BA'ALBEK. - An ancient city of Coele Syria between Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon at an altitude of 1170 m. in the fertile Bekaa valley, near the sources of the Litani; its origin, which legend connects with Solomon, is unknown; the name Ba'albiki is found in ancient Assyrian and Egyptian inscriptions. The first part of the name indicates the city as a principal place of the Phoenician cult of Baal, while the derivation of the second part is uncertain. The Greeks, identifying their sun-god with Baal, called it Heliopolis, while the Romans spoke of the Jupiter of Heliopolis. Alongside Jupiter, Mercury and Venus also had temples there, and, as coins of the 1st century show, the city was made by Augustus a Roman colony with the name Iulia Augusta Felix. The emperor Antoninus Pius (138-161) built a grandiose temple to the sun-deities, which was completed by his successors down to Caracalla (211-17). A temple was also built to Bacchus. The emperor Theodosius (379-95) destroyed the great temple and built in front of it a Christian basilica.
The modern city, to the east of the ancient city, has about 8,000 inhabitants (Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Melkite and Maronite Catholics, "Orthodox"). It is famous for the gigantic ruins of its acropolis, largely excavated by the Germans in 1900-1904, on which stood the great temple of Jupiter (or the Sun), about 20 m. high, and the smaller one of Bacchus. The northwest enclosing walls are made of colossal blocks. The base, 7 m. high, is of stones averaging 9 m. in length, 4 m. in height and 3 m. in thickness. Three titanic blocks form the foundation of the western side and each measures more than 19 m. in length, 4 m. in height and 3 m. in thickness. In the history of art, the Greek art adapted by the Romans (barrel vaults) is shown here, the Romans imitating the grandiose constructions of the Egyptians.
From the 2nd century perhaps, certainly from the time of Constantine (Eusebius, Vita Const., III, 58: PG 20, 1125), B. was the seat of a bishopric of the Phoenice Libanensis district; by about 400 it depended on the metropolitan see of Damascus. Taken by the Arabs in 634, hotly contested during the Crusades, B. today has two Eastern Catholic prelatures: a Melkite bishop (with about 7,500 faithful in 14 parishes) and a (minor) Maronite archbishop, resident at Aramūn (Lebanon); the Maronite eparchy, not earlier than 1670, has about 42,000 faithful in 71 parishes, with about 120 priests and 30 monks.
