History of Baalbeck

pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:SimSun;color:black;mso-fareast-language:ZH-CN">A fourth, still larger stone called Stone of the Pregnant Woman lies unused in a nearby quarry about 1 mile from the town. – its weight, often exaggerated, is estimated at 1,000 tons. An even larger stone, weighing approximately 1,200 tons, lies in the same quarry across the road. Another of the Roman ruins, the Great Court, has six 20 m (65.62 ft) tall stone columns surviving, out of an original 128 columns.

Jupiter-Baal was represented locally (on coinage) as a beardless god in long scaly drapery holding a whip in his right hand and thunderbolts and ears of wheat in his left. Two bulls supported him. In this guise he passed into European worship in the 3rd century and 4th century. The icon of Helipolitan Zeus (in A.B. Cook, Zeus, i: 570–576) bore busts of the seven planetary powers on the front of the pillar like term in which he was encased. A bronze statuette of this Heliopolitan Zeus was discovered at Tortosa, Spain; another was found at Byblos in Phoenicia. A comparable iconic image is the Lady of Ephesus.

Other emperors enriched the sanctuary of Heliopolitan Jupiter each in turn. Nero (54–68 CE) built the tower-altar opposite the Temple of Jupiter; Trajan (98-117) added the forecourt to the Temple of Jupiter, with porticoes of pink granite