Heliopolis (Syria)

Baalbek (; ar, بَعْلَبَكّ, Baʿlabakk, Syriac-Aramaic: ܒܥܠܒܟ) is a city located east of the Litani River in Lebanon's Beqaa Valley, about northeast of Beirut. It is the capital of Baalbek-Hermel Governorate. In Greek and Roman times Baalbek was also known as Heliopolis (, Greek for "Sun City"). 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.

Name

A few miles from the swamp from which the Litani (the classical Leontes) and the Asi (the upper Orontes) flow, Baalbek may be the same as the ''manbaa al-nahrayn'' ("Source of the Two Rivers"), 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 ''Hēlioúpolis'' () 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 Baʿal 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 Baʿal with their great god Ra. It was sometimes described as or Coelesyria ( la, Heliopolis Syriaca or ') to distinguish it from its namesake in Egypt. In Catholicism, its titular see is distinguished as , from its former Roman province Phoenice. The importance of the solar cult is also attested in the name Biḳāʿ al-ʿAzīz borne by the plateau surrounding Baalbek, as it references an earlier solar deity and not later men, named Aziz. 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 (Jupiter, Venus, and Bacchus) 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'' (שום בעלבכי). Two early 5th-century Syriac manuscripts, a translation of Eusebius's '' Theophania'' and a life of Rabbula, bishop of Edessa. It was pronounced as ''Baʿlabakk'' ( ar, بَعْلَبَكّ) in Classical Arabic. In Modern Standard Arabic, its vowels are marked as ''Baʿlabak'' () or ''Baʿlabekk''. It is ''Bʿalbik'' (, is ) in Lebanese Arabic.

The etymology of Baalbek has been debated indecisively since the 18th century. Cook took it to mean "Baʿal (Lord) of the Beka" and Donne as "City of the Sun". Lendering asserts that it is probably a contraction of ''Baʿal Nebeq'' ("Lord of the Source" of the Litani River). 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

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