Resumo
About 30 kilometres north of Byblos, the two Roman temples of Qsar Naous (Ain Akrine, Lebanon) are situated on a hilltop 700 meters above the sea level along the ridge of Mount Lebanon, overlooking the Al-Koura Valley to the east and the sea to the west. Probably developed over a previous cultic site, they were in use until Byzantine era in the 4th century CE and their monumentalization and location at relatively high altitude should have made them visible from a great distance. But an archaeoastronomical analysis suggests that the creation of the sacred landscape in this place was influenced not only by the mountain conditions and offers interesting results relating the sacred complex to astronomical phenomena, that may have been relevant for the religious and agricultural calendars in the region in Antiquity. This presentation shows a study of the orientations of the two Roman temples of Qsar Naous and their relation to the surrounding landscape. The data were taken in the site in the spring of 2018 and they present interesting connections between the design and location of these temples with conspicuous topographic features and relevant moments of the solar cycle, the religious calendar and the productive activities.In particular, the temples follow the general pattern of orientations of Greek and Roman temples towards east and face important astronomical events such as the sunrise in the summer solstice and maybe the first visibility of Pleiades. References to the Pleiades appear in the Greek religion and the summer solstice was a general moment of renewal across the Mediterranean. Interestingly, these results are in accordance to the orientations previously found in ancient temples in the Lebanese Bekaa valley (Magli, 2021) such as the temple of Bacchus and Jupiter Heliopolitanus in Baalbek and the great temple in Niha, south of Ain Akrine. Besides their orientation, the temples of Qsar Naous share other architectonical features with those in Bekaa valley as well as with other monuments relatively close to Ain Akrine, such as those of Faqra and Yanouh (Yasmine, 2009) which are also surrounded by a similar sacred enclosure or temenos. Furthermore, the astral symbology is present in the lintels of the propylaea (entrance gate) of both temples of Qsar Naous, that were decorated with reliefs of Sun disks which are present in further Roman temples in Lebanon like the one at Chhim (Aliquot, 2006) and could support the idea of a solar cult in the temple solstitially oriented at Qsar Naous.Previous surveys in Mount Lebanon reveal various forms of cultic continuity from the Hellenistic to the Roman periods and that the Roman monuments may have been built on previous layers (Kaizer, 2017). In this sense, these and other evidences found in this research can provide hints about the origin of the religious practices and the cults performed in Qsar Naous, the differences among the divinities worshipped in each temple (if any), the process of transformation of the previous traditions and the role of these Roman temples in the complex religious context of Lebanon in Antiquity and in the Roman Near East.
Palabras chave
Archaeoastronomy. Roman Near East. Roman religion. Ancient Near East. Sacred landscapes.