TELL ARQA

Since 1972, teams of Lebanese and French archaeologists have managed to exhume seventeen successive layers of occupations from Neolithic to medieval. This city seems to have been a prosperous regional centre that remained for a millennium. Excavations helped to discover a set of houses, a craft district of the bronze age. Important in Phoenician times, Arqa is also mentioned in Assyrian texts. The city will have a period of prosperity in Roman times, where it was called Arca Caesarea, the Liban of Lebanon. The main sanctuary is dedicated to Venus Lugens "the sad", another to Astarté poliade. Arqa will experience continuous occupation until the time of mamelouke. On their first expedition, the crusaders discovered a strong and prosperous city surrounded by rivers, forests and olive trees. With an area of 7 hectares and a height of 30 to 40 m, the tell of Arqa dominates the whole plain of Akkar in Northern Lebanon, about kilometres from Tripoli.