Concept
The Museum of Lebanese Prehistory (Musée de Préhistoire Libanaise, متحف ما قبل التاريخ اللبناني) is a museum of prehistory and archaeology in Beirut, Lebanon. The museum is the first museum of prehistory in the Middle East and was opened in June 2000 to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Saint Joseph University of Beirut. The founding of the museum followed from the work of Jesuit scholars who controlled prehistoric research in this part of the world until the 1950s. These had accumulated a large amount of artifacts and heritage, collected at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Saint Joseph University. This faculty established a research centre in 1988 that developed with the creation of the Museum of Prehistory in June 2000. The museum houses an exceptional collection of animal and human bones, Neolithic pottery, stone tools and other ancient items recovered from over four hundred archaeological sites since the 19th century. The collections form a unique reference and were only accessible to specialists until the late 1990s. By exhibiting part of the collection to the public, the university has enabled people to investigate and discover the details and mysteries of prehistoric Lebanon. The museum occupies a total of on two levels. The upper floor is devoted to tools and the basement displays illustrate the lifestyle of hunter-gatherers. The invention of agriculture and the domestication of animals are key themes and the museum includes 35 display boards and 22 windows exhibiting different fossils and flint tools from the Stone Age. These include early agricultural tools, blades, sickles, a pick, an axe and millstone. Dioramas and recreated artifacts are presented together in thematic arrangements and in some cases compare and relate modern tools to Stone Age counterparts making the artefacts easier to understand. Displays cover three areas: tools, hunting and the invention of agriculture. Visitors are invited to discover how and why flint tools were made and what purpose they served.
