Talk:Temple of Jupiter (Baalbek)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 March 2019 and 8 May 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): ZoeWZY. Peer reviewers: ZoeWZY.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:05, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Copious rework
My largest change was to remove the following due to copyright concerns:

"On a single E-W axis almost 400 m long, the sanctuary of Heliopolitan Jupiter includes monumental propylaea, a hexagonal court, a large rectangular court, and the temple proper, where the cult idol was enthroned under a canopy in the cella. The sanctuary occupies an ancient tell, artificially enlarged by enormous works of terracing and masonry. At the W end near the N corner, the supporting walls contain three colossal quadrangular stones, called the "Trilithoi", each one nearly 20 by 4.5 by 3.6 m. Another even larger stone was left in a quarry at the foot of the hill W of the town. Two long vaulted galleries running E-W correspond at the basement level to the peristyle of the central court. They are open at the ends and joined by a transverse gallery. Some of their keystones carry Latin inscriptions."

- J. Rey-Coquais

I further made many changes to the order of presentation, which was previously circuitous, to say the least. Also, the previous style tended to telegraph words rather than repeat words for clarity, as one would normally do in an encyclopedic text, rather than a grand historical narrative.

Most of the connective tissue in the original version was oblique, and here I had to supply many guesses to reconnect bits and pieces in a less oblique idiom.

The entire article would certainly benefit from review: pertaining both to the original content, and to my potential damage in the decoding process. &mdash; MaxEnt 00:33, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

To add
Plonking this here for now, will add excerpts to this or baalbek article Mango Mapes (talk) 02:14, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

I did not think to have taken up the pen again for description, much less of a place worn so threadbare as this; but all I heard and all I saw was so new and strange, that I must suppose that previous travellers have been taken somewhere else by mistake.

On approaching the ruins the day before yesterday, the block which they constitute on the plain exhibited, as it became distinct, stones in the wall of dimensions so enormous, as to shut out every other thought, and yet to fill the mind only with trouble. The impossibility of any solution paralyzed the attempt to think; and instead of impatience to get on, it was a desire to run away that I experienced.

The distance from the quarry to the building is scarcely a mile. With the thousandth part of the labour, the quarry itself could have been scarped into the edifice. Why cut out the blocks here, to carry them there? It was no architectural performance.

There is Baalbeck before me; take away the Greek and Roman temples now stuck on the top, it is nothing but a quadrangular enclosure. It is not raised on the dead levels of Mesopotamia, where the height of a wall was required for a fastness. One can conceive the hewing out of enormous blocks for the statue of a king, the ornament of a palace, or the pomp of a temple, but here there is no such object; there is no conceivable object by which such an effort can be explained.

The great statue of Memnon, the shafts of the obelisks, those of the granite columns which the Phoenicians brought from Egypt, and of which the fragments are strewed all over these coasts, astonish by their own magnitude, and perplex by the variety of excellence which constituted the grandeur to which they testify. But what are these to the blocks of Baalbeck?

Here is one thrice the size of that required for the statue of Memnon, and from which five or six obelisks might have been cut, merely used to put in a wall. It is cut out here to be built in yonder, and is wheeled there like a tumbril of bricks. Tyrens to this is a prentice experiment, Stonehenge a nursery toy.

If we cannot discover the object of this work, still less can we conceive how such a work, whatever its object, could have been placed here. Pre-eminent structures invariably belong to seats of dominion. Geography has fixed the positions of capitals, and its decisions are absolute and irrevocable. A central point in reference to cultivable space, a connecting point in reference to communications, security from attack, convenience for intercourse, access to the river, or the sea, in connection with hold upon the land; all these are wanting here. The Bkkaa is, as its name indicates, not a waddy or gorge, but a valley of meadows, of about 150 square miles; it is separated from the sea by the Lebanon, and shut out from the east by the Anti-Lebanon, is remote from the rich districts of Syria, both north and south, has no water communication whatever, and, however defensible the neighbouring mountains, is entirely destitute of military strength. There was here, therefore, not one of the elements combined at Memphis, Babylon, Nineveh, or any of the seats of empire, of the ancient or modern world.

And yet here are ruins, surpassing in their indications and evidences of greatness anything to be found in those ancient capitals, to an extent which defies all calculation, leaving the imagination itself stranded on a bank of mud.

On the top of this comes a third riddle; how these works were interrupted. They are not merely not concluded, but they are stopped at the very beginning. Was it a panic in the money-market? Was it a bubble speculation? Was it a revolution in the streets? Was it a foreign invasion? Was it an irruption of savages? Was it a "confusion of tongues" What could it have been? The mysteries of finance were not then invented; those who could plan such a structure, would not be likely capriciously to abandon it. With a people so powerful on the face of the earth, it is hard to suppose another more powerful still; far less, that rude hordes should overpower them.

All is again bewilderment.

Now we have a fourth riddle. This structure is alone; there is nothing upon earth in the remotest degree resembling it. We do not say "the Pyramid," but "the Pyramids;" nor is the peculiar group alone in the world; they belong to a system of which we can trace the progressive rise. Neither is Stonehenge a solitary structure; that of Salisbury plain may be pre-eminent, but it has its counterpart; there are many of them, and they are spread all over the world. Besides, monuments like the Pyramids, and like Stonehenge, are liable to destruction. The stones of Baalbeck are like the primeval rocks themselves; they could not be pulled down, nor could they waste away; nor again could they be covered over, as the palaces of Nimroud. Wherever erected, there must they stand, and they stand nowhere else.

Again, for the fourth time, have we to give it up. It is like a troubled dream, and would be disposed of as such, only that there is that stone lying before me.

Here no intellectual process is needed, no inductive reasoning; the stones themselves speak to our eyes, and the sermon these stones preach to us is, "Ye are pigmies." The improvement upon the text, "Ye are insolent pigmies."

There is but one Baalbeck, and that Baalbeck is but four stones. Still these four vertebrae, like those of the Ichthyosaurus of Conybeare, do enable the comparative anatomist to impersonate the society, and exclaim, in the words of Scripture, "There were giants on the earth in those days." But when those days were, who can tell?


 * It is not unique. There is also the Temple Mount with trilithons, but with a lot of buildings on top. Voproshatel (talk) 07:25, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Images of the "three stones"

 * Wood engraving, 1890 (PD) https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/baalbek-trilithon
 * Photo, c.1890 (PD?) https://66.media.tumblr.com/de8d5d5a3993363a081631fd828805d6/tumblr_o592o0kYdZ1shbwlio4_1280.jpg
 * Photo, c.1890 (PD?) https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bg8sqqhQXVc/Tv4SfRiIyaI/AAAAAAAALRI/zbgCgi1bxgU/s1600/trilithon-corner.jpg
 * Photo, c.1890 (PD?) https://s017.radikal.ru/i420/1209/e0/ebb2960dd776.jpg


 * File:Trilithon_of_Baalbek_3.jpg (PD)

Four possibly free images + one already held. Could be used? Mango Mapes (talk) 02:14, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

old sources

 * (c. 400) Macrobius Saturnalia I 23.14


 * (c. late 5th century) Zacharias (or pseudo-Zacharias?) Ecclesiastical History 8.4 (trans. F. J. Hamilton & E. W. Brooks. London 1899)

"And to the south of it are three wonderful stones on which nothing is built, but they stand by themselves, joined and united together and touching one another; and all three are distinguished by effigies, and they are very large. And in a mystical sense they are set, as it were, to represent the temple of the knowledge of the faith in the adorable Trinity, the calling of the nations by the preaching of the gospel tidings.

There came down lightning from heaven, while the rain fell in small quantities: it struck the temple and reduced its stones to powder by the heat, and overthrew its pillars, and broke it to pieces and destroyed it. But the three stones it did not touch, but they remain perfect; and now a house of prayer has been built there, dedicated to Mary the Holy Virgin, the Theotokos."

Need to find an eng trans of macrobius. Mango Mapes (talk) 02:47, 18 April 2019 (UTC)

Pls remove wrong redirect
There is currently a redirect (automatic link) from Heliopolis (Lebanon) to this page, which is plain wrong - akin to redirecting "Eiffel Tower" to "Paris". Redirects are meant to take one to a page on the very same, identical topic, but with a different title; NOT to a somehow related, but different topic. Heliopolis was a city, of which the Temple of Jupiter was just one building, be it the most prestigious one. (I can't believe I feel obliged to explain this.) Who knows how to undo this redirect? Thanks. Arminden (talk) 14:49, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi Arminden, you are quite right. I've changed the redirect from this article to Baalbek, try it now: Heliopolis (Lebanon)! Mango Mapes (talk) 16:20, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Change article name?
Wouldn't 'Temple of Jupiter, Baalbek' be a better name for the article? Then it would match other examples like 'Temple of Jupiter, Split' and 'Temple of Jupiter, Damascus'. SopranoOpera (talk) 20:01, 15 May 2021 (UTC)


 * The Temple of Jupiter built on the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem was an exact replica of the one in Baalbek.  in fact, the two Islamic mosques were built on the ruins of the Roman temple, as can be verified with an overlay map. Tormarquis (talk) 07:07, 22 November 2021 (UTC)