BEIRUT, 20 September 2006 — Archaeologists excavating a necropolis uncovered by construction workers in Beirut only two weeks before war broke out between Hezbollah and Israel had to stop work this summer when Israeli bombs started falling on the country.

But Fadi Beayno and his team were lucky. The 300 square meter dig on a quiet street in the Christian district of Ashrafiyeh was spared any bombing.

But while the Ashrafiyeh site was spared the damage of war, the same cannot be said for some of the ancient ruins that dot the country, dating back beyond the Romans, to the Greeks and Phoeniceans. A team from UNESCO has already begun assessing the damage from 34 days of bombing and shelling to often fragile structures, already ravaged by time, earthquake, looting and previous wars.

This tiny country, about the size of the state of Connecticut, has no less than five entries on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. Perhaps the most famous is Baalbek, called Heliopolis by the Romans, about 90 kilometers east of Beirut.

It is perhaps most famous for the stunning remains of the Temple of Jupiter, but there are also temples to Bacchus and Venus.

UNESCO’s Deputy Director General Mounir Bouchnaki told AFP that “the major sites registered on the World Heritage List suffered damages, but it was minimal.” He has visited not only Baalbek, but also sites in Tyre, on the southern Mediterranean coast and Byblos, north of the capital, and said more time will be needed to assess the true extent of damage.

At Baalbek, the six columns of the Temple of Jupiter that have captivated visitors for centuries, are nearly 6.5 meters in diameter and more than 21 meters tall.

The temple is located only about 300 meters from the center of Baalbek, which was a stronghold of Hezbollah and repeatedly targeted by Israeli bombing.

It was spared any direct hits, but Professor Giorgio Croci, a specialist on the temple who was part of the UNESCO team, said, “New cracks appeared during the Israeli offensive and a plan of action needs to be developed quickly.”

Cracks in stone were not the only damage caused in Baalbek. For the past 50 years, the town has been host to an international festival of art, music and dance each summer, and rehearsal for opening night was taking place the day the war broke out on July 12.

Tourism revenues lost by the cancellation of this year’s festival have been estimated at $900,000.

Meanwhile, at a Phoenician port in Byblos, damage was of a different sort.

Early in the war, Israeli warplanes knocked out a power plant south of Beirut, and 15,000 tons of fuel oil poured into the Mediterranean, severely polluting a large swathe of Lebanon’s coastline and that of Syria to the north.