Magicians of the Gods
Page 26
And there’s another possibility as well, which I intend to consider. It concerns the megalithic U-shaped wall that forms the base and boundary of the feature Lohmann calls Podium 2. Suppose that U-shaped wall isn’t Roman at all? Suppose it was already in place before, not after, Herod built Podium 1? Suppose, further, that the Tell that antedates Podium 1 by thousands of years was itself situated where it is because of the prior existence of the U-shaped megalithic wall? In other words, suppose the U-shaped wall with its immense megaliths was the very first work of architecture to be built on this site, perhaps enshrining some central feature, some primeval mound, in front of which the Tell later evolved over thousands of years, until the Herodian Temple was built on top of it, and then a little later overbuilt by the Temple of Jupiter?
Trilithon
Having climbed a stairway set against the side of a monstrously large block—the scale of everything here is truly epic!—I make my way along the top of the row of 13-feet high, 400-ton megaliths that form the southern elevation of the U-shaped megalithic wall that Lohmann sees as part of the—never completed—Podium 2. I’m heading west now and I pass under the six standing columns, which seem less to loom than to take flight over me, so light and graceful do they appear despite their massive size. The wall they’re perched on rises to about twice my height; its upper edge—where the columns stand—marks the level of the floor of the Temple of Jupiter, where I’d sat earlier. The space between the wall and the edge of the 10-feet wide megaliths I’m walking on is an obstacle course of broken fragments of columns and ornate multi-ton chunks of the pediment they once supported.
At the end of the long row of megaliths I’m confronted by a warren of towers, archways and tumbledown, medieval Arab fortifications. I thread my way through these—it’s all a bit bewildering!—climb a flight of stairs and take a right turn into a narrow alley at the western edge of the whole complex. I’m heading north now and the alley, which isn’t wide enough for two people to pass abreast, runs between the outer fortification wall on my left—part Roman, part Arab reconstruction—and a row of rough-hewn megalithic blocks on my right. I don’t know what to make of these blocks but a few months later, in correspondence we eventually engage in, Lohmann will tell me that they’re:
part of a filling layer … that was intended to fill up space between the Herodian wall and the later megaliths which make up the exterior shell of the second, Julio-Claudian podium. They were intended to be invisible behind the shell, so they remained undressed, and with a rough surface.64
Whatever they are, these massive blocks are separated by little more than the width of my shoulders from the hybrid Roman wall extended by Arab fortifications to my left. The feeling is one of constriction, almost claustrophobia. After twenty paces, or so, however, the alley widens as the outer fortification wall, previously several courses thick suddenly reduces to a single course which, just ahead, has a large gap in it through which I peer down onto a grassy border, some 35 or 40 feet below, edged by the modern fence that surrounds the whole of the Baalbek complex.
That’s when I realize for sure—I’d been half expecting it, but I wasn’t certain until this moment—that I’m standing on what I’ve come to Baalbek to see. It’s just over 64 feet long, more than 14 feet high, nearly 12 feet wide and weighs more than 800 tons.65
It’s the southernmost of the three famed megaliths of the Trilithon.
Chapter 13
And Then Came the Deluge …
I’d hoped, I’d expected, I was almost sure, that the course I’d charted through the ruins would lead me to the Trilithon, but still I feel a minor sense of triumph that my wanderings in the labyrinth have actually brought me to this very special place!
It’s a good moment to take stock. That single course of outer-fortification masonry to my west barely covers a quarter of the Trilithon’s immense width. There’s part of the drum of a fallen column lying just by the gap in the fortifications that overlooks the grassy border within the perimeter fence surrounding the ruins. Pressed against the fortification wall this column covers approximately half the width of the huge megalith it rests on, the southernmost of the three in the Trilithon. All in all this is a sheltered spot, a quiet space, a little courtyard almost. Conveniently there’s a loose block about the height of a stool for me to perch on, and what’s more, since it’s afternoon now, there’s a patch of shade.
With a sigh of relief I sit down, haul out my notebook and compose my thoughts. I’m aware, as I do so, that my feet are placed not only on the Trilithon block, but also on something inscribed into it that effectively proves it is older than the Temple of Jupiter, though not how much older. The shade is working against me, the fifty years since it was first brought to light have not been kind to it, and honestly I can’t see it. However, Professor Haroutune Kalayan, the engineer placed in charge of the restorations of Baalbek by the Lebanese Department of Antiquities, explains that back in the mid-1960s, “In view of the scientific interest, Emir Maurice Chehab, Director General of the Antiquity Department, decided to have the top of the Trilithon cleared…” When this was done:
The south block … exposed a full-scale orthographic drawing of the pediment of the Temple of Jupiter. The drawing partly extends under Roman construction and partly it is hidden under an early period Arabic construction … This … discovery suggests that the Trilithon was already in place to serve as a trestle board for the dimensioning and ordering of the pediment blocks; that is, in the beginning of the second half of the first century AD. Further, it can be concluded that after the construction of the pediment, after the drawing had served its purpose, the constructional scheme above the level of the Trilithon [was] executed; this is why part of the drawings extend under the Roman constructions.1
So right here, at my feet, unfortunately invisible now without special lighting, is a convincing piece of evidence that a real mystery, not just one made up by alternative historians, surrounds the Trilithon. Obviously, since it was used for an architectural drawing of part of the Temple of Jupiter, as Kalayan admits, and particularly so since it was afterward partially covered by Roman construction, the only logical deduction is that it must be older than the temple.
We’ll look further into the implications of this, but it should be noted right at the outset that Daniel Lohmann doesn’t agree. Presenting a paper for the Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Constructional History, held in the German city of Cottbus, in May 2009, he argued:
Kalayan suggested that this drawing proves the Trilithon to be older and already in place when the temple was built. Today, new indications show that this assumption is outdated, and that the Trilithon and temple were built synchronous. The upper surface of this block [the southernmost Trilithon block with the drawing on it] was practically used for a simultaneous construction, later simply to be covered by the next stone course.2
And in a follow-up paper in 2010, Lohmann expanded on his reasoning:
The unfinished pre-Roman sanctuary construction [Podium 1] was incorporated into a master plan of monumentalization. Apparently challenged by the already huge pre-Roman construction, the early imperial Jupiter sanctuary shows both an architectural megalomaniac design and construction technique in the first half of the first century AD. The most famous example may be the Trilithon forming the middle layer of the western temple podium … The podium can be considered as an attempt to hide the older, inconveniently shaped temple terrace behind a podium in fashionable Roman manner …3
I understand Lohmann’s logic but I have a number of problems with it. First and foremost there is the very concept of a “podium” that is being bandied around here. The dictionary defines “podium” as:
the masonry supporting a classical temple.4
Or, alternatively:
a stereobate for a classical temple, especially one with perpendicular sides.5
A “stereobate” in turn is defined as:
the foundation or base upon which a building o
r the like is erected.6
Or, alternatively:
the solid foundation forming the floor and substructure of a classical temple; crepidoma; podium.7
A “crepidoma,” likewise, is “the platform on which the superstructure of the building is erected.”8
What all these definitions hold in common is the notion that a podium is a structure on top of which a temple is built. But this is not the case with Lohmann’s Podium 2. It is not the “foundation or base” upon which the Temple of Jupiter is erected, it is not the “solid foundation forming the floor” of the Temple of Jupiter, and it is not “the masonry supporting” the Temple of Jupiter. What the Temple of Jupiter in fact stands on, and is “supported” by, as Lohmann himself makes clear, is the Herodian Podium 1. Lohmann’s Podium 2, it turns out, does not “support” any part of the Temple of Jupiter. It surrounds Podium 1 on three sides but it does not support it. It is, in other words, as I described it several times in Chapter Twelve, a U-shaped megalithic wall; but it is not a podium. If the Romans built it, as Lohmann believes, then they did not build it to serve any structural, load-bearing, podium-like purposes but purely for cosmetic reasons—“as an attempt,” to repeat his own words, “to hide the older, inconveniently shaped temple terrace behind a podium in fashionable Roman manner.”
In response I can only repeat that “podium” continues to be a misleading term, which does not describe what we actually see on the ground. If Lohmann’s analysis of the pre-existing Herodian works is right, then we don’t see evidence of the Romans hiding “the older, inconveniently shaped temple terrace” behind a fashionable Roman “podium.” Whatever plans they may have had for extension and development, which we cannot know and which there are no records of whatsoever, the evidence on the ground is limited to that massive U-shaped enclosure wall surrounding Podium 1 on three sides but not supporting it—a profoundly megalithic wall, larger in every dimension than any other that the Romans are known to have built anywhere in the world.
A wall that doesn’t even look Roman, incorporating blocks weighing more than 800 tons—the Trilithon—that would have required truly spectacular efforts to move and put into place.
I’m not saying that the Romans weren’t equal to such efforts, or that 800-ton blocks were beyond the limits of their building technology. I don’t know, and don’t claim to know, the limits of their technology. What I’m saying is that it is quite unlike the practical, phlegmatic cast of mind of the Romans, which Lohmann recognizes,9 to go to such extreme lengths for purely cosmetic purposes. Surely, therefore, there is room to consider an alternative possibility, namely that the megalithic U-shaped wall was already in place long before—perhaps even thousands of years before—Podium 1 was built?
But in the very paper in which Kalayan asserts that the Trilithon predates the Temple of Jupiter he goes on to give another crucial piece of information that seems to pour cold water on speculation of this sort. Yes, the Trilithon is older than the superstructure of the Temple of Jupiter, but not much older, because:
A part of a drum of a column similar in dimension to the columns of the Temple of Jupiter is used as a block in the foundation under the Trilithon. In the absence (to our knowledge) of a second monument with similar dimensions of columns in Baalbek, one can conclude that the drum was a discarded one and that the columns were already cut, or were in process of shaping when the foundations of the Trilithon had started.10
Is this the “ugly little fact that destroys a beautiful theory?” Is my quest for a lost civilization at Baalbek fatally compromised by Kalayan’s column drum? Might I just as well pack up and go home? You would think so from the skeptical literature on this subject, which endlessly regurgitates the paragraph quoted above as though it settles the matter once and for all, as though it proves beyond reasonable doubt that the Trilithon is the work of the Romans—as though any further thought and questioning on the matter is spurious, pseudo-scientific hogwash.
Skeptical author and self-styled “debunker of fringe science and revisionist history” Jason Colavito, for example, claims that “archaeology and engineering can explain all the individual aspects of the Trilithon” and that there is therefore no need for an alternative perspective.11 Rather than do the work to back up this assertion himself, however, he refers us to the “wonderful” writings of another self-styled “skeptic,” physicist Aaron Adair.12 Adair in turn simply rehashes Kalayan’s arguments, placing heavy reliance on the column drum in the foundations, and on the architectural drawing on top of the southernmost Trilithon block, to conclude:
we can be reasonably certain that the Trilithon stones were put into place contemporaneously with the construction of the Temple of Jupiter. So already, by having the Trilithon stones contemporaneous with the temple we have established the Roman provenance of the structure.13
It all sounds reasonable, wholesome and convincing. But actually, like so much else in the skeptical literature that is passed off as fact, it turns out, on close scrutiny, to be speculation, opinion and bias masquerading as objectivity. That column drum, that Kalayan mentioned in passing, and that so many others have relied upon absolutely to reinforce established ideas about the chronology of the site, is much—much!—less than it seems.
Ironically, the central problem that I’m coming to here is illustrated by Adair himself in a black and white photograph of the western wall of the sanctuary (apparently taken from a very old postcard) that he reproduces with his article to support his argument—namely that there are blocks below the Trilithon, and that below these blocks, out of sight in the photo, is Kalayan’s column drum. But what the photograph shows in the wall above the Trilithon is a section of a different Roman column drum that was redeployed by the Arabs during one of the many occasions when we know they repaired fortress Baalbek, after it had been attacked and pounded by enemy catapults.14 Moreover, as though to underline the impermanence of every redeployable feature in the walls of Baalbek, even that bit of column drum (which can also be seen in a photograph “taken before the First World War” and reproduced in 1980 by Friedrich Ragette15) was removed in more recent restorations—as Santha Faiia’s images from 2014 in the plates section show.
Indeed the Arabs regularly and routinely cannibalized, reused and repurposed Roman column drums and parts of column drums.16 Moreover, as we saw in Chapter Twelve, and as Michael Alouf, a man who knew the ruins intimately for more than fifty years, confirms, the foundations of Baalbek were repeatedly undermined during the numerous sieges that the sanctuary suffered while it served as a fortress.17 After the sieges the foundations were naturally repaired (otherwise whole sections of wall would have collapsed) and it is my view that this, rather than original Roman construction, is the most plausible explanation for the column drum found in the foundations beneath the Trilithon. Why, after all, if the Romans made these foundations, as the orthodox theory requires us to accept, would they have suddenly used a column drum at this point, when they would surely have had plenty of regular blocks, specifically cut and dressed for the purpose, at their disposal?
It simply doesn’t make sense. But Arab masons repairing an undermined foundation would have used whatever lay at hand and the centuries of warfare, earthquakes and other disasters that Baalbek suffered meant that there were enormous quantities of broken columns lying around, as there still are to this day. There is also another possibility, which is that the Romans did, in fact, put the column drum into the wall—but again as a repair, rather than as an act of original construction. If the megalithic wall was already very ancient when the Romans came on the scene, and if it was their intention to use it as a base for further construction, they would undoubtedly have surveyed the foundations and repaired any sectors that the years had not been kind to.
I scrawl “FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THAT COLUMN DRUM” across a page of my notebook. The matter isn’t closed yet—one way or the other—but the hypothesis that the Romans were not the original builders of the U-shaped megalithic wall of which th
e Trilithon is an integral part, continues to look viable to me, and worthy of further investigation.
It’s time to see the Trilithon from the outside. I leave my welcome patch of shade, poke around a little longer on the top of the giant blocks and then retrace my steps eastward through the Temple of Jupiter complex. Eventually—it’s a long walk—I find my way back to the main entrance of the site, pass through the propylea and down the main stairs, turn right and follow the path that runs parallel to the southern exterior wall of the fortress the Arabs made of this place. The Temple of Venus comes into view a few hundred yards southeast of the main ruins. It’s beautiful, but irrelevant to my purposes, so I ignore it and press on toward the southwest, passing two more Arab towers built into the fortification walls and eventually coming to a gateway in the fence through which I can see the Trilithon in the distance.
Figure 44
A guard is there. He makes a great show of keeping me out, but money changes hands, the gate is opened with a flourish, and I’m on my way through an orchard of shriveled trees to get a better look at the three largest blocks ever used in any construction anywhere in the world …
“The highest pinnacle of power and science…”
In the nineteenth century David Urquhart, a learned Scotsman, traveled widely in Lebanon, eventually publishing his History and Diary in 1860. He never explained where he got the hint from, but it was his belief that Baalbek had played an important part in the secretive maritime empire of the Phoenicians, whose exploits started to be remarked upon by other cultures in the second millenium BC and who were descended from the original Canaanite people of this region. Indeed the Phoenicians usually referred to themselves as Canaanites.18 Renowned for their seafaring abilities, and especially for their uncanny—or perhaps one should say instead, precise and scientific—navigational skills, they established ports all around the coasts of the Mediterranean as far afield as Tunisia, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus and Malta. Their heartland was in Lebanon, however, and their first city was Byblos, to the north of modern Beirut, with other important centers at Tire and Sidon.