Do Roman Catholics KnOw about

Baalbek?

The Baalbek Mystery Baalbek means God (Baal) of the Beqaa, and refers to the fertile Beqaa plain [see: the book of Enoch text] : Enoch 10:4 And again the Lord said to Raphael: Bind Azazel hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert, which is in Dudael, and cast him therein. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there for ever, and cover his face that he may not see light.

Enoch 13:9 I came unto them, and they were all sitting gathered together, weeping in Abelsjail, which is between Lebanon and Seneser, with their faces covered. I felt the perfect place to bury a fallen angel where he could not see light would be below a foundation which even today we could not move. This would also explain how such immense stones could be set in place with the power of angels. Now this may be too much speculation for most people but it would also explain why this massive terrace has had so many pagan temples built on it. This article will try to introduce new discoveries made in the colossal ruins at Baalbek, Lebanon, and the possibility they are evidence of a past supercivilization or, at least, technically advanced civilization of prehistory. Facts: Baalbek is the name of an archeological site in Lebanon. In Roman times it was known as Heliopolis or City of the Sun. An example of how ancient is the site can be found in that its holiest area (in pagan times) was the Temple of Baal-Jupiter a hybrid between the ancient Canaanite god Baal (lord) and the Roman Jupiter. Moreover, this temple was built on a tel or

ruin mound, indicating a place that had long been held sacred, though what had caused this area to be significant or sacred is unknown. Circumstantial Evidence: There are several other matters about the Baalbek stones that further confound archeologists and the conventional theories of prehistoric civilization. There are no legends or folk tales from Roman times that link the Romans with the mammoth stones. There are absolutely no records in any Roman or other literary sources concerning the construction methods or the dates and names of the benefactors, designers, architects, engineers and builders of the Great Terrace. One also finds plenty of circumstantial evidence undermining the official version of Trilithons origins: a) Absence of Baalbek records. Above all, Rome records no claim to the incredible retaining wall. b) Presence of other records of actual Roman transport capabilities Elsewhere in the Roman empire, just a little over 300 metric tons seemed to be the limit for the transport of big blocks, achievable only with the greatest difficulty. Transport of the 323 ton Laterano obelisk to Rome spanned the reigns of three emperors. Clearly, the record setting engineers from Baalbek, had they existed, could have also managed the task of transporting the relatively light Lateran Obelisk. The fact that they were nowhere to be found, no matter, how crucial the task, indicates that they simply did not exist. c) Baalbek was an important holy place The Ptolemys conferred the title of Heliopolis upon Baalbek. Therefore, like the other Heliopolis (Sun City) under Ptolemys domain in Egypt, it had to be an ancient holy place, it must have had some notable architecture, and the two places had to have some connection. I suggest it was the titanic blocks that instilled awe in everybody. In Phoenician times, Baalbek had supposedly been a religious centre devoted to Baal. Local Arab legends place the cyclopean walls (the Baalbek Terrace) into the time of Cain and Abel. d) Roman and Megalithic styles of building

Orthodox scholars of today scoff at all suggestions that Romans had not brought the great blocks to the temple site, despite the fact that building with megalithic blocks was not at all in the Roman style, and was no longer practised in those days.Romans knew and used concrete. The Colosseum still standing in Rome is a good example of a classic Roman concrete structure. The sad truth is that regarding the Trilithon, some scholars have mental blocks its own size. Admissions that blocks weighing over a 1000 metric tons were quarried and transported in prehistoric times would invite uncomfortable questions on what technology had made it all possible. Regardless of such touchy issues, I have several personal observations, which support dating of Baalbeks megalithic walls to the megalithic era. Have a look at this nice northwestern view of the wall as it was circa 1870.

Approximately 86 kilometers northeast of the city of Beirut in eastern Lebanon stands the temple complex of Baalbek. Situated atop a high point in the fertile Bekaa valley, the ruins are one of the most extraordinary and enigmatic holy places of ancient times. Long before the Romans conquered the site and built their enormous temple of Jupiter, long even before the Phoenicians constructed a temple to the god Baal, there stood at Baalbek the largest stone block construction found in the entire world.

The origin of the name Baalbek is not precisely known and there is some difference of opinion among scholars. The Phoenician term Baal (as the Hebrew term Adon) simply means lord or god and was the title given to the Semitic sky -deity worshipped throughout the archaic Middle East. The word Baalbek may mean God of the Bekaa

valley (the local area) or God of the Town, depending on different interpretations of the word. Ancient legends assert that Baalbek was the birthplace of Baal. Some scholars have suggested that Baal (the Assyrian Hadad) was only one of a triad of Phoenician deities that were once venerated at this site the others being his son Aliyan, who presided over well-springs and fecundity, and his daughter Anat (Assyrian Atargatis).

In the Seleucid (323-64 BC) and Roman (64 BC-312 AD) periods, the town became known as Heliopolis, the City of the Sun. The sky/sun god Jupiter became the central deity of the shrine during this time. Arguably the most important deity of the Romans and taking over the role of Zeus in the Greek pantheon, Jupiter was probably chosen to replace the much earlier worship of the Phonecian god Baal who had many characteristics in common with the Greek Zeus. Many Roman emperors were of Syrian birth, so it would not have been unusual for them to have promoted the worship of the countrys indigenous deities under their adopted Roman names. Whatever the nature of the pre-Roman worship at Baalbek, its veneration of Baal created a hybrid form of the god Jupiter, generally referred to as Jupiter Heliopolitan. The Romans also assimilated the worship of the goddess Astarte with that of Aphrodite or Venus, and the god Adonis was identified with Bacchus. The origin and development of Baalbek may be considered from two quite different paradigms of prehistory, one the conventional approach that views civilization as having only begun in middle Neolithic times and the alternative approach which suggests that developed cultures existed in what is archaeologically known as the Paleolithic period. Let us first examine the chronology of Baalbek from the conventional interpretation, following which I will discuss some amazing site anomalies that can only be explained by recourse to a far older and now lost civilization.

According to theories stated by the mainstream archaeological community, the history of Baalbek reaches back approximately 5000 years. Excavations beneath the Great Court of the Temple of Jupiter have uncovered traces of settlements dating to the Middle Bronze Age (19001600 BC) built on top of an older level of human habitation dating to the Early Bronze Age (2900-2300 BC). Biblical passages (I Kings, IX: 17-19) mention the name of King Solomon in connection with a place that may be ancient Baalbek (And Solomon built Geze r and BethHoron, the lower, and Baalath and Tadmor in the wilderness), but most scholars are hesitant to equate this Baalath with Baalbek and therefore deny any connection between Solomon and the ruins. Because the great stones of Baalbek are similar, though far larger, than the stones of the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, archaic myths had arisen that Solomon erected both structures. If Solomon had really erected the site of Baalbek, however, it is astonishing that the Old Testament has mentioned nothing of the matter. After the time of Solomon, the Phoenicians became masters of Syria and chose the site of Baalbek for a temple to their Sun-god BaalHadad. Little is known of Baalbek from this period. The late 11th century BC witnessed the arrival of an Assyrian army on the Mediterranean coast but because Baalbek is not mentioned alongside the names of other Phonecian cities, it has been assumed that Baalbek was an obscure religious center with no political or trading importance.

In the year 634, Muslim armies entered Syria and besieged Baalbek. A mosque was built within the walls of the temple compound, which was itself converted into a citadel. Over the next several centuries, the city and region of Baalbek were controlled by various Islamic dynasties including the Umayyads, Abbasids and Fatamids as well as the Seljuk and Ottoman Turks.

During these years, Baalbek was ravaged by the Tartars in 1260, Tamerlane in 1401 and was also shaken by numerous powerful earthquakes.

In the 1700s, European explorers began to visit the ruins and in 1898 the German emperor, William II organized the first restoration of the ancient temples. Following the lead established by the Germans, extensive archaeological excavations were carried out by the French government and later the Lebanese Department of Antiquities. While a great deal of much needed restoration work was performed by these archaeologists, the analysis of the ancient origins and use of the site was limited by the prevailing academic view of prehistory which does not recognize the possibility of sophisticated civilizations in early Neolithic or pre-Neolithic times. Particular structures at the Baalbek ruins can, however, only be explained by recourse to such extremely ancient cultures.

The ruins of Baalbek, situated on a large hill (1150 meters) with an expansive view over the adjoining plains, are bordered on two sides by the town of Baalbek and on the other sides by agricultural land belonging to local farmers. Within the sprawling complex are a profusion of temples and platforms filled with a stunning collection of fallen columns and sculptures. The primary structures at the ruins are the Great Court; the Temple of Baal/Jupiter situated upon the massive pre-Roman stone blocks known as the Trilithon; the so-called Temple of Bacchus; and the circular temple believed to be associated with the goddess Venus. Let us briefly discuss the Roman constructions first.

The Great Court, begun during the reign of Trajan (98-117), measured 135 meters by 113 meters, contained various religious buildings and altars, and was surrounded by a splendid colonnade of 128 rose granite columns. These magnificent columns, 20 meters tall and of enormous weight, are known to have been quarried in Aswan, Egypt but how they were actually transported by

land and sea to Baalbek remains an engineering mystery. Today, only six columns remain standing, the rest having been destroyed by earthquakes or taken to other sites (for example, Justinian appropriated eight of them for the basilica of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople).The Temple of Baal/Jupiter was begun during the reign of Emperor Augustus in the late first century BC and completed soon after 60 AD. The single largest religious edifice ever erected by the Romans, the immense sanctuary of Jupiter Heliopolitanus was lined by 104 massive granite columns, imported from Aswan in Egypt, and held a temple surrounded by 50 additional columns, almost 19m (62ft) high.

The Temple is believed to have been consecrated to a triad of deities: Hadad (Baal/Jupiter), the god of Heaven; Atargates (Astarte/Hera), the wife of Hadad; and Mercury, their son. As the vast temple complex expanded throughout Roman times, the so-called Temple of Bacchus was constructed in the middle of the 2nd century BC. It is called the Temple of Bacchus (the god of fertility and good cheer) mainly because a number of its sculptured reliefs have been interpreted by archaeologists as scenes from the childhood of this god (although some scholars argue this temple was dedicated to Mercury, the winged god of communication). The best-preserved Roman temple in the world, it is sixty-nine meters long by thirty-six meters wide and is surrounded by forty-two columns nineteen meters in height. At the beginning of the 3rd century a lovely circular temple was added to the Baalbek complex. While early European visitors assumed it was a Venus temple due to its ornamentation of seashells, doves and other artistic motifs associated with the cult of this goddess, it is not known for certain which deity the shrine was actually dedicated to. During Byzantine Christian times the temple was used as a church by Greek Catholics and dedicated to the early Christian martyr Saint Barbara.

The great mystery of the ruins of Baalbek, and indeed one of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world, concerns the massive foundation stones beneath the Roman Temple of Jupiter. The courtyard of the Jupiter temple is situated upon a platform, called the Grand Terrace, which consists of a huge outer wall and a filling of massive stones. The lower courses of the outer wall are formed of huge, finely crafted and precisely positioned blocks. They range in size from thirty to thirty three feet in length, fourteen feet in height and ten feet in depth, and weigh approximately 450 tons each. Nine of these blocks are visible on the north side of the temple, nine on the south, and six on the west (others may exist but archaeological excavations have thus far not dug beneath all the sections of the Grand Terrace). Above the six blocks on the western side are three even larger stones, called the Trilithon, whose weight exceeds 1000 tons each. These great stones vary in size between sixty-three and sixty-five feet in length, with a height of fourteen feet six inches and a depth of twelve feet. Another even larger stone lies in a limestone quarry a quarter of a mile from the Baalbek complex. Weighing an estimated 1200 tons, it is sixty-nine feet by sixteen feet by thirteen feet ten inches, making it the single largest piece of stonework ever crafted in the world.

Called the Hajar el Gouble, the Stone of the South, or the Hajar el Hibla, the Stone of the Pregnant Woman, it lays at a raised angle with the lowest part of its base
still attached to the quarry rock as though it were almost ready to be cut free and transported to its presumed location next to the other stones of the Trilithon.

Why these stones are such an enigma to contemporary scientists, both engineers and archaeologists alike, is that their method of quarrying, transportation and precision placement is beyond the technological ability of any known ancient or modern builders . Various scholars, uncomfortable with the notion that ancient cultures might have developed knowledge superior to modern science, have decided that the massive Baalbek stones were laboriously dragged from the nearby quarries to the temple site. While carved images in the temples of Egypt and Mesopotamia do indeed give evidence of this method of block transportation using ropes, wooden rollers and thousands of laborers the dragged blocks are known to have been only 1/10th the size and weight of the Baalbek stones and to have been moved along flat surfaces with wide movement paths. The route to the site of Baalbek, however, is up hill, over rough and winding terrain, and there is no evidence whatsoever of a flat hauling surface having been created in ancient times. Next there is the problem of how the mammoth blocks, once they were brought to the site, were lifted and precisely placed in position. It has been theorized that the stones were raised using a complex array of scaffolding, ramps and pulleys which was powered by large numbers of humans and animals working in unison. An historical example of this method has been suggested as the solution for the Baalbek enigma. The Renaissance architect Domenico Fontana, when erecting a 327-ton Egyptian obelisk in front of St Peters Basilica in Rome, used 40 huge pulleys, which necessitated a combined force of 800 men and 140 horses. The area where this obelisk was erected, however, was a great open space that could easily accommodate all the lifting apparatus and the men and horses pulling on the ropes. No such space is available in the spatial

context of how the Baalbek stones were placed. Hills slope away from where lifting apparatus would need to have been placed and no evidence has been found of a flat and structurally firm surface having been constructed (and then mysteriously removed after the lifting was done). Furthermore, not just one obelisk was erected but rather a series of giant stones were precisely put in place side-by-side. Due to the positioning of these stones, there is simply no conceivable place where a huge pulley apparatus could have been stationed. Archaeologists, unable to resolve the mysteries of the transportation and lifting of the great blocks Architects and construction engineers, however, not having any preconceived ideas of ancient history to uphold, will frankly state that there are no known lifting technologies even in current times that could raise and position the Baalbek stones given the amount of working space. The massive stones of the Grand Terrace of Baalbek are simply beyond the engineering abilities of any recognized ancient or contemporary builders. There are several other matters about the Baalbek stones that further confound archaeologists and conventional theories of prehistoric civilization. There are no legends or folk tales from Roman times that link the Romans with the mammoth stones. There are absolutely no records in any Roman or other literary sources concerning the construction methods or the dates and names of the benefactors, designers, architects, engineers and builders of the Grand Terrace. The megalithic stones of the Trilithon bear no structural or ornamental resemblance to any of the Roman-era constructions above them, such as the previously described Temples of Jupiter, Bacchus or Venus. The limestone rocks of the Trilithon show extensive evidence of wind and sand erosion that is absent from the Roman temples, indicating that the megalithic construction dates from a far earlier age.

Finally, the great stones of Baalbek show stylistic similarities to other cyclopean stone walls at verifiably pre-Roman sites such as the Acropolis foundation in Athens, the foundations of Myceneae, Tiryns, Delphi and even megalithic constructions in the new world such as Ollyantaytambo in Peru and Tiahuanaco in Bolivia. Baalbek as a mystery remains unsolved!.

en: Baalbek, Lebanon - Temple of Bacchus

References: http://reinep.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/the-baalbek-mystery/