Random Ruin III: The Column of Iaat (or Yaat)

A few weeks ago, while exploring the quiet back roads of the Bekaa Valley, we stumbled upon a Roman column. It's a lonely looking column, in the middle of a muddy field and about 100 yards off the road.

It also doesn't seem to be a big tourist attraction. Of the three cars that drove by while we were walking around, two stopped to make sure that we were alright -- apparently some of the locals have forgotten that the massive Roman column is even there.

The Corinthian column is about 60 feet tall with and sits almost exactly midway between Baalbek and a smaller temple on side of the Mount Lebanon range, about 14 kilometers away from both places.

The folks in town were not quite sure what the column was used for. One person claimed that the column was just one in a long colonnade that stretched from the Baalbek to the Mount Lebanon range That doesn't make a lot of sense (Where are the other columns?) but we didn't push the issue.

You can barely see Column of Iaat from this photo, taken on the eastern edge of the Mount Lebanon range.

George Taylor, author of The Temples of Lebanon (1967) guesses the column commemorated a battle. He has no idea which battle, or when the alleged battle was fought, or who was fighting who. But he points out that the column has a "cartouche" about mid-way up, which is a symbol that Egyptians used signifying the name of royalty.

We did not notice any cartouches, nor did we have any idea what a cartouche is.

Wikipedia, perhaps just as reliable as Mr. Taylor, says that there was once a plaque, but that it has gone missing. The online encyclopedia speculates that the monument was "funerary".

For us, however, it was a fantastic photo op.