The Museum of Lebanese Prehistory (, ) is a museum of prehistory and archaeology in Beirut, Lebanon.
History
The museum is the first museum of prehistory in the Middle East and was opened in June 2000 to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Saint Joseph University of Beirut. The founding of the museum followed from the work of Jesuit scholars who controlled prehistoric research in this part of the world until the 1950s. These had accumulated a large amount of artifacts and heritage, collected at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Saint Joseph University. This faculty established a research centre in 1988 that developed with the creation of the Museum of Prehistory in June 2000.
Displays
The museum houses an exceptional collection of animal and human bones, Neolithic pottery, stone tools and other ancient items recovered from over four hundred archaeological sites since the 19th century. The collections form a unique reference and were only accessible to specialists until the late 1990s. By exhibiting part of the collection to the public, the university has enabled people to investigate and discover the details and mysteries of prehistoric Lebanon.
The museum occupies a total of on two levels. The upper floor is devoted to tools and the basement displays illustrate the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers. The invention of agriculture and the domestication of animals are key themes and the museum includes 35 display boards and 22 windows exhibiting different fossils and flint tools from the Stone Age. These include early agricultural tools, blades, sickles, a pick, an axe and millstone. Dioramas and recreated artifacts are presented together in thematic arrangements and in some cases compare and relate modern tools to Stone Age counterparts making the artefacts easier to understand. Displays cover three areas: tools, hunting and the invention of agriculture. Visitors are invited to discover how and why flint tools were made and what purpose they served. Rare bone tools and an antler from the Antelias cave, Sands of Beirut illustrate the ingenuity of the prehistoric people who inhabited Lebanon. Hunting is illustrated in various panels with reconstructions of weapons like the spear and arrows along with elements of well-preserved fauna from sites explored by the Jesuit Fathers. The invention of agriculture was one of the most important milestones in the history of mankind achieved in the Middle East. A special area of the display highlights the various stages from plowing up to production of bread, a transition accessible to all audiences. A French and Arabic documentary presentation entitled Lebanon in Prehistory can be viewed by visitors.
Exhibitions
The museum hosts a range of conferences and exhibitions including "The Heritage of Darwin", "The Paintings of Frédéric Husseini" and "Aquatic Fossils from Lebanon". To celebrate its 10th anniversary, the museum presented an exhibition entitled Prehistory vs Urbanization devoted to one of its founders, Henri Fleisch. Fleisch compiled a photographic archive of the devastation caused by excessive urbanization of Lebanon for nearly 60 years. The single showroom exhibition gave a dissection of the scene showing sites such as Tripoli, Byblos, Tabarja, the bay of Jounieh, Antelias and memorable caves, Ras Beirut and Naam. Thousands of images and freezes were taken of the Lebanese coastline, mountains and the Beqaa Valley showing sites that were inhabited by bipedal hominids for nearly a million years before the appearance of the Phoenicians. A central theme of the exhibition was urbanization as "a disaster inflicted on the Prehistory" and the upheavals of the Lebanese landscape. This destruction is shown in the Fleisch's photographs which document the disappearance of the Sands of Beirut, a complex of nearly 20 rich, prehistoric sites that were completely destroyed due to operations to use the soft sandstone for buildings.
Lévon Nordigiuan, the museum director said
The exhibition was filled with similar photographic examples. The Antelias cave with many Paleolithic vestiges was demolished by workers in the 1960s. Naama showed three Paleolithic habitats with numerous animal bones and disappeared in favor of the southern highway. Last-minute intervention of Fleisch saved many essential pieces for scientific research. Other sites, like the shelter of Ksar Akil in the valley of Antelias are still at risk. Transformations reported by the photographs are not always obvious to understand for the untrained eye.