Baalbek. Baalbek, also known as Balbec, Baalbec or Baalbeck, is a city located east of the Litani River in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, about 85 km northeast of Beirut. It is the capital of Baalbek-Hermel Governorate. In Greek and Roman times Baalbek was also known as Heliopolis. In 1998 Baalbek had a population of 82,608, mostly Shia Muslims, followed by Sunni Muslims and Christians. It is home to the Baalbek temple complex which includes two of the largest and grandest Roman temple ruins: the Temple of Bacchus and the Temple of Jupiter. It was inscribed in 1984 as an UNESCO World Heritage site. A few miles from the swamp from which the Litani and the Asi flow, Baalbek may be the same as the manbaa al-nahrayn, the abode of El in the Ugaritic Baal Cycle discovered in the 1920s and a separate serpent incantation. Baalbek was called Heliopolis during the Roman Empire, a latinisation of the Greek Helioúpolis used during the Hellenistic Period, meaning Sun City in reference to the solar cult there. The name is attested under the Seleucids and Ptolemies. However, Ammianus Marcellinus notes that earlier Assyrian names of Levantine towns continued to be used alongside the official Greek ones imposed by the Diadochi, who were successors of Alexander the Great. In Greek religion, Helios was both the sun in the sky and its personification as a god. The local Semitic god BaÊ¿al Haddu was more often equated with Zeus or Jupiter or simply called the Great God of Heliopolis, but the name may refer to the Egyptians' association of BaÊ¿al with their great god Ra. It was sometimes described as or Coelesyria to distinguish it from its namesake in Egypt. In Catholicism, its titular see is distinguished as, from its former Roman province Phoenice. In Greek and Roman antiquity, it was known as Heliopolis. It still possesses some of the best-preserved Roman ruins in Lebanon, including one of the largest temples of the empire. The gods that were worshipped there were equivalents of the Canaanite deities Hadad, Atargatis. Local influences are seen in the planning and layout of the temples, as they vary from the classic Roman design. The name is first attested in the Mishnah, a second-century rabbinic text, as a geographic epithet for a kind of garlic, shum ba'albeki. Two early 5th-century Syriac manuscripts, a translation of Eusebius's Theophania and a life of Rabbula, bishop of Edessa. The etymology of Baalbek has been debated indecisively since the 18th century. Cook took it to mean Ba'al of the Beka and Donne as City of the Sun. Lendering asserts that it is probably a contraction of BaÊ¿al Nebeq. Steiner proposes a Semitic adaption of Lord Bacchus, from the classical temple complex. On the basis of its similar name, several 19th-century Biblical archaeologists attempted to connect Baalbek to the Baalgad mentioned in the Hebrew Scripture's Book of Joshua, the Baalath listed among Solomon's cities in the First Book of Kings, the Baal-hamon where he had a vineyard, and thePlain of Aven in Amos. The hilltop of Tell Baalbek, part of a valley to the east of the northern Beqaa Valley, shows signs of almost continual habitation over the last 8-9000 years. Macrobius later credited the site's foundation to a colony of Egyptian or Assyrian priests. The settlement's religious, commercial, and strategic importance was minor enough, however, that it is never mentioned in any known Assyrian or Egyptian record, unless under another name. Its enviable position in a fertile valley, major watershed, and along the route from Tyre to Palmyra should have made it a wealthy and splendid site from an early age. During the Canaanite period, the local temples were largely devoted to the Heliopolitan Triad: a male god, his consort, and their son. The site of the present Temple of Jupiter was probably the focus of earlier worship, as its altar was located at the hill's precise summit and the rest of the sanctuary raised to its level.
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