page_title: Temples of the Beqaa Valley
section_title: Worship
hierarchical_section_title: Temples of the Beqaa Valley / Worship
caption_attribution_description: Temple of Jupiter, leaning column, Baalbek, Holy Land, (i.e., Ba'labakk, Lebanon) Taken from the Detroit Publishing Co. Collection at the U.S. Library of Congress. [PD] This picture is in the public domain.
context_page_description: The Temples of the Beqaa Valley are a number of shrines and Roman temples that are dispersed around the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon. The most important and famous are those in Roman Heliopolis. A few temples are built on former buildings of the Phoenician & Hellenistic era, but all are considered to be of Roman construction and were started to be abandoned after the fourth century with the fall of the Roman Paganism.
context_section_description: It was the opinion of Edward Robinson that worship was not conducted within the temples, but rather outside it. The temple was the domain of the priests where they venerated a cult statue. Worshippers gathered around the temple at ceremonial times and hence there was no need for divisions within it, such as the aisles of modern churches. The cult images, along with temples themselves would often be aligned so that the sun would illuminate them at certain times of day and year. George F. Taylor was of the opinion that a sacrifice would be made when certain areas of the temple became illuminated. He suggested that a "Minister of Works" may have been responsible for local civil engineering in Ancient Roman times.
caption: Heliopolis temple in 1895
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