THE GREAT TRILITHON TEMPLE, the Acropolis of Baalbec, and its massive, mighty ruins are now before us—they have been so often pictured by the painter that their external appearance must be familiar to many. We enter from the east, where once was the principal entrance, a noble flight of steps ascending to a colonnade supported by twelve mighty columns. This grand approach was destroyed by the Turks when they converted the Acropolis into a fortress. Passing under this, through a portico, we find ourselves in a long lofty corridor, richly ornamented; facing us are three large doors, the centre, 23 feet wide, brings us into an outer court of hexagonal form about 190 feet long and 240 wide; three gates again from this leading to the grand court, about 440 feet long and 370 wide; on the north and south sides are vast somewhat semicircular alcoves, with three Exedrae, rectangular recesses on each side with arched roofs, but open to the central court; these are elaborately decorated with niches, Corinthian pillars, shrines, &c., the various designs of ornament on the latter scrolls, birds, flowers, &c., being very beautiful and still in fine preservation, so numerous and varied that it has been said that it would take an artist a lifetime to copy them in detail. This court leads us up to what was once the great Temple, at first dedicated to Baal and then to all the gods, so as not to offend any. The only remains of this Temple are six magnificent columns of the peristyle, each 60 feet high and 7½ feet in diameter; they are visible at a great distance in the plain below, and have a very grand impressive effect, especially when seen from below at a distance standing out boldly in an evening sky.
This temple was probably about three hundred feet long, and stood upon the old Phœnician foundation, built of Cyclopean masses of stone, many of which are thirty feet long and ten feet thick; but there are three stones (which gave the name of Trilithon to the Temple) each over sixty feet long, thirteen feet high, and as many thick. How they could have been carried from the quarry, and raised to the height they now occupy, it is difficult to explain, unless they were hauled up great inclined planes of earth which were afterwards carted away, as represented in the bas reliefs of Birs Nimroud. To the left of the great Temple, on a somewhat lower level, having formerly an approach of its own from the plain, probably a noble flight of steps, is the Temple of the Sun (by some called that of Jupiter), one of the best preserved and finest ruins in the world; the ornamentation somewhat florid, but very beautiful and varied. It was surrounded by forty-six columns, about sixty-five feet high and six feet in diameter; the portico, twenty-five feet deep, was supported by a double row of columns; the door itself was forty-two feet high and twenty-one broad, and on each side of it were lofty hollow pillars containing spiral staircases leading to the roof. The cornices are rich in design and elaborate in execution, the Cella or interior is in fair preservation, and at the end of it is a raised platform where the altar stood. Underneath the altar was a vault whence concealed priests sent up Delphic responses to unsuspecting votaries who imagined that they were listening to the voice of inspiration. The symbol of the Syrian Eagle, sacred to the Sun as the bird which flies highest and is supposed to be able to look at the Sun unflinchingly, predominates everywhere about these ruins. The temple area is undermined by vast vaulted corridors, now used as approaches in the same way as the Temple platform at Jerusalem. The emperors Constantine and Theodosius converted the great Temple into a Basilica; at the Moslem conquest it was used as a fortress. When some five hundred years later the tide turned again in favour of Christianity, it was converted back by the Crusaders into a church, and when the Saracens under Saladin wrested it from them, it became again a fortress, and it probably remained so until its final decay in about the 15th century, when it was destroyed by Tamerlane the Tartar when he raided through Syria. While at Baalbec, we witness an extraordinary hailstorm, the stones being larger than pigeons’ eggs—almost as large as a walnut; very pretty elliptical in shape, the centre about the size of a large pea was cloudy ice, then a large, clear, crystal-looking ring, the outer ring again cloudy ice. The storm lasts about an hour, and the stones do not melt for some time; it is accompanied by a sharp thunderstorm. We now bid farewell to Baalbec, and wend our way across the plain of the Bukâa, bound for Beyrût.