has led me to suspect that it may be older—far older—and dedicated to a far more enigmatic purpose than anything the Romans built here.
Now’s my chance to find out.
Centuries of darkness
The mid-morning sun is beating down out of an absolutely cloudless clear blue sky and I’m sitting on a big limestone block roughly in the middle of what was once the Temple of Jupiter. I say “once” because there’s very little of this towering edifice left standing now, other than the six immense columns that rear skywards about the width of a football field behind me—the last six out of the total of fifty-four that originally demarcated the exterior of the vast rectangular structure. This site is so enormous, the complex of temples so colossal and at the same time so ruined that I’m finding it difficult to get my bearings. Also, I have to confess, the long echoing booms of distant artillery, punctuated by the rapid, stuttering coughs of heavy machine guns, and an occasional very loud explosion, are a little disconcerting.
OK, I think, deliberately shutting my ears to the sou
nds that are, almost certainly, only the Lebanese military doing some practice firing, let’s figure out what we’ve got here. I glance over my shoulder and when I do I’m looking roughly southeast, through the six big columns which stand on the edge of the massive platform I’m in the midst of, across a sunken plaza, to the row of a dozen columns that line the northern perimeter of the smaller, but more intact and still very beautiful Temple of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine.
I’m not here to research or write about Roman architecture but still I’m impressed. Not only did the Romans have the sense of fun to dedicate a temple to wine and all its pleasures—reportedly joyous acts of sexual license regularly took place within—but also, let’s not beat around the bush here, these people really knew how to build! The columns themselves are extraordinary feats of megalithic architecture, and the Romans seem to have had no difficulty in hauling the ponderous blocks of the pediment, each weighing tens of tons—and in some cases hundreds of tons—up to the top of them.
So let’s be clear about this, right from the start, because there is so much ignorant baloney talked on the subject: the Romans were incredibly accomplished builders and they were absolutely capable of moving and placing monstrously huge and heavy blocks of stone. If there’s an argument to be made for a lost civilization at Baalbek then it can’t be based on the block weights, or on naïve, ill-informed notions about what the Romans could or couldn’t do, because in the realm of building, the evidence all around me confirms they could do pretty much anything they chose to.
One of the things they frequently did was build their temples on pre-existing sacred sites. Their objective was not to obliterate the indigenous gods and religions (as the Spanish sought to do in Mexico, for example, when they installed churches on the site of Aztec temples), but rather to associate the gods and religion of Rome in a positive way with what had gone before. The pre-Roman cults usually continued to flourish and the pre-Roman deities were honored and absorbed in a rich, creative and endlessly proliferating syncretism. But for those doing archaeological forensic work to try to establish exactly who was responsible for what, and when, this practice of overbuilding inevitably presents some challenges—particularly so, as is the case at Baalbek, when other later cultures, and the ravages of time, have also continuously modified the site.
Magicians of the Gods Page 24