The National Museum of Beirut was built according
to the plans submitted by the architects A. Nahas
and P. Le Prince Ringuet. The Museum's collection,
during the following years, was enriched by items
from various archeological excavation sites from all
over the country.
1975:
The National Museum closed its doors at the
beginning of the Lebanese war. In order to be protected,
small objects were moved, while some sculptures, low
relief and mosaics were poured in cement screed.
1995
and onward: With the return of calm, the
rehabilitation of the museum became the main concern
of the Ministry of Culture and the National Heritage
Foundation. Restoration of archeological pieces and
the full rehabilitation of the museum took place.
Today,
and after a great deal of hard work, the
national Museum proudly exhibits six thousand years
of civilization and heritage, a landmark for generations
to come.
Read
this article: Beirut museum text by Hana Alireza Kobeissi
Most national museums can be said to have an intimate
connection to the cities in which they reside, protecting
within their walls the material culture of a nation
and preserving behind glass, physical testaments to
former glories and empires past. In the case of the
Beirut National Museum, this is especially true.
In its relatively short lifetime, it has witnessed
the best and worst of Beirut’s recent history and
found itself fulfilling a role as shelter to the country’s
cultural patrimony in the most literal sense.
Although the current building was inaugurated by President
Alfred Naccache in 1942, the museum traces its story
back to a group of artifacts collected by a French
officer stationed in Lebanon in 1919, by the name
of Raymond Weill. These were displayed in a temporary
space for many years, until sufficient funds were
finally collected by 1930 to begin the construction
of a national museum to house them and all antiquities
subsequently unearthed in Lebanon. Across the Middle
East, the following three decades were to prove extremely
rich in archaeological discovery. By the time Suzy
Hakimian joined the museum staff in 1975, it was filled
with beautiful and unique artifacts from the great
ancient cities of Beirut, Baalbeck, Byblos, Tyre,
Sidon and numerous archaeological sites around the
country. Little did she know that it would soon be
forced to shut its doors to the public for a 16-year
hiatus. In the same year, the museum’s location near
the demarcation line that was to divide the city had
made it so vulnerable to destruction by shellfire
that it was forced to close.
Today, Hakimian is the museum’s Director. She has
led the renovation project since 1992 and has seen
the museum through some of its worst times. “It was
only meant to be closed temporarily”, she says. “Everyone
thought the situation would calm down and the fighting
would stop. No one imagined that it would last so
long.” She explains how emergency measures were taken
during the brief ceasefires to place sandbags around
the larger pieces in the galleries and remove the
most delicate objects from their cases to put them
into storage in the museum basement, which in turn
was walled off to prevent any access to the lower
floors. In 1982, the sandbags were deemed insufficient
and the mosaics, statues and sarcophagi had to be
encased in protective structures made of wood and
concrete.
A short video presented to visitors at the museum
presents its history in a series of dramatic images.
It begins with early photographs of the museum in
sepia tones, followed by shots of the destruction
inflicted on the building and its contents during
the war. The camera pans across open gaps in the ceiling,
bullet holes and the devastation of fire in the façade
of the building and its interior, all accompanied
by a haunting vocal soundtrack. Like a team of explorers,
a team of conservators in facemasks navigates the
flooded lower floors armed with flashlights, briefly
shining their lights across rows of shelves holding
endless boxes of archaeological objects that were
hastily stored. The most valuable artifacts, like
an ancient Greek terracotta rhyton shaped like a cow’s
head, are passed gingerly from one set of hands to
another. In the main gallery, lit by shafts of light
through broken windows, massive monuments that were
encased in concrete are freed as huge pieces of cement
come crashing to the floor one after another, bringing
up clouds of dust. Meanwhile in the laboratory, researchers
in white coats peer through microscopes to gently
restore the most fragile pieces. We catch a glimpse
of Hakimian placing a delicate Bronze Age pectoral
plate made of gold into a display case on the upper
floor. The museum is ready.
The video is dramatic and effective in putting the
history of the museum in context, but these images
only hint at the conservation nightmare that the museum
staff faced when they started working to restore the
museum in 1991. Aside from the extensive destruction
to the building’s façade and infrastructure,
a large part of the collection had suffered terrible
damage. All the laboratory equipment, as well as 45
cases of archaeological artifacts in storage, had
been destroyed by fire. Many of the stone monuments
had suffered salt water corrosion as a result of a
rise in water table levels beneath the building. Extremely
high levels of humidity in the basement had harmed
countless objects, which had been stored in emergency
conditions without proper ventilation for 15 years.
The Lebanese Ministry of Culture, the National Heritage
Foundation and the Director General of Antiquities
joined efforts to support the restoration process.
Fortunately, interest by foreign museums also helped
to provide opportunities for funding and expertise
to restore some of the largest pieces. Three of the
museum’s prize objects, The Ahiram Sarcophagus, a
mosaic depicting the ‘Rape of Europe’ and another
depicting the birth of Alexander, were shipped to
France for an exhibition at the Institut du Monde
Arabe in 1997 entitled: ‘Liban, L’autre Rive’. Cracks
in the sarcophagus, dated to the 10th century BC,
were repaired in Beirut before it was shipped by sea
in a custom-built metal cage to France, where it underwent
analysis of surface pigment and stone. There, the
concrete backing on the mosaics was also removed and
replaced by new lightweight fiberglass backing, reducing
the weight of the pieces by over 80 percent.
It took five years of restoration and reconstruction
before the museum was fully ready to reopen its doors
in 1991. Today, visitors continue to be impressed
with the richness of its collection and the beautiful
way in which it is displayed. Given the amount of
devastation inflicted by the war, the galleries were
completely renovated with new lighting, signage and
display cases. A favorite tool with many visitors
is a heavy-duty, rolling magnifying glass that slides
up, down, and across many of the table cases, allowing
visitors a closer look at small objects like jewellery
and coins.
Suzy Hakimian explains that being a national museum,
they have a responsibility to represent a full chronology
of Lebanon as well as to try and represent all parts
of the country. “We are not only an archaeological
museum, and this is not a warehouse. We are selective
in what we choose to show”. The permanent collection
on display numbers around 1400 objects. It begins
with some of the earliest objects found in Lebanon
from the Neolithic era (c. 7500 BC) and continues
up until the Mamluk period in Lebanon in the 14th
century. Highlighs of the museum are many: Bronze
Age figurines from Byblos, Roman glass, Phoenician
art of all kinds, Mamluk jewellery, coins and pottery,
are all exceptional. Examples of the influence of
neighbouring empires; Greece, Persia and Egypt can
also be seen in many of the statues and mosaics, especially
on the ground floor. When asked what she thinks are
the most interesting parts of the collection, Hakimian
says it depends on the context. Some people are most
interested in the uniquely local works, such as the
Phoenician pottery, the figurines from Byblos or the
coins. On the other hand, the museum recently loaned
some ancient objects for an exhibition in Athens during
the last Olympic Games, where the aim was to show
the common threads between the modern nations of the
Mediterranean. The story of the Beirut National Museum
cannot just be told by what it displays in its cases.
Lebanon’s ancient and diverse cultural history, the
violence of its wars and its numerous rebirths, are
all intimately linked to, and represented within,
the walls of this institution. With a full renovation
already underway at the American University’s Archaeological
Museum and beautiful new museums recently opened in
Sidon and Byblos, Lebanon has shown that even after
so many years of conflict, it can act as an example
for modern museology in the Arab world. With the devastation
of cultural property that is being suffered in lrak
as a result of the current instability, we see daily
threats to their historical establishments and archaeological
sites. Let’s hope that the institutions of this region
are ready to pool their knowledge and share their
experience to support each other in preserving our
common cultural heritage.
The
Tomb of Tyre
This
tomb richly decorated with frescoes was accidentally
discovered in 1937 in Burj el-Shemali, about 3Km from
Tyre in an ancient necropolis area. It is a remarkable
example of funerary art from the Roman period.
In 1939, the archaeologist Maurice Dunand undertook
excavations inside the tomb. At the end of the same
year, the architect Henry Pearson dismantled the frescoes
from the original walls with their mortar and restored
them in the basement of the National Museum of Beirut.
The
tomb was used during the 2nd century AD.
The
tomb (or hypogeum) measures 6.30m x 5.40m and 3.40m
from the floor to the ceiling in its highest part.
In antiquity, the tomb was consolidated by two transversal
arches built on two rectangular pillars.
Fourteen loculi (or cavities) were carved on the Northern,
Southern and Eastern walls of the tomb in order to
house the sarcophagi. The loculi were blocked with
flagstones. Two secondary tombs were found one to
the left side of the vestibule and the other to the
left side of the entrance.
The
frescoes cover the four sides of the tomb with rich
funerary themes and ornaments...
Between
1975 and 1995, the National Museum of Beirut remained
closed. During this period, several factors contributed
to the degradation of the wall paintings of the tomb
of Tyre, such as the upwelling of water, the high
level of humidity and the inadequate environmental
conditions.
Thanks
to the generous contribution of the Italian Ministry
of Foreign Affaires/Italian Cooperation Office in
Beirut, the restoration of the frescoes as well as
the design and execution of the museographic presentation
for the Tomb of Tyre were carried out in 2010-2011,
in the framework of the museology of the National
Museum basement.
-
The National Museum: >> View
Movie << (2001-02-01) - >> View
Movie << (2016-11-15)
- The National Museum: >> View
Movie << (2001-02-01) - >> View
Movie << (2016-11-15)
- The National Museum: >> View
Movie << (2016-11-15)
- The Tomb of Tyre: >> View
Movie << (2011-03-01)
- Anthropoid Sarcophagi: Marble, 'Ayn el Helweh (area
of Saida), 5th c. B.C.:
>> View Movie
<< (2016-11-15)
- The National Museum, exterior: >> View
Movie << (2016-06-01)
