← Back to the map David Roberts' 1839 painting of the ruins of the Temple of Bacchus at Baalbek

David Roberts, 1839 · Wikimedia Commons

Baalbek

Name: Baalbek
Address: Lebanon

Syria · Roman province·Lebanon·Founded 1st c. BCE (Roman colony)

Roman Heliopolis. Temple of Jupiter — one of the largest sanctuaries in the empire. Still under construction in Trajan's day.

A living Lebanese city of roughly 80,000 in the Bekaa Valley; its UNESCO-listed Roman temples of Jupiter and Bacchus stand within the modern town.

Excavation history

1898-1904

German archaeological mission under Otto Puchstein and Theodor Wiegand — After Kaiser Wilhelm II toured the site in 1898, a German expedition of about a dozen archaeologists with roughly 400 local workers cleared the temple complex, largely complete by 1904.

1997-2000s

German Archaeological Institute (DAI) with Lebanon's Directorate General of Antiquities, led by Margarete van Ess — A renewed Lebanese-German research program dug soundings beneath the Temple of Jupiter podium and found occupation layers reaching back to the Neolithic, well before the Roman temples.

Notable finds

Sursock Bronze (Jupiter Heliopolitanus)

This gilt-bronze miniature of Baalbek's cult statue shows Jupiter Heliopolitanus as a beardless youth in a basket-shaped kalathos hat, flanked by a pair of bulls. Collector Charles Sursock first owned it before the Louvre acquired the piece, catalogued as AO 19534, in 1939.

Louvre Museum, Paris, France

Roman Gold Funerary Mask

Sheets of gold once covered the eyes, nose, and mouth of a Roman-period woman buried at Baalbek, with more gold leaf sewn onto her burial dress. The mask now sits among the National Museum of Beirut's Roman holdings.

National Museum of Beirut, Lebanon

Venus Heliopolitana Statue

Enthroned between two sphinxes and dressed for the temple in gold earrings and an emerald necklace, this cult image of Venus Heliopolitana raises her right hand in blessing and holds ears of grain in her left.

National Museum of Beirut, Lebanon

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