Museum of Lebanese Prehistory

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Museum of Lebanese Prehistory
Musée de Préhistoire Libanaise
متحف ما قبل التاريخ اللبناني
Maya Haïdar-Boustani[1]
CuratorNelly Abboud
Websitewww.usj.edu.lb/mpl/

The Museum of Lebanese Prehistory (

Arabic: متحف ما قبل التاريخ اللبناني) is a museum of prehistory and archaeology in Beirut, Lebanon.[2][3][4]

History

The museum is the first museum of prehistory in the

Jesuit scholars who controlled prehistoric research in this part of the world until the 1950s. These had accumulated a large amount of artifacts and heritage, collected at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Saint Joseph University.[6] This faculty established a research centre in 1988 that developed with the creation of the Museum of Prehistory in June 2000.[7]

Displays

The museum houses an exceptional collection of animal and human bones, Neolithic pottery, stone tools and other ancient items recovered from over four hundred archaeological sites since the 19th century. The collections form a unique reference and were only accessible to specialists until the late 1990s. By exhibiting part of the collection to the public, the university has enabled people to investigate and discover the details and mysteries of prehistoric Lebanon.[5]

The museum occupies a total of 350 square metres (3,800 sq ft) on two levels. The upper floor is devoted to tools and the basement displays illustrate the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers.[8] The invention of agriculture and the domestication of animals are key themes and the museum includes 35 display boards and 22 windows exhibiting different fossils and flint tools from the Stone Age. These include early agricultural tools, blades, sickles, a pick, an axe and millstone. Dioramas and recreated artifacts are presented together in thematic arrangements and in some cases compare and relate modern tools to Stone Age counterparts making the artefacts easier to understand. Displays cover three areas: tools, hunting and the invention of agriculture. Visitors are invited to discover how and why flint tools were made and what purpose they served. Rare bone tools and an antler from the Antelias cave, Sands of Beirut illustrate the ingenuity of the prehistoric people who inhabited Lebanon. Hunting is illustrated in various panels with reconstructions of weapons like the spear and arrows along with elements of well-preserved fauna from sites explored by the Jesuit Fathers. The invention of agriculture was one of the most important milestones in the history of mankind achieved in the Middle East. A special area of the display highlights the various stages from plowing up to production of bread, a transition accessible to all audiences.[7] A French and Arabic documentary presentation entitled Lebanon in Prehistory can be viewed by visitors.[9]

Exhibitions

The museum hosts a range of conferences and exhibitions including "The Heritage of Darwin", "The Paintings of Frédéric Husseini" and "Aquatic Fossils from Lebanon".

Phoenicians. A central theme of the exhibition was urbanization as "a disaster inflicted on the Prehistory" and the upheavals of the Lebanese landscape.[11] This destruction is shown in the Fleisch's photographs which document the disappearance of the Sands of Beirut, a complex of nearly 20 rich, prehistoric sites that were completely destroyed due to operations to use the soft sandstone
for buildings.

Lévon Nordigiuan, the museum director said

The work carried out on large urban sites will slow if not stop prehistoric research, even though Lebanon is at this time, one of the most developed Arab countries in this area ... historians can only feel deep sorrow at the disaster inflicted on the prehistory of the Sands of Beirut, the Sands are gone.

The exhibition was filled with similar photographic examples. The Antelias cave with many Paleolithic vestiges was demolished by workers in the 1960s. Naama[who?] showed three Paleolithic habitats with numerous animal bones and disappeared in favor of the southern highway. Last-minute intervention of Fleisch saved many essential pieces for scientific research. Other sites, like the shelter of Ksar Akil in the valley of Antelias are still at risk. Transformations reported by the photographs are not always obvious to understand for the untrained eye.

Maya Haïdar Boustani, the museum curator stated

The photographs are black and white and the places he chooses are not easy to visualize. The difficulty for us was to make pictures talk to the general public so they measure the extent of damage.

To provide a comparison point for visitors, photographs of the locations were taken showing changes over 60 years and the verdict was clear and without surprises;

cement mixers.[11]

Projects

The museum has been involved in various archaeological research and recovery projects in Lebanon and

Epipaleolithic, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B and Chalcolithic or Early Bronze Age. The diagnosis of pottery sherds collected on the surface showed several periods of occupation.[12][13]

In 2004, the museum embarked on a project of surveys in Syria's (

Tell al-Marj, which has strong parallels with Byblos. Megalithic sites are a spectacular phenomenon, often equipped with tumuli and burial vaults. These structures are sometimes grouped in small numbers, as on the tops of hills in the basaltic area, but sometimes they form a vast necropolis such as the basalt plains north of Lake Qattina. The presence of monoliths, and side walls of the tumuli suggests the existence of complex, Bronze Age, ritual structures similar to those of Menger in northern Lebanon and those of southern Syria.[14]

Visitor information

The museum opening hours are between 0900 and 1500 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The museum is closed on public holidays and during university holidays. Tours last approximately 1 hour, including a 15-minute film documentary, the first of its kind and a valuable complement to the museum visit, broadcast in French or Arabic. Group tours and school visits can be made by appointment.[15]

See also

References

  1. ^ Musée de Préhistoire Libanaise Website - Staff
  2. ISBN 978-3-598-20690-0
    . Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  3. ISBN 9781932543193
    . Retrieved 1 April 2011.
  4. ^ Timeout Beirut - Lebanese Prehistoric Museum
  5. ^ a b UMAC Worldwide Database of University Museums & Collections
  6. ^ Nordiguian, Lévon., Le musée de Préhistoire libanaise, Archéologia n° 379, Ostie : Port de Rome, Page : 34-38, Juin 2001, ISSN 0570-6270
  7. ^ a b Saint Joseph University Website - Cultural Activities Archived 8 November 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  8. ^ Musée de Préhistoire Libanaise Website - Displays
  9. ^ Morel, Élodie., The Lebanese Prehistory Museum - iloubnan.info - Article - December 30 2007
  10. ^ Museum of Lebanese Prehistory - Activités et actualités du Musée
  11. ^ a b Sfeir, Mia., Femme Magazine - Préhistoire VS Urbanisation, le témoignage d’Henri Fleisch - Issue 206 - P.70 Published June 1, 2010 Archived September 20, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ Museum of Lebanese Prehistory Website - Recherches au Liban, région de l'Anti-Libans
  13. ^ GARRARD, A. PIRIE A., SCHROEDER B. and WASSE A. with contributions by CLARKE J., HAÏDAR-BOUSTANI M., RHODES S. and YAZBECK C., 2003 « Survey of Nahcharini Cave and the prehistoric settlement in the Northern Anti-Lebanon highlands », Bulletin d’Archéologie et d’Architecture libanaises vol. 7, p. 15-48.
  14. ^ Museum of Lebanese Prehistory Website - Recherches au Syrie
  15. ^ Museum of Lebanese Prehistory Website - Opening Times
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