Baalbek is a city of Coele-Syria, about 40 miles NW of Damascus, celebrated for its magnificence in the first centuries of the Christian era, and famous since then for its ruins. Early identified with the worship of Baal, the sun god, the Greeks named it Heliopolis, "City of the Sun." It became a place of importance only after it was made a Roman colony. The Prussian government undertook its excavation in 1902.

Our interest at the site was the temple of Bacchus that structual design is clearly a house of Eli based upon the surrounding pillars of the building.

The next to the Sun temple was built the great six pillars. Chief of the ruins is the great Temple of the Sun, 290 ft. by 160 ft., built of incredibly huge stones from near-by quarries. The city was completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1759.