Splendor of ruins

Baalbek, Lebanon, Date Unknown (Photograph by George F. Mobley)

"Awe-inspiring even in ruin, the splendor of Baalbek [40 miles (64 kilometers) northeast of Beirut] must have defied description in its time of glory. Rome began erecting the huge sanctuaries in the first century A.D., on a site previously dedicated to the Canaanite god Baal."

(Text from and photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Lebanon: Little Bible Land in the Crossfire of History," February 1970, National Geographic magazine)