Baalbek named IA Bunin “Places of Eden” in his essay “Temple of the Sun”. Alas, in our time, full-scale excavations and studies of the mysterious complex are not carried out here - the incessant political and military tensions in the Middle East interfere. But it is unlikely that even the most thorough research would help reveal the secrets of Baalbek.
There are in Lebanon the famous ruins of the ancient city of Baalbek, not far from Beirut at an altitude of 1130 meters above sea level. This area was inhabited in ancient times. However, information about the mysterious city first appears only in the time of Alexander the Great.
From time immemorial there existed in Baalbek an amazing temple complex, in which the gods Dionysius and Baal were worshiped; from the latter came the name of the city. Europeans learned about the grandiose ruins of Baalbek only in the 16th century. And since the 19th century, they have become an obligatory place of pilgrimage for civilized tourists.
The complex consists of the ruins of the Great Temple (the Temple of Jupiter), the Small Temple (the Temple of Bacchus or Mercury) and the Round Temple (the Temple of Venus). On the side of the northern and southern facades of the Temple of Jupiter, there is a stone strip about seven meters wide, which is called the Baalbek platform, or terrace. It serves as the basis for Baalbek's unprecedented architectural structures.
The slabs of the platform and the temples themselves are made of cut stones of absolutely incredible dimensions, nothing similar has yet been found on Earth. Once the temple of Jupiter was surrounded by 52 columns, which were unparalleled in the whole world - now there are only six of them. But each of them is twenty meters high and two and a half meters in diameter.
But the main miracle of Baalbek is at the southwestern wall of the Temple of Jupiter. There are three of the world's greatest stones, most likely handcrafted. They were called the Trilithons, or the Miracle of the Three Stones. The dimensions of the stones are impressive: 21 meters long, 4 meters wide and 5 meters high. Each "pebble" weighs 800 tons.
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One of Baalbek's former guardians, Michel Aluf, writes: “Despite their grandiose size, they are so neatly folded and so precisely connected to each other that it is impossible to put a needle between them. No description can give any accurate idea of the tremendous impression that the sight of these giant blocks makes on the observer."
It was the Trilithons who pushed human thought to the most fantastic assumptions. The most sober-minded scientists believe that the temple columns weighing about 45 tons each, as well as other stones of Baalbek, were sawn at the quarries of Aswan (Egypt) and delivered to the Anti-Lebanese mountains, first by ships along the Nile, and then by ox-cart - and this is almost forty kilometers up the hill! Then it was necessary to vertically raise and strengthen the giant stone blocks.
It is unlikely that this can be done even with the most modern technology. For reference: at present there are only two lifting devices for loads weighing 200 tons on Earth, each of which is served by 40 people.
There is nothing to say about Trilithons, although they seem to have been mined in a nearby quarry. Moreover, it was impossible to fit them so perfectly to each other, to lay them so that even all-pervading water could not seep into this masonry.
But they are not Baalbek's most mysterious objects either. There is also the so-called "Stone of the South", which even the mysterious (you cannot say otherwise) builders of the complex could not deliver to the place. Here is what Alan Alford wrote about him in the book "Gods of the New Millennium":
“It lies not far away in a quarry, ten minutes walk southwest. The dimensions of this block are 23 meters long, 5.3 meters wide and 4.55 meters high. It weighs approximately 1,000 tons - the same as three Boeing 747s combined.
Russian engineer O. Kolomiychuk calculated that 60,000 (sixty thousand!) People must make simultaneous efforts to move this stone partially buried in the ground. And one more "but" arises in connection with this: on the "Stone of the South" and the columns of the Temple of Jupiter, you can easily find traces of processing with tools from about that time. But how did you manage to make the Trilithons' surface perfectly smooth?
Modern scientists are not yet able to comprehend how such a grandiose cult center was created in ancient times. Moreover, the construction of the temples themselves can be attributed to the times of the ancient Romans. And the time of the construction of the platform on which they rest cannot be established with a sufficient degree of reliability.
Consequently, the Roman engineers either themselves (but how? - it is not clear!) Created a platform that protects the temple complex from earthquakes, or … used an older structure erected by creatures unknown to us, possibly aliens from Space.
There is nothing surprising in this assumption. Archaeologists and mathematicians seem to have already explained to us how the Egyptian and other famous pyramids were built. With the help of pulleys - complex systems of blocks, rollers of various shapes (remember ball and roller bearings), and also relying on the forces of numerous slaves. But not on the same scale as when the Baalbek Platform emerged!
From this fact, the version was born, according to which the Baalbek platform was an alien takeoff and landing site.