The news about the sudden destruction of the ancient Phoenician port in Beirut has flooded the news and the Lebanese blogosphere over the last couple of days. Everybody seems to be against move and some are even asking the minister of culture Gaby Layoun to resign over it.
But let’s be real for a second, downtown Beirut all lay over Phoenician ruins and much more! At the end, it was destroyed and rebuilt 7 times over its 5,000 year history, so the least you can find is ruins WHEREVER you dig around the city! Should we preserve everything we find and halt all construction works for ever? And let’s assume that we’ve succeeded in actually preserving them and turning these site into touristic places, will Khaleeji people be interested in visiting them? In fact, I see them enjoying places like Zaitounay Bay much more than the ancient ruins near the Grand Serail!
Still, don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling to erase our history, but why can’t we be more practical? I know the developers at the Phoenician port did wrong by suddenly demolishing that Phoenician port, but why for instance didn’t we give them the option to maybe move that port to another place instead of totally halting their plans?
I don’t care if it comes to the taste of tourists or anything, but you know restoring heritage is an idea we should all respect with the Phoenicians and others. I mean, yes when they find something they should halt all the construction and they can move outwards the central city, (mish darouri kil shi bel down town bass!).
For example here in UK, they were planning to dig for a highway, but then they found a skunks’s dens, so they re-planned the highway all over again instead of moving out the den!
Rome is very charming because of such ruins all over the city, and we can be the same!
But then again, UK and Italy have much more spaces than we do here..
I’m not calling for the destruction of all ruins we find, but let’s just move them to another place for display instead of stopping all projects..
rami, huge archeology cannot be moved away for display. take the circus maximus in rome for example. no buildings allowed near it so that its original context remains. same here. when found, big archeology (like baalbek or anjar) remains IN SITU and building is carried out elsewhere. when there’s no more space to build, simply demolish low rise concrete buildings and replace them by high rises but dont take out archeology (public property) to accomodate a developing project (private property)…
The goal is not and should never be the attraction of the Khaleeji people when it comes to heritage.
And an ancient phoenician port is not like any other ruins.
I’m not saying that should be our ultimate goal, but most of the tourists we get are Khaleeji and I was giving an example..
What exactly does the picture show? The port?!
Yes, it shows the construction site and what is remaining of the port now.
Hi Rami, it is good to hear a counter argument to this whole Phoenician port issue. Here is a documented side of the story:
Actually this picture shows what was done by the buldozers yesterday. The actual picture was much clearer before the destruction.(check blogbaladi for before and after)
We are talking about a 2500 years old port. To be accurate it was the repair dock of the port, it is one of 3 yes THREE remaining Phoenician ports of that era in the east Mediterranean. What was special about this port, is that it was completely carved in bedrock. And yes it was a port and not a quarry (As per our cultture minister), the following people said it was a port:
LEBANESE EXPERTS like Hisham Sayegh, Anis Chaaya, Martine Francis Allouch, Jeanine Abdel Massih, Eric Gotwalles, Laure Salloum, Assaad Seif, Leila Badre, Nadine Panayot says it is a port.
INTERNATIONAL EXPERTS like Jean Yves Empereur, David Blackman, Kaliopi Baika, Ana Maria Busila, Marguerite Yon, Jean-Christophe Sourisseau says it is. ICOMOS & UNESCO confirm this too.
I was astonished by the title: “Should we preserve every single Phoenician ruin in Beirut”. To start with, yes there is a law that enforces the preservation of every single Phoenician ruin in Lebanon. However, regardless of the law (Since i am no lawyer) do you know of any Phoenician ruin in Beirut? If yes, please name it.
Thank you
thank you charles for the great input. regarding khaleeji tourists, nobody should care about what they like. because were we to follow such logic, then why not transform baalbek into a resort and tripoli’s mount saint gilles into a golf course? come on, why not wlo? our arab neighbors and I’m well placed to know it, are themselves, preserving any rock, any wall fragment they uncover in their desert (except of course KSA, who keep denying any pre-islamic ruins they find, but that’s another story) and are trying their best to build themselves a cultural tourism industry, while we, are trying to cater to THEIR needs? if they dont liek our ruins, fine, other tourists will like them! this is who we are! we dont remove it to please a tourist. if the khaleeji doesnt like the roman coliseum, should the italians reconvert it into an IMAX venue? beirut is suffocating from the people in it, while plenty of spaces outside beirut are available for building. why not dbaye marina for example? in hamra you need 50 minutes to cross half a kilometer in your car and this is not acceptable. room must be made in beirut, green spaces created, so that beirut becomes livable again. cheers
Maybe they should move the towers to somewhere else. Hariri did better by restoring solidere. Now Layoun can have his own palace in Zahle. Mabrouk
You have a point but considering the lack of public space in Beirut vs the number of towers popping up like mushrooms, this could have been a good opportunity to preserve this Phoenician port and turn it into a public space. The towers could have been moved elsewhere (There are a few empty plots of land around martyrs’ square).
Also, the way this was done, ie Layoun’s decision to disregard whatever had been agreed by the previous minister of culture and bulldozing the site while everyone was looking elsewhere, does not inspire much respect or confidence in this guy…
If lack of space is such an issue and catering to the Khaleeji’s needs is our no. 1 priority, why not build a restaurant or resort on the pigeon’s rock? They would love it…
an absolutely unacceptable process by layoun. a ministerial decree should be pulished in the official gazette for a 2month period to give way for any refutation (ta3n) and allow public opinion to have a say in the matter. instead, layoun sent the public opinion to hell and declassified the site and in the space of hours (he must have called venus) the site was gone. typical gangsta style. is this how a ministry of culture protects archeological sites???? APLH sued both layoun and venus based on the way they dealt with this archeological site and public property. it’s public property= it belongs to the lebanese people. not to venus. our support as lebanese, should be to ourselves, not to what tourists wish us to be. tourists are fickle. they come and go. identity remains, connects us to our land and bonds us with our own people. maybe that’s why we sell ourselves to foreigners, because we are giving up our identity for material gain.
With all do respect Rami, but the arguments in the post do not make a lot of sense.
Talking about Gulf tourists is not only an example, you use them to prove a point in a flawed argument. If we want to be practical, you are basically saying we should decide to preserve the cultural heritage that interests incoming tourists. The reasons we attract tourists in the first place is to support Lebanese development in all aspect; economic, social, cultural, and environmental. The economic benefit from a gulf tourist for your average Lebanese (not huge international corporations) is not worth any degradation in our cultural richness.
In your reply to some of the comments above, you say you propose moving the site to another place not to halt development… Well it’s too late since bulldozers destroyed everything! No asked to stop the development of the project, but to protect ruins thousands of years old from being destroyed by bulldozers as if they were nothing.
Today, Italy is culturally rich because everything was preserved since it was a poor countries for 500 years and had no “big development projects”. Today Italians are grateful for the results. Let’s start thinking long term and seeing things beyond tomorrow.
Cedric
Assad seif, the current archeologist with minister layoun, suggested that one of the towers be moved over into an angle that allows the port to remain. the developer refused. the government in such cases should not ‘suggest’ but should ‘force’ the developer to do a small compromise so that an important archeological site remains and in the same time, allowing the developer to continue his business.
Phoenician ruins in Lebanon are rare. And this one (containing repair docks) was even rarer. They didn’t even allow enough time for scholars/archeologists to study the site.
You can search the “blogosphere” for info, then make an informed judgement.
This is not about preserving EVERY ruin or archeological site we find. This is about preserving something we don’t have a single site of ANYWHERE. It’s not like Lebanon is sprouting phonecian ports everywhere. This is an extremely rare find that should be preserved, if not in place, at least dismantled and rearranged together somewhere else.
I wrote this before even reading your post. After reading it I can see all the preconceived ideas we are being fed with such as there is no space and what does a bunch of stones mean. Rami I am very sad to tell you that it is the ignorance instilled in you and so many Lebanese that is demolishing us and a few of us will spend every effort to try and protect the heritage of your kids from your destructive impulses
And now my response:
It is not about every single ruin because the debate is never present. Every house, ruin, building with historical significance has been demolished and what we don’t understand is the house themselves do not have a value, what is of value is the social net, the lives that are woven around it, in the antiquity it took thousands of years to build cities. in our modern world where things are accelerated it takes 30 to 50 years to build a city…this is why people choose to life in Sursock and Gemmayze and Clemenceau and verdun because there life, relationships and culture there, but they do not realize that by encouraging savage development they demolish these links, living in a tour in sursock is now exactly the same as living in a tower in any new development in “city cities” across Lebanon.
No it is not about every single ruin but in reality were we ever given a choice? every time a building is set for demolishing are we asked about our opinion? can we stand in front of money and promoters.
Paris is a wonderful city because the happy few are set to protect it. Had we left Paris to the Lebanese it would have looked like a dump. We had the Paris of the Middle East … and now we live in an atrocious dump.
To Joe:
Hariri did not restore Solidere….Hariri demolished 90% of Solidere and if it wasn’t for civil society he would have demolished 100%
please do not distort history. We should not be happy because we have two old houses standing we should be revolted because the 98 others were demolished
The site was not a port, neither was it repair docks or even slipways. These large trenches had rough bottoms and walls. In fact, the reported slopes of the trench bottoms did not exist. There were short inclines interrupted by steps, level areas, and even one part with a reverse pitch. It would have been impossible to haul ships up or down these features. The trenches were likely for the foundation of a monumental building- which is important in its own right. It was most likely not even from the Phoenician period- Roman is more likely.
The international experts who wrote letters in support of the site never actually came to Beirut to examine it. Their determinations were base on the article of Allouche. Many of the Lebanese archaeologists did not see the site, basing their ideas on the aforementioned article as well. Those who did see it are not experts in maritime archaeology and made mistakes in the interpretation. This is coupled with erroneous data from the site itself.
Yes, it is sad to see any archaeological site destroyed, but this was not a port or port facility.
Ok, I’m not going to be acting all stubborn on this. That port does have an importance indeed, and I hope it’s really a port unlike what some people are claiming! Yet, my post is not specifically about this site.
As I stated in the post, my point is Beirut all lay on ruins, do you expect all developers to stop their work and turn the city into one big museum?
Again, I’m not calling for the destruction of the ruins we find, but instead of starting a campaign to save every single piece of stone we find, let’s assess which ones should we preserve and which ones should go away.
That’s MY opinion, and I’m entitled to express it.
Yes Rami, it is your right to express your opinion.
I asked you if you know of any Phoenician site in Beirut.
But in any case, here’s a tip: 198 historical sites were discovered in Beirut, only 7 remain.
I had no idea, sorry. Thanks for letting me know.
Thanks again Rami for discussing this issue in your blog. Everyone has their own opinion, and I believe it’s healthy. It was great to discuss this topic here. Let’s stay in touch.