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Updated: June 17, 2025
But the most wonderful thing at Baalbec is the foundation platform upon which the temples stand. Even the colossal fabrics of Ancient Egypt dwindle before this superhuman masonry.
One morning he sent for them, and, except for the presence of prince Hassan, the most favourite of his emirs, and a famous imaum, or priest of his religion, received them alone. "Listen," he said briefly, addressing Godwin. "I understand that my niece, the princess of Baalbec, is beloved by you. Good.
My Egyptian scheme brought me into relations with Bonomi, who at that time was a famous traveller. Bartlett, the artist-traveller, whose works had been very widely spread abroad by engraving, told me that when he was ill of a fever at Baalbec he was nursed by a sheik who wore a beard and rode an Arab horse.
With such foundations as these, it is little wonder that Baalbec has lasted so long. The Temple of the Sun is nearly three hundred feet long and one hundred and sixty feet wide. It had fifty-four columns around it, but only six are standing now the others lie broken at its base, a confused and picturesque heap.
All the architectural remains of the most famous nations and the greatest empires, the amphitheatres, and arches, and columns of the Romans; the fanes of the Greeks; the temples of the Syrians and Sicilians; the Colosseum, the Parthenon, the courts of Baalbec, the pillars of Palmyra and Girgenti, sink into insignificance when compared with the structures that line the banks of an African river.
"Palmyra, Baalbec, Timour of the Desert," said March, voicing their common feeling of the change. They turned and went into the beautiful church, and found themselves in time for the matin service. Rapt far from New York, if not from earth, in the dim richness of the painted light, the hallowed music took them with solemn ecstasy; the aerial, aspiring Gothic forms seemed to lift them heavenward.
I saw her eyes dance with expectancy with that expression of eagerness that lights the faces of those to whom the world, with all its goodness and badness, beauty and ugliness, tranquillity and turbulence, is still unexplored. "The Sheik of Baalbec!" I exclaimed. "The Sheik of Baalbec!" she repeated. "I have heard so much of him, but have never seen him. That is just the thing!"
In the pillars that surround the temple, and the spires that taper far aloft, may be traced types and emblems borrowed from the Temple of the Sun at Baalbec, the proud fane of Diana at Ephesus, the shrines of the Delian Apollo; but the Brahminical symbols and interpretations prevail.
Nobody doubts the splendor of the material glories of the ancient nations. The ruins of Baalbec, of Palmyra, of Athens, prove this, to say nothing of history. The material glories of the ancient nations may be surpassed by our modern wonders; but yet all the material glories of the ancient nations passed away.
I left Damascus and returned toward the coast to Rayak, where I took the train on a branch line for Baalbec, the Syrian city of the sun, a place having no Biblical history, but being of interest on account of the great stones to be seen there. No record has been preserved as to the origin of the city, but coins of the first century of the Christian era show that it was then a Roman colony.
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