There is, however, tantalising evidence to show that some of the earliest archaeologists and European travellers to visit Baalbek came away believing that the Great Platform was much older than the nearby Roman temples. For instance, the French scholar, Louis F licien de Saulcy, stayed at Baalbek from 16 to 18 March 1851 and became convinced that the podium walls were the `remains of a pre-Roman temple'.(39)
Far more significant, however, were the observations of respected French archaeologist Ernest Renan, who was allowed archaeological exploration of the site by the French army during the mid nineteenth century.(40) It is said that when he arrived there it was to satisfy his own conviction that no pre-Roman remains existed on the site.(41) Yet following an indepth study of the ruins, Renan came to the conclusion that the stones of the Trilithon were very possibly `of Phoenician origin',(42) in other words they were a great deal older that the Roman temple complex. His reasoning for this assertion was that, in the words of Ragette, he saw `no inherent relation between the Roman temple and this work'.(43)
So what was it that so convinced early archaeologists and travellers that the Trilithon was much older than the rest of the temple complex?
The evidence is self apparent and runs as follows:-
a) One has only to look at the positioning of the Trilithon and the various courses of large stone blocks immediately beneath it to realize that they bear very little relationship to the rest of the Temple of Jupiter. Moreover, the visible courses of smaller blocks above and to the right of the Trilithon are markedly different in shape and appearance to the smaller, more regular sized courses in the rest of the obviously Roman structure.
b) The limestone courses that make up the outer podium base - which, of course, includes the Trilithon - are heavily pitted by wind and sand erosion, while the rest of the Temple of Jupiter still possesses comparatively smooth surfaces. The same type of wind and sand erosion can be seen on the huge limestone blocks used in many of the megalithic temple complexes around the northern Mediterranean coast, as well as the cyclopean walls of Mycenean Greece. Since all these structures are between 3000 and 6000 years of age, it could be argued that the lower courses of the outer podium wall at Baalbek antedate the Roman temple complex by at least a thousand years.
c) Other classical temple complexes have been built upon much earlier megalithic structures. This includes the Acropolis in Athens (erected 447-406 BC), where archaeologists have unearthed cyclopean walls dating to the Mycenean or Late Bronze Age period (1600-1100 BC). Similar huge stone walls appear at Delphi, Tiryns and Mycenae.
d) The Phoenicians are known to have employed the use of cyclopean masonry in the construction of their citadels. For instance, an early twentieth-century drawing of the last-remaining prehistoric wall at Aradus, an ancient city on the Syrian coast, shows the use of cyclopean blocks estimated to have been between thirty and forty tonnes a piece.
These are important points in favour of the Great Platform, as in the case of the inner podium, being of much greater antiquity than the Roman, or even the Ptolemaic, temple complex. Yet if we were to accept this possibility, then we must also ask ourselves: who constructed it, and why?
