16 November 2006

BEIRUT: What is a historian to do after writing 15 exhaustively researched books of comprehensive scope on every major archaeological site in a country as small as Lebanon? If that historian is Nina Jidejian, the answer is revisit, revise and update.

On Wednesday, Jidejian gave a lecture at the American University of Beirut's archaeology museum on the Phoenician necropolises of Sidon. It was a suitably studious - and modestly deflecting - manner in which to celebrate the publication of "Sidon through the Ages," a revamped and enlarged edition of a book Jidejian fist published back in 1972.

The new edition incorporates recent discoveries, such as those made by the British Museum's archaeological mission, which began studying Sidon in 1998. Also new is the story of a particularly top-heavy camel in the time of Lady Hester Stanhope that trod across Wadi Abu Ghyas and fortuitously collapsed through the concealed roof of a 2,000-year-old tomb replete with fully preserved wall frescoes.

Jidejian was born in Boston, raised in Tehran and ended up in Beirut thanks to a visit she paid her sister, who suffered a minor accident in the Lebanese capital and had to convalesce in the hospital. While visiting, Jidejian fell for her future husband.

Though she had completed two years of university in Iran, she didn't return to school until after she married and had a child. Her AUB thesis on Byblos became her first book.

While "Sidon through the Ages" draws on source materials and artifacts from all over the world, the book, and by extension Jidejian's entire enterprise, maintains fierce loyalty to that regal underdog of Lebanon's cultural life - the National Museum.

"Sidon through the Ages" revels in the fact that the National Museum in Beirut holds the largest collection of marble anthropoid sarcophagi of any institution in the world. These sarcophagi incorporate Egyptian mummy cases and elements of Greek sculpture. They are considered distinctly fifth-century Phoenician inventions and mark an early attempt at portraiture in Sidon. If nothing else, Jidejian's latest book, the first of many revisions she plans to do, is good motivation to get oneself to the museum once and for all. - The Daily Star

Nina Jidejian's "Sidon through the Ages" is out now from Aleph