Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 August 1892 — The Temple of Baal. [ARTICLE]

The Temple of Baal.

There rises a huge wall seventy feet high, inclosing a square court of which the side is 740 feet long, says a writer in Blackwood’s Magazine. Part of the wall, having fallen into ruins, has been rebuilt from the ancient materials, but the whole of the north side, with its beautiful pilasters, remains perfect. As the visitors enter the court they stand still in astonishment at the extraordinary sight which meets their eyes, for here, crowded within those four high walls, 13 the native village of Tadmor. It was natural enough for the Arabs to build their mud huts within these ready-made fortifications, but the impression produced by such a village in such a place is indescribably strange. The temple, so to speak, is eaten out at the core, and little but the shell remains. But here and there a fluted Corinthian column or group of columns, with entablature still perfect, rises in stately grace far over the wretched huts, the rich, creamy color of the limestone and the beautiful moldings of the capitals contrasting with the clear blue of the cloudless sky. The best view of the whole is to be obtained from the roof of the naos, which, once beautiful and adorned with sculpture, is now all battered and defaced, and has been metamorphosed into a squalid little mosque. To describe the view from that roof were indeed a hopeless task. High into the clear blue air and the golden sunshine rise the stately columns, crowded, and jumbled, and heaped together below, untouched by the gladdening sunbeams, unfreshened by the pure, free air, lies all the squalor and wretchedness of an Arab mud-hut village.