This monograph explores the transformation of Berytus and the Bekaa after the Roman colonial foundation in 15 BCE, challenging the traditional perspective of Bronze Age roots for the sanctuary at Baalbek-Heliopolis and its deities.

This monograph explores the transformation of Berytus and the Bekaa after the Roman colonial foundation in 15 BCE, challenging the traditional perspective of Bronze Age roots for the sanctuary at Baalbek-Heliopolis and its deities.

The fame of the ruins at Baalbek in Lebanon once drew many tourists. The Romans eventually built magnificent temples over a massive multi-level platform considered to be one of the only prediluvial sites that survived the flood. Here we find the amazing 1000-plus ton stones as part of the original temple platform. The largest cranes in the world would have difficulty lifting, let alone moving, these massive limestone blocks. These stones and other parts of this important site are described in this handy reference guide.

This volume explores the span of human history-and plenty of prehistory-searching out prominent and fascinating examples of cities or broader civilizations that shifted from a position of influence to a lack thereof. The accelerating threat of climate change challenges us to analyze our own communities' relationships with the wider world and to contemplate their very existence. This single-volume cultural encyclopedia examines lost cities and civilizations from every region of the globe and dated throughout human history. Arranged alphabetically, the compilation allows both students and general readers easy access to detailed entries on specific lost cities and civilizations. Throughout the geographically and chronologically diverse entries, such themes as colonization, migration, and especially climate change are developed and analyzed. Supplementing the main entries are sidebars detailing mythological cities and Investigative Boxes examining present-day cities on the brink of extinction. These round out the book's focus on disappearing cultural centers and reveal the robust relevance this material has to a world facing the crisis of climate change.

Roman Architecture casts new light not only on many familiar monuments of the city of Rome, but also on less well-known examples from across the Roman empire. Rome and its empire were fundamental to the development of western architecture, and its forms and motifs remain significant elements of our own built environments. Roman Architecture places the varied architecture of ancient Rome, from its humble apartment blocks to its grand public structures, within the broader context of Roman society. It takes as its starting point the writings of the Roman architect Vitruvius, as one voice in a broader contemporary debate about the nature and value of architecture. What did the Romans themselves think architecture was for? What was built, by whom and why? How was architecture represented in text and image? The interplay of type and variation that are the hallmark Roman architecture are here traced back to the human actions and choices from which they originated. Janet DeLaine explores how the desires of patrons for novelty and individuality were met by architects and builders working within the practical constraints of available materials and the moral prescriptions of religious and social norms to create new forms. Ranging from early Rome to the late empire, this volume casts new light on many familiar monuments of the city of Rome, but also on less well-known examples from across the empire. Through an examination of the key types of buildings at the heart of Roman society and their decoration, it reveals the symbolic meaning of architecture in terms of competitive power displays and commemoration, and it explores how architecture helped to define being 'Roman' at different times and in different places of the empire.