Arriving in Style. There’s nothing like a triumphal archway (or a sweeping... (Tyre, Lebanon)
May 09, 2017 by wsinghbartlett
Arriving in Style. There’s nothing like a triumphal archway (or a sweeping staircase and a floor-length gown) for making a grand entrance. This one, Hadrian’s Arch, was originally the main gateway to the great city of Tyre, birthplace of Dido and Europa, founders of Carthage and namesake of Europe and (as we are talking about making an entrance) home to the Temple of Melqart, which had a pillar made of solid gold and another of emerald. Hadrian’s Arch, which was dedicated to the Emperor after his visit to the city in AD 130, was fairly eye-catching in its time, too and would have been covered in brightly painted plaster. Twenty-one metres high, it’s still pretty impressive today and was originally flanked by two guardrooms, the walls of which can be seen in the photo above. The arch marked the edge of the ancient city and beyond it lay the vast Greek and Roman necropolis known today as Al-Bass, a realm of the dead through which overland travellers in and out of the city would have had to pass. They did not use this main gate, which was reserved for horses and carts, but would have used one of two smaller gateways that originally stood on either side of the main arch. By the time Hadrian passed through here, the wall he had ordered built across northern Britain had just been completed. He was on a tour of his restive eastern provinces that would take him to ruins of Jerusalem, where he had plans to build a Temple of Jupiter on Temple Mount and a few months later to Egypt, where his 20 year-old lover, Antinous, would drown in the Nile. Devastated by his loss, Hadrian had Antinous elevated to godhood and ordered a city to be built where he died. Antinopolis was abandoned 900 years later but the great temple dedicated in part to the god Antinous/Osiris survived until the 19th Century, when it was dismantled, its stones crushed and turned into cement.
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