[LCM Articles] Lebanon's ancient ruins suffer from Israeli bombing

[Marc Haddad]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060919/lf_afp/mideastconflictlebanon_060919161316

by Albion Land and Pierre Sawaya
Tue Sep 19, 12:13 PM ET


BEIRUT (AFP) - Archeologists excavating a necropolis uncovered by construction
workers in Beirut only two weeks before war broke out between Hezbollah and
Israel had to stop work this summer when Israeli bombs started falling on the
country.

But Fadi Beayno and his team were lucky. The 300 square meter (3,200 square
foot) dig on a quiet street in the Christian district of Ashrafiyeh was spared
any bombing.

Ironically, however, the first bombs to strike the center of the capital during
the 34-day war hit only about 100 meters away, destroying some water boring
machinery.

Beayno said it belonged to the same man providing equipment for the building
being erected on the site of the dig, and that he had suffered a heart attack
on hearing the news and died.

The 37 graves so far discovered, dating from some time between the first and
beginning of the third centuries, were undamaged.

Little is yet known about the site, except that some graves had masonry frames
with either terra cotta or lead coffins. Other bodies were buried in wooden
coffins.

Beayno said his 22-man team is removing the remains as quickly as possible, so
that construction can continue, and that the findings would be analyzed
afterwards.

But while the Ashrafiyeh site was spared the damage of war, the same cannot be
said for some of the ancient ruins that dot the country, dating back beyond the
Romans, to the Greeks and Phoeniceans.

A team from UNESCO has already begun assessing the damage from 34 days of
bombing and shelling to often fragile structures, already ravaged by time,
earthquake, looting and previous wars.

This tiny country, about the size of the state of Connecticut, has no less than
five entries on UNESCO's World Heritage List. Perhaps the most famous is
Baalbek, called Heliopolis by the Romans, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) east
of Beirut.

It is perhaps most famous for the stunning remains of the Temple of Jupiter, but
there are also temples to Bacchus and Venus.

UNESCO's deputy director general, Mounir Bouchnaki, told AFP that "the major
sites registered on the World Heritage List suffered damages, but it was
minimal."

He has visited not only Baalbek, but also sites in Tyre, on the southern
Mediterranean coast and Byblos, north of the capital, and said more time will
be needed to assess the true extent of damage.

Bouchnaki told a press conference in Paris Monday that the stones of the port
would have to be cleaned by hand, one at a time, and that the cost could reach
100,000 dollars.

"If we do not deal with this before the winter, it will truly be a disaster," he
said.

At Baalbek, the six columns of the Temple of Jupiter that have captivated
visitors for centuries, are nearly 6.5 meters (21 feet) in diameter and more
than 21 meters (70 feet) tall, rising from a base and an entablature that takes
them to an awe-inspiring 38 meters (125 feet) in above the surrounding plain.

The temple is located only about 300 meters from the center of Baalbek, which
was a stronghold of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and repeatedly
targeted by Israeli bombing.

It was spared any direct hits, but Professor Giorgio Croci, a specialist on the
temple who was part of the UNESCO team, said "new cracks appeared during the
Israeli offensive and a plan of action needs to be developed quickly.

Bouchnaki said a detailed evaluation needs to be carried out over the next six
months to determine the true extent of damage.

Cracks in stone were not the only damage caused in Baalbek. For the past 50
years, the town has been host to an international festival of art, music and
dance each summer, and rehearsal for opening night was taking place the day the
war broke out on July 12.

Tourism revenues lost by the cancellation of this year's festival have been
estimated at 900,000 dollars.

Meanwhile, at a Phoenician port in Byblos, damage was of a different sort.

Early in the war, Israeli warplanes knocked out a power plant south of Beirut,
and 15,000 tonnes of fuel oil poured into the Mediterranean, severely polluting
a large swathe of Lebanon's coastline and that of Syria to the north.

At the Byblos port, Bouchnaki said "we have begun an urgent plan to clean and
reinforce the structures."

And in Tyre, a missile fired at a building near the Roman hippodrome missed its
target and hit a mausoleum, destroying some frescoes. Fortunately, there was no
other damage.

There are other important archaeological sites in the south of Lebanon where
most of the heavy combat and bombing took place, such as at Shemaa and Bint
Jbeil. But so far, no assessment has been made of damage there.