Time is ruthless. It indifferently erases the traces of great civilizations, turning into ruins the magnificent creations of ancient masters. Covers with the sand of oblivion the glory of the ancient powerful kingdoms.
Once Baalbek was considered a sacred city, and its temples were among the wonders of the world. The Baalbek sanctuary was visited by Alexander the Great, bringing great gifts and asking for help and success in his campaigns from the god Jupiter, whom he revered as a father. Today it is just a sightseeing object.
But his riddle is one of the most intractable.
Baalbek (Balbek, Baalat, Greek Heliopolis) is perhaps the oldest known city. It is now almost completely destroyed. The ruins are in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, at the foot of the Anti-Lebanese mountains, 53 miles northeast of Beirut.
The temple of Jupiter makes the greatest impression on the tourist. Time, wars and the most powerful earthquake of 1759 did not spare the building. However, even what is left gives an idea of the scale of the temple, next to which the Athenian Parthenon would look like a child's toy.
The building of the main temple in the depths of a large courtyard was a rectangle 89 meters long and 49 meters wide, the roof of which rested on 54 Corinthian columns, forming a peristyle (Peristyle is a rectangular square surrounded on four sides by a covered colonnade).
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Of these columns, only six have survived at present, with approximately 7-7 meters in girth and a rod 19.8 meters long, and together with a pedestal - 24 meters; the rest of it is miserable rubble, covering the entire area occupied by ruins with an area of about five square kilometers.
However, the attention of historians is attracted not so much by fragments of a Roman building (dating from about the 3rd century BC), as by the base on which the temple complex rests - a cyclopean structure, created long before the arrival of peoples known to us in Lebanon.
It is made up of stone blocks. There are nine rows in the southeastern wall of the temple base. Each block measures approximately 11 x 4.6 x 3.3 m and weighs more than 300 tons respectively.
On the same level, in the adjoining southwest wall, there are six more 100-ton stones, on top of which are three giant megalithic blocks called Trilithon, or the Miracle of the Three Stones. Three Trilithon granite blocks form the sixth visible row of the wall masonry. Each of these gigantic stones reaches an average of 21 meters in length, 5 meters in height and 4 meters in width. They weigh 800 tons each!
Michel Aluf, the former keeper of Baalbek, wrote: “… despite their grandiose size, they (the Trilithon stones) are so neatly folded and so precisely connected to each other that it is almost impossible to put even a needle between them. No description can give any accurate idea of the amazing impression that the sight of these giant blocks makes on the observer."
A few hundred meters to the south of the ruins of this complex, there is a blank of another stone colossus ("South Stone") measuring 21.5 x 4.8 x 4.2 m, weighing more than 1000 tons and a volume of 433 cubic meters. Some researchers explain his presence by the fact that the construction of Baalbek was not completed.
Southern stone before excavation
After excavations, another equally large megalith was found under it …
Who, when and why raised this grandiose platform? And how did the builders cope with the movement and adjustment of multi-ton blocks, because even modern technologies are only approaching to solve similar problems?
The answer should be sought in the distant past, in those times when the Baalbek fortress was built. However, apparently, we are talking about such antiquity that more or less reliable information has not reached our days. Only legends and traditions remained …
According to Arab legend, Baalbek belonged to Nimrod, who once reigned in this part of Lebanon. An Arabic manuscript found in the ruins of the city states that Nimrod sent giants to rebuild Baalbek after the Flood.
And the patriarch of the Lebanese Maronite community Estfan Doveigi cited a fragment of the legend, which says that the city was built by the son of Adam Cain to hide from Divine wrath (he also names the date of Baalbek's foundation - 133 years from the creation of the world). Cain populated the city with giants, who subsequently suffered punishment (Flood) from God for their iniquity.
There is also a hypothesis according to which Baalbek was built (or restored) by the Egyptians. This opinion is shared, in particular, by the historian M. Elauf. He writes that the Egyptian temple in Baal Gede (the ancient name of Baalbek) was restored by the Egyptian priests after the earthquake during the conquest of Syria by Egypt.
The fact that the Temple of the Sun in Baalbek was erected by the Egyptian priests was asserted by the Roman writer Macrobius (5th century AD). He noticed a similarity between the statue of the god Osiris in Baalbek and the statue of Osiris, which was transported by sea from Egypt.
This version is indirectly confirmed by the fact that giant stone blocks (albeit somewhat smaller) were used by the Egyptians in the construction of the pyramids. However, all these data speak not so much about the fact that Baalbek was erected by the Egyptian priests, but about the similarity of the techniques used by the ancients (after all, judging by the legends, Baalbek is older than the Egyptian civilization, which means that the Egyptians could have been disciples of those who built the platform).
Attempts to reconstruct the ancient technology were made several times in Baalbek and in other places where giant stones were used to build mysterious structures. So far, none of them have been successful. Garcilaso de la Vega says that one of the Inca kings, wishing to strengthen his reputation, gathered 20 thousand people and ordered them to lift one of the huge stones up the mountain (from time immemorial, there was a structure made of the same blocks on the mountain).
The case ended in tragedy - a huge stone fell off, thousands of people were killed. Could it be that the wrong technique was chosen to move the stones?
To date, there are several assumptions about the way the giant blocks are transported. The first method - moving stones along special stone or wooden rollers - was rejected as a result of calculations. It turned out that the rollers are destroyed with much less effort than is required to lift the lumps.
The second method, which assumed the existence in ancient times of huge working animals (similar to modern elephants, but much larger), was rejected by biologists: so far not a single skeleton of such a creature has been discovered.
The third way - moving stones according to the principle of "push and pull" using a special rhythm - could possibly explain how the stones were brought to the construction site. But it is impossible to fit them to other blocks in the masonry (or at least just raise them to the desired height) in this way.
Supporters of the fourth method (let's conditionally call it fantastic) proceed from the fact that the ancients had access to many skills that are hopelessly lost at the present time. The stones could easily be put in place by teleportation. As proof, the supporters of the hypothesis cite the legend of Merlin delivering stones for Stonehenge by air.
It should be noted that there are not so few structures in the world whose appearance (and often their function) does not find a rational explanation. For example, not far from the town of Tiahuanaco (southern shore of Lake Titicaca, Bolivian Plateau), huge boulders have been discovered that can be compared in size to Baalbek.
The legend that explains their appearance is also associated with the giants who allegedly built the structure one night after the Flood.
There are a number of similar structures in Peru. One of them, Ollantaytambo, is located 40 miles northwest of Cusco. Above the walled terraces of Ollantaytambo rises a mysterious building called the Temple of the Sun. The pediment of this temple is composed of six huge monoliths. The largest stone is over 13 feet (4.3 m) high.
These are completely unique stones - with straight side faces and extraordinary ribs. The accuracy of their fitting to each other is comparable to that used in Baalbek. The same technique was used in the construction of the Egyptian pyramids.
The weight of the stones involved in the construction varies from limestone blocks of 2-2.5 tons to huge granite monoliths of 50-70 tons. These immense granite blocks were brought here from the quarries at Aswan, six hundred miles (about 1000 km) to the south.
The question of the purpose of all these structures is still open. Some researchers suggest that one and the same civilization is behind the construction of all megalithic structures. She had a high technological level, but remained unwritten.
In addition, the supporters of this hypothesis argue that this civilization was of extraterrestrial origin. And buildings like Baalbek played the role of beacons and landing sites for spaceships.
Researchers argue their hypothesis as follows: first of all, almost all civilizations have a myth that the gods taught people the basics of the craft, gave them writing, mathematics, etc. Also, many peoples preserve legends about the places where the gods once lived (usually these places are the oldest temples).
Finally, the information contained in megalithic structures is predominantly "cosmic" in nature, and certain elements of the preserved knowledge (for example, the complex time system of the Incas and Mayans) is not applicable to everyday life. In addition, a number of cultures (Egypt in particular) are experiencing a sudden technological breakthrough that cannot be explained by the gradual accumulation of knowledge.
There are also more “mundane” versions explaining the purpose of Baalbek and similar structures. The researcher Volney reports one of the legends, which says: "This building was only erected in order to store priceless treasures in its underground vaults, which should still be there now."
Indeed, under Baalbek there is a whole network of underground passages. Some of them are believed to have been associated with palace buildings, others with tombs. It is likely that some of them were used as treasures. In the vicinity of Baalbek, gold, silver, raw materials for obtaining copper and many other minerals were mined, large deposits of which still exist today.
So there was something to fill the caches. The dungeons are still not fully explored. Perhaps they will contain jewelry. Or maybe - historical materials that will shed light on the past of the world's oldest city …
