Baalbek: symbol of power or living city?
The “Baalbek: Archives of an Eternity” exhibition collected an unprecedented number of objects from the ancient Lebanese city, exploring the interplay of power and people through the millennia.
“The expression of power and of sacred practice into the physical and mercurial form of these glorious temples [in Baalbek] … is too big and too heavy to be human,” Vali Mahlouji, curator of the iconoclastic exhibition “Baalbek: Archives of an Eternity,” told Al-Monitor.
“As grand as [Baalbek’s temples] are, they suppress 7,000 years before it … and it evicts the town [currently there] — it pushes it out,” he said, adding that this is why it was interesting as a power and authority symbol.
The exhibition, on display at Beirut’s Sursock Museum, displays a timeline of the vast history of Baalbek, where continuous human settlement dates back nearly 10,000 years. Intertwined into this timeline from the Neolithic era to the modern day, were documents, photographs, artefacts and artworks.
Forty kilometers (25 miles) from the modern Syrian border, Baalbek was built on natural springs, which feed the Assi and Litani rivers. Mahlouji explained that the springs would regularly flood and “effectively create an oasis city.”
