25 July 2008

BEIRUT: In Gemmayzeh, on the northeast end of the Lebanese capital, it's common to find relatively recent structures looming over late-Ottoman and Mandate-period buildings, like warnings of coming development. The architectural record goes back beyond the Ottomans, as it happens, and for the past several months, the diversity of the quarter's historic architecture has been more obvious.

Just east of the Haddad Street gas station, due south of Gouraud Street, is a large hole - at its largest extent, it ran southwest for about 1,100 square meters. The pit is the site of an archaeological excavation, whose ruins are estimated to have been erected in the Roman period, between the end of the first and the start of the second centuries AD.

At the height of the excavation work, the site was pleasingly incongruous. Peering over the southern lip of the pit is a once-modest late-Ottoman building, which a few years ago underwent a cyborg-like reconstruction a-la Lebanese architect Bernard Khoury.

Disemboweled of its interior, exterior plaster flensed away, the building's skeleton of soft limestone bricks was wrapped in an exoskeleton of steel and wire mesh - as if in anticipation of Solidere-style "restoration." A cylinder was then grafted to the roof that opens to the night like the cargo bay of a space shuttle.

Next door, just east of the dig, is the construction site for Saifi 616, a concrete monolith destined to be a block of flats.

Though overseen by Lebanon's Directorate General of Antiquities, the Gemmayzeh dig is being sponsored by Saifi Crown, the development company responsible for Saifi 616. The company whose laborers found the ruins in late 2007 and have since been doing the archaeologists' heavy lifting - says it intends to incorporate the excavation's finds into the new structure.

Roman construction in Beirut reached its zenith between 50 and 270 AD, the so-called "Pax Romana" - when the empire's old rivals had been subdued and the later ones were still nascent - and before the earthquake of the mid-sixth century.

Among the artifacts unearthed include the foundations of a Roman bath (in use perhaps as late as the sixth century AD), an underground vault, a mosaic, marble floors and a footprint, still preserved in dried mud.

"At this location ... is part of a cultic complex with a bath, a part of the daily life of the people who lived there," said Assaad Seif, the archaeologist responsible for the digs. "For them, it was a place to relax, a change of environment."

The bath was a very important part of late-Hellenistic and Roman cultural practice, he continued, "like a Turkish bath and a spa ... The people who lived here and left these traces, we consider our ancestors."

The bath is divided into three sections - cold, warm and hot rooms. Remains of the "hypocaust," the system designed to generate central heating for the hot room, are found at the entrance to the site, in the form of small stacks of stone. A well-preserved labrum (fountain) was also found in this room.

Just north of the hypocaust, a vault was uncovered. Around 3 meters high and 4 meters wide, it extended beyond the limits of the present excavation. Archaeologist Christine Matar says she assumes the vault was a single room of some 17 meters in length, though there is still no way to confirm this.

The vault has long since been broken up. Leftover pieces of walls and large slabs of rock suggest later builders "recuperated" the by-then-derelict structure, using it as a stone quarry. Since its construction, this site has endured one visible stone recuperation activity, undertaken during the Ottoman period.

"They were going through holes, making walls for safety in all the areas of foundation," explained the site coordinator, Roula Raidy.

The vault was used as a water passage and it's here that the footprint was found. "It could have been made during the [Ottoman] recoup period," she said, "when the water level was high."

Finding the footprint was very exciting for Raidy. It was a cause for "celebration," she said. "[This evidence] doesn't stay with time unless there are proper conditions." A cast of the footprint has been made and, along with other artifacts, will be preserved in archives.

"The materials are moved to a warehouse to specialists [focusing on] pottery, tile, etc," said Fady Beayno, senior coordinator at the site. Most analysis is done in overseas labs, as Lebanon lacks the necessary equipment.

It's still unknown why the hypocaust disks shifted and the walls and roof of the bath collapsed. "We don't know if it was caused by earthquakes," Raidy explained. The team has found no evidence to suggest that the earthquake in 551 AD affected the site, as there are insufficient elements for analysis.

The archaeologists are still waiting to gather more information from what they found at the site, such as whether there was Byzantine-era recuperation activity. "If we don't discover something else, we can say the bath was used during the Byzantine period," said Raidy. "The great thing is that we discover something new every day."

At the west end of the site, the team discovered a mosaic and a marble floor and, alongside the mosaic, a drain 1.5 meters in diameter and 3 meters deep. This part of the bath served as the "trepidarium," the warm room.

Functionally decorated with geometrical shapes and floral borders, the mosaic has been removed and stored until it can be integrated into the final plans of the new complex.

Beayno said the artifacts that have been removed from the site would later be incorporated into the construction of the new apartment building. He estimated the excavation would be completed by the end of 2008 and construction in the north half of the site has already resumed, its artifacts having been cleared for analysis and archiving.

"All the consistent elements of the site will be relocated and integrated with the plans [of the apartment complex]," said Beayno. "We are working toward integration."

He wasn't sure who would be able to access the final display of the artifacts, though he remains positive about the outcome of the project. "It's a struggle,' Beayno said, "between the past and the future." - With JQ

Copyright The Daily Star 2008.