Return to Doug's archaeology page
BAALBEK: The Romans really did build it!
I'm continuing seeing people claim that Baalbek couldn't be Roman. I've saved a
couple of old posts on this, which I include here:
From: Frank_Doernenburg@do2.maus.ruhr.de (Frank Doernenburg)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Message-ID:
<199609132242.a20735@do2.maus.de>
References:
<3232A4FA.382@lynx.bc.ca>
Organization: MAUS DO2 - Die freundliche MAUS im Westen Dortmunds
Subject: Re: 200 ton Blocks
Date: Fri, 13 Sep 96 22:42:00 +0200
Hi!
I don't know what your sources are, but they are crap. This time, your
Baalbek-claims.
First: The three blocks used weight about 800 tons each, the heavy, unmoved
block weights about 1200 tons.
Second: The quarry for the blocks lies higher then the temple, about 15
meters. Distance to the platform: about 600 meters, but to get round a ditch
the way had to be about 1100 meters long.
Third: A German expedition dug 1904/1905 through to the foundations of the
temple. The temple platform is through and through of Roman origin. They found
typical roman masonery, roman trash and so on, down to the bedrock. Nothing
un-Roman was found! Btw: The temple platform was not built from massive
stone, but typically roman honeycombed. Only the outer shell looks like a
massive building.
Fourth: The trash you can read about the temple comes mostly from a book from
1864 ("Voyage autour de la mer morte" by Felicien ce Saulcy) and an article
from a professor Modeste Agrest, who based his story on a book "published in
Paris in 1898" - long befor any serious dig was done. These sources were used
by authors like Daeniken and Sitchin. The first real investigation from
1904/1905, published 1921 (Wiegand, Ballbek, 3 bde, 1921-1925), is
"forgotten" by these guys.
Read some real literature about the things you are phantasizing about.
Bye,
FD
And another article
Frank_Doernenburg@do2.maus.ruhr.de
(edited) says:
The stones in Baalbek are not as heavy as claimed by many authors.
The three actually moved weigh just under 800 tons each, and
only the not-moved block in the quarry weighs about 1000 tons.
The stones were transported over a path only 600 meters length
and about 15 meters *downhill*. The quarry is 1160 meters high, and
the temple 145 meters. So it was easy to keep the stones on an even
level to their final resting place and it was uneccesary to lift
them about 7 meters as some authors claim.
As you might know, Rome is the city with the most obelisks outside
of egypt. They stole the things by the dozen and took them home.
The heaviest known obelisk weighs 510 tons, and it was transported
some 1000's of *kilometers*. This transport was documented by the
roman author Marcellinus Comes. The romans even left detailed
paintings and reliefs about the ways to move such things : as on the
bottom of the Theodosius-obelisk in Istanbul.
They used "Roman-patented" winches, in German called "Göpelwinden"
which work with long lever ways. To move a 900 ton stone, they needed
only 700 men. The transport was slow, about 30 meters a day, because
they had to dismantle and rebuild the winches every few meters,
to pull the obelisk with maximum torque. But in Baalbek, where they
moved several blocks, maybe they built an alley of winches, where
they passed the block from winch to winch.
But its irrelevant, because they needed only three weeks per block,
and that's OK. Oh by the way, the Romans worked a few hundred years
on the temple, until the project was finally canceled.
Bye,
FD
And a more recent post:
Subject: Re: Stone of Baalbek
From: fdoernen@ruhrgebiet.net (Frank Dörnenburg)
Newsgroups: sci.archaeology
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 1998 23:16:04 GMT
Dear ...
This is no flame but a rational post to explain some things to you :-)
It would be nice if you would read just some of the basic stuff about
antique transporting techniques before arguing about "I don't know how
to do it, and therefore anciens certainly didn't know it".
From Roman times, and the trilithon was built in Roman times, we have
full documentations about the methods they used. For example, the
transport of a 900 t block at the time of Thedosius (compareable to
the Bal Bekaa blocks) was accomplished with 12 winches manned with 24
men each - or only 264 men!!!
The romans developed a system of continous winch movement, called in
German a "Göpelwinde". With this system, winches are placed on poles
dugged into the ground besides the transport way. In the example
listed above 2 parallel rows with 6 winches on each side, between them
the weight was moved. Each winch had a distance of about 5 m to the
next.
All 6 winches on each side had a different repe angle to the weight to
pull. The lower, the smaller the transport force afflicted to the
block. When the angle ot the two winches most behind got
unpracticable, the winches were removed from the pole and moved to the
frontmost position and the ropes got new connected. And so on. The
blocks were transported on sleds. The transport of the Byzanz-Obelisk
eg. took about 2 weeks for 3 kilometers from waterfront to 300 m
height. The Trilithon-blocks were transported only 600 meters to a
lower position!!
When the work was finished, the poles were pulled out and the holes
filled.
Next point: How were the blocks in Bal Bekaa lifted? Answer: They
werent lifted. The quarry was slightly higher than the platform of the
forum, so the Romans only had to fill a small trench with rubble to
bull the blocks horizontally to their places.
Next point: Why do I write Bal Bekaa instead of Baalbek? Because this
is the original name of the settlement after roman times: Bal Bekaa
means "Valley of the Bekaa" and has nothing to do with the old god
Baal (you notice the similarity between "Valley of Bekaa" and the
famous "Bekaa-plateau" in Lebanon??? Yeah, right, they both mean the
same location.) . "Bal Bekaa" was the official name up to the 19th
century, and the French use this writing (or the shortened form Bal
Bek) until today.
In fact, the whole settlement is of Roman origin, first mentioned in
about 20 AD as "Colonia Iulia Felix Helipolitania", named not after
the Greek sun god Helios (as Sitchin proposes), but after a local
Roman hero, Iuppiter Heliopolitanus. The city lay in the center of
several trade routes and therefore flourished after it had to be
abandoned because of the onrush of the Arabs.
Next: Why is it no ancient spaceship landing platform? Because of its
construction. Its a typical Roman honeycomb-brick-construction.
Underneath the forum is a labyrinth of brick walls and chambers,
filled to support the weight with shards and other compact trash. All
of roman origin. Only beneath the temples on top of the forum are
fundaments to the bedrock to support their weight. And in typical
roman fashoin, to conceal the flimsy inner construction an outer wall
of monoliths between 50 and 800 tons each was placed around the
construction so that it lookes massive. But this is only an outer
appearance, the whole construction is so unstable, that any decent
space ferry would simply break through the ceiling and land in a heap
of roman shards.
All these things are known since the publishing of the Wiegand-
Baalbek-report between 1921-1925. Z. Sitchin (from where you as I
believe you got the "facts") is or was in posession of these reports
(because he uses pictures from these books, without mentioning their
origins). He publishes the pictures, but doesn't mention the other
facts published in the three volumes - so I think I can say, he is a
fraud. Once I believed in these people, too. Because I thought "When
they publish such things they must be true, because nobody can publish
lies as facts". Silly me. When you care to take a look at my home
page, you can find some of these silly old believes right there. And I
only can say: Think before you flame against "schoolbook science".
There is a reason because we have to go to school ;-)
Literature: Wiegand, TH; Baalbek 1-3; Berlin/Leipzig 1921-1925 (the
original digging report)
Bruns, G. "Der Obelisk und seine Basis auf dem Hippodrom zu
Konstantinopel", Istanbuler Forschungen Bd. 7
Bye,
FD
Visit http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/FDoernenburg
Message-ID:
<364766ed.14717168@news.nacamar.de>
Return to Doug's archaeology page