Temple of Jupiter, Baalbek
About
Fifty-four columns ring this temple and each stands about twenty metres tall — the tallest in the Roman world. They rest on a podium built from limestone blocks so large that three of them, laid side by side in a single course, weigh several hundred tonnes apiece; the quarry is less than a kilometre away, and they were brought in on rollers by rope and muscle. The god is Jupiter Heliopolitanus, a Roman name laid over a much older local weather god who is still worshipped in the old way. In 117 CE the temple is finished and the vast forecourts in front of it are still being built.
What happened here
The building itself is a house for the god, and most people never go inside. Everything public happens on the steps and at the altar in front: an animal led up, examined, killed cleanly, its organs read, the meat divided and eaten. The priest covers his head and a flute player keeps up a noise so no ill-omened word is heard. Worshippers leave what they can afford — a terracotta figure, a coin, a model of the body part they want healed — and the accumulated clutter is periodically cleared and buried on site. On festival days the doors are opened and the cult statue is dressed, garlanded, and sometimes carried out through the streets. The temple also holds money, which is why towns keep their treasury in one.
In ancient writing
- Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.23.10-20
Macrobius gives a detailed description of the cult of Jupiter Optimus Maximus Heliopolitanus at Heliopolis (Baalbek), including the gold cult statue said to have been brought from Egypt, its iconography, and the statue-borne oracle by which the god's will was divined, citing a 114 CE prediction to Trajan.
Sources
Nearby
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