National Museum of Beirut

The National Museum of Beirut (متحف بيروت الوطنيّ, Matḥaf Bayrūt al-waṭanī or French: Musée national de Beyrouth) is the principal museum of archaeology in Lebanon. The collection begun after World War I, and the museum was officially opened in 1942. The museum has collections totaling about 100,000 objects, most of which are antiquities and medieval finds from excavations undertaken by the Directorate General of Antiquities. About 1300 artifacts are exhibited, ranging in date from prehistoric times to the medieval Mamluk period. During the 1975 Lebanese Civil War, the museum stood on the front line that separated the warring factions. The museum's Egyptian Revival building and its collection suffered extensive damage in the war, but most of the artifacts were saved by last-minute preemptive measures. Today, after a major renovation, the National Museum of Beirut has regained its former position, especially as a leading collector for ancient Phoenician objects. In 1919, a small group of ancient artifacts collected by Raymond Weill, a French officer stationed in Lebanon, was exhibited at a provisional museum in the ogKaiserswerth Deaconesses' building in Georges Picot Street, Beirut. Meanwhile, a forerunner of the Archaeological and Fine Arts Service began to assemble items from the region round Beirut. The initial collection was rapidly expanded under successive antiquity directors with the addition of finds from the excavations led by Dr. Georges Contenau at Saida and Ernest Renan at Saida, Tyre and Byblos. Donations of private collections included those of Henry Seyrig’s coin collection, General Weygand in 1925 and George Alfred Ford, the director of the American Mission School of Sidon, posthumously in 1930. In 1923, the "Friends of the Museum Committee", headed by Bechara El Khoury, then Prime Minister and minister of education and fine arts, was created to raise funds to build a national museum.

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National Museum of Beirut

Phoenicia

Phoenicia (fəˈnɪʃə,_fəˈniːʃə), or Phœnicia, was an ancient Semitic thalassocratic civilization originating in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily located in modern Lebanon. The territory of the Phoenicians extended and shrank throughout history, with the core of their culture stretching from Arwad in modern Syria to Mount Carmel in modern Israel. Beyond their homeland, the Phoenicians extended throughout the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula.

History of Lebanon

The history of Lebanon covers the history of the modern Republic of Lebanon and the earlier emergence of Greater Lebanon under the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, as well as the previous history of the region, covered by the modern state. The modern State of Lebanon has existed within its current borders since 1920, when Greater Lebanon was created under French and British mandate, resulting from the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I.

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