These lyrics from a famous song by Fairouz, Lebanon’s most famous singer and a mainstay of Lebanese folk music, sum up the relationship between the Lebanese people and their heritage. In the collective memory and culture passed down through the generations, archaeology and heritage are seen as knowledge in Lebanon. Moreover, people are in the habit of saying ‘no matter where you dig you will find archaeological remains’. This naïve conception of the importance of heritage has very often been the cause of the destruction of a great number of archaeological sites which are packed into the earth of the land of cedars (Lebanon). In this part of the world – inhabited since the Upper Palaeolithic (c.70,000 BC), with some of the earliest sedentary societies – more than 1500 archaeological sites have been officially recognised and hundreds of others await discovery. Unfortunately, this apparent ‘saturation’ of archaeological evidence has caused the loss of much material because, for the large majority of Lebanese people, the destruction of an archaeological site is not necessarily a ‘drama’ but simply a sad state of affairs which will, in all probability, be compensated for by new discoveries.

This view was first reinforced during the civil war (1975–92) and subsequently during the conflict known as ‘the 33 day war’ of July 2006. During periods of armed conflict, archaeology – not a priority in Lebanese national politics to begin with – is relegated to third or fourth place: it is often even judged ‘ridiculous’ to bring up issues of heritage and archaeology when the very existence of the country itself is under threat. During the long years of civil war it was forbidden to raise the question of heritage, looting, or the use of archaeological sites as military bases. The Syrian army did not hesitate to set up camp in the Temple of Mercure, situated in the high ground at Baalbek, and were quick to level the land there, while the Lebanese army is currently using the site of the Roman town of Khaldé, excavated in the 1960s by a team of archaeologists from the Direction Générale des Antiquitiés under the direction of Roger Saidah: today soldiers’ tents are pitched on top of the mosaics. Even once fighting is over, attempts to raise the issue are never successful.