ARCHAEOLOGY NEWS – An archaeological team, led by Professor Leila Badre, American University of Beirut museum director, has discovered the first Phoenician temple in Tyre. The temple is the first complete one to be discovered in Lebanon.
The AUB museum team resumed its second archaeological season in Tyre between August 18 and September 14, 2013. The project is financed by AUB.
The team consists of 12 members of expert archaeologists and students, both local and international.
This season, archaeologists doubled the size of the excavation site to 1500 m² with the aim of determining the full size of the temple and its surroundings. A major restoration operation was undertaken on a collapsed wall.
The Temple is rectangular in shape (20 x 6.5 m) with a two-meter-high podium, built with very large sandstone blocks. An altar on top of the podium is made of a large monolithic slab, which is used for the sacrifices.
Next to the podium is a kiln full of shaved animal bones resulting from the sacrifices.
The Western wall of the temple is very long one, of which 22 meters has so far been uncovered. This wall is decorated with a carved frieze of Egyptian gorges, well known in other Phoenician temples (Eshmun in Lebanon and Amrit in Syria).
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1gCDH92
Lebanon Culture and Heritage 