Author's Note: I am indebted to Anne-Marie Afeiche, Yasmine Makaroun, Nadine Sinno, and Julie Conquest for their help with researching the stelae of Nahr al-Kalb. I am equally grateful for the opportunity to present an earlier draft of this article at the 7th Mediterranean Social and Political Research Meeting at the European University Institute, where I codirected Workshop 9: Spaces of Memory and Practices of Restoration. Special thanks go to Bruce Grant, Lara Deeb, Khaldun Bshara, and Béatrice Hendrich for their intellectual support and encouragement. I also benefitted from the helpful comments of the three anonymous IJMES reviewers. My research in Lebanon, carried out between July 2003 and January 2008, was made possible by faculty-development travel grants from San Francisco State University. All photographs and translations are my own, unless otherwise noted.

¹ Rym Ghazal, “UNESCO to Preserve Lebanon's Ancient Phoenician Documents,” Daily Star, 8 August 2005. The title of the article is misleading because the inscriptions of Nahr al-Kalb are not Phoenician.

² Lebanon has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1984 with the architectural heritage of Anjar, Baalbeck, Byblos, and Tyre. In 1998 the Ouadi Qadisha and the Forest of the Cedars of God were added to the list. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/lb (accessed 15 October 2007). Nahr al-Kalb was submitted for inclusion in UNESCO's World Heritage in the 1990s. The proposal was not accepted because Lebanon could not meet UNESCO conditions for site protection (personal communication, Anne-Marie Afeiche, Directorate General of Antiquities, 16 October 2007). The Memory of the World Programme's conditions are less stringent; however, this program offers less, or, in Lebanon's case, no financial or technical assistance (personal communication, Ramza Jaber Saad, Lebanese National Commission for UNESCO, 17 October 2007).

³ “UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme,” http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=1538&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (accessed 29 July 2007).

⁴ For a list of members of the IAC and Lebanon's National Committee, consult the UNESCO Memory of the World website, ibid. (accessed 15 October 2007). A second submission, the evolution of the Phoenician alphabet, was also accepted into the World Memory Register in 2005. A separate article is required to discuss the significance of this second, more intangible Lebanese world-heritage icon. The Phoenician alphabet is said to be the precursor of most Western scripts, superseding the hieroglyphic and cuneiform writing systems prevalent in the ancient Middle East. Phoenician inventiveness and seafaring merchant prowess became part of an early 20th-century political identity construction project in Lebanon. See Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions: The History of Lebanon Reconsidered (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1988), Chapter 9. The heritage site of Nahr al-Kalb does not form part of the Phoenician identity project because there are no Phoenician inscriptions at the site.

⁵ Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara, “Intangible Heritage as Metacultural Production,” Museum International 56 (2004): 52–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ In my discussion, I use stele (sing.) and stelae (pl.) to refer to the upright rock faces with sculpted designs and inscriptions that can be found along Nahr al-Kalb. A stele can also describe a freestanding slab or pillar. Note that different versions of the spelling for stele/stelea—as well as Nahr al-Kalb—exist in the literature.

⁷ For a discussion of Lebanon's “history wars,” see Kamal Salibi, A House of Many Mansions, and Ahmed Beydoun, “L’Identité des Libanais,” in Le Liban Aujourd’hui, ed. Fadia Kiwan (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1992), 5–30. For a critique of UNESCO's valuation of national heritage, see Eriksen, Thomas Hylland, “Between Universalism and Relativism: A Critique of the UNESCO Concept of Culture,” in Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Cowan, Jane, Dembour, Marie-Benedicte, and Wilson, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 127–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Barbara Kirschenblatt-Gimblett, “Intangible Heritage,” 56.

⁹ Nora, Pierre, “General Introduction: Between Memory and History,” in Realms of Memory: The Construction of the French Past, Vol. 1, Conflicts and Divisions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 2–3.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Jeffrey, Olick and Robbins, Joyce, “Social Memory Studies: From ‘Collective Memory’ to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998): 111Google Scholar; Jeffrey, Olick, “Introduction: Memory and the Nation: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformation,” Social Science History 22 (1998): 385Google Scholar.

¹¹ Silverstein, Paul and Makdisi, Ussama, eds., “Introduction: Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa,” in Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa (Bloomington, Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 2006), 3–4Google Scholar.

¹² See Algerian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Israeli case studies in Makdisi and Silverstein, Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa. See also Slyomovics, Susan, The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Swedenburg, Ted, Memories of Revolt: The 1936–39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past (Fayetteville, Ark.: University of Arkansas Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Khalili, Laleh, Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Özyürek, Esra, ed., The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

¹³ See Ben-Yehuda, Nachman, The Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Zerubavel, Yael, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory in the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Benvenisti, Meron, City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998)Google Scholar and Landscape, Sacred: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000)Google Scholar; and El-Haj, Nadia Abu, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

¹⁴ See Timothy Mitchell's classic Colonising Egypt (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1991); and Zeynep Çelik, Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers under French Rule (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997).

¹⁵ Meskell, Lynne, ed., Archeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and the Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East (New York: Routledge, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lynn Meskell, “The Practice and Politics of Archaeology in Egypt,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 925: 146–69; Davis, Eric, Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Goode, James F., Negotiating for the Past: Archaeology, Nationalism, and Diplomacy in the Middle East, 1919–1941 (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Lebanon's civil war has generated many studies and commentaries, among them Charles Winslow, Lebanon: War and Politics in a Fragmented Society (New York: Routledge, 1996); Edgar O’Balance, Civil War in Lebanon 1975–92 (London: Macmillan, 1998); Khalaf, Samir, Civil and Uncivil Violence in Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Picard, Elizabeth, Lebanon: A Shattered Country (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 2002)Google Scholar.

¹⁷ The Israeli military entered Lebanon in March 1978, establishing a “security zone” along the Lebanese–Israeli border to protect northern Israeli towns from attacks from Lebanese soil. See O’Balance, Civil War in Lebanon, 74ff. and 132ff. Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak withdrew all Israeli troops in May 2000. The Israeli army continued to patrol and monitor the border area and in the summer of 2006 again invaded Lebanon in response to a Hizbullah kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers. Although South Lebanon is technically not an Israeli “security zone” any longer, it remains vulnerable to continuing outbreaks of violence.

¹⁸ Hizbullah, which is a Lebanese political party, social-welfare institution, and militia group, calls itself variously “Islamic Resistance” (al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya) or “Lebanese Resistance,” (al-Muqawama al-Lubnaniyya) depending on the intended audience or message that it is trying to convey.

¹⁹ Samir Khalaf, Civil and Uncivil Violence, 305.

²⁰ See Haugbolle, Sune, “Public and Private Memory of the Lebanese Civil War,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 25 (2005): 191–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Peleikis, Anja, “The Making and Unmaking of Memories: The Case of a Multi-Confessional Village in Lebanon,” in Memory and Violence in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. Makdisi, Ussama and Silverstein, Paul (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2006), 133–50Google Scholar. Both authors contrast official silences among Lebanese political elites with memories generated in the private sphere via graffiti, art, film screenings, religious holiday celebrations, funerals, and so forth.

²¹ Elizabeth Picard, Lebanon: A Shattered Country, 165; Haugbolle, “Public and Private Memory,” 193.

²² Samir Khalaf, Civil and Uncivil Violence, 150. Khalaf points out that the formula evoked memories of Lebanon's 1958 civil war, a war that similarly ended without clear winners and losers. He goes on to argue that a civil war that ends indecisively leaves the issues that started the war unresolved and consequently poses a significant risk of future violence.

²³ Khalili, Laleh, “Places of Memory and Mourning: Palestinian Commemoration in the Refugee Camps of Lebanon,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 25 (2005): 30–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁴ Post civil war reconstruction prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri, owner of the television station Future TV, undertook an ambitious redevelopment plan of downtown Beirut and widely distributed computer-generated images of the restored capital on large billboards around the construction site. Hariri was repeatedly criticized for bulldozing ancient remains that were found during construction work so that he could realize his vision of the future. See, for instance, Albert Farid Henry Naccache, “Beirut's Memorycide: Hear no Evil, See no Evil,” in Archaeology under Fire: Nationalism, Politics and Heritage in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, ed. Lynn Meskell (New York: Routledge, 1998), 140–58.

²⁵ Savage, Kirk, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Raymond, André, “Reflections on Research in the History of the Arab City during the Ottoman Period (Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries) or Jean Sauvaget Revisited,” in Text and Context in Islamic Societies, ed. Bierman, Irene A. (Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing Limited, 2004), 48Google Scholar. Italics are in the original.

²⁷ Halbwachs, Maurice, The Collective Memory (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1980), 86Google Scholar.

²⁸ The length of the river is an estimated forty kilometers. F. H. Weissbach, Die Denkmäler und Inschriften an der Mündung des Nahr el-Kelb (Berlin und Leipzig: Vereinigung Wissenschaflicher Verleger Walter de Gruyter & Co.: 1922), 1.

²⁹ Joanne Farchakh, “Une Nouvelle Stèle à Nahr el-Kalb: Déformation d’un Site Archéologique Classé,” L’Orient Le Jour, 22 September 2000.

³⁰ The bridge bears a later inscription dated 1517, when Ottoman sultan Selim conquered the area and ordered repairs to the bridge. S. F. Ghosn-El-Howie, Rock Sculptures at Nahr el-Kelb: The Dog River (Beirut: n.p., n.d.), 3. During the Ottoman rule of ʿAbd al-Hamid II in 1901, a new bridge was built to facilitate traffic of larger vehicles across the river.

³¹ For the most authoritative history of the 1860 civil war, see Leila, Tarazi Fawaz, An Occasion for War: Civil Conflict in Lebanon and Damascus in 1860 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

³² Two modern additions to the site are worth mentioning: the Lebanese Army Battalion 54's insignia, which was added on 25 March 1979, and a yellow stone obelisk commemorating the 300 officers and 9,000 soldiers that the French lost in the Levant between 1919 and 1927, which was removed from its original site in Ras Beirut in 1960 and added to the historic stelae at Nahr al-Kalb. Neither of the two monuments fits in from the point of view of size and style. Although the French monument received its own explanatory plaque, the 1979 army inscription is neither labeled nor explained.

³³ The foremost critic of text-bound memory scholarship is Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). In the Middle Eastern context, Connerton's ideas have been applied to the study of Israeli schoolchildren and soldiers hiking and camping in the countryside in order to gain “knowledge of the land.” See Ted Swedenburg, Memories of Revolt: The 1936–39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past (Fayetteville, Ark.: University of Arkansas Press, 2003), 55; and Joel Bauman, “Designer Heritage: Israeli National Parks and the Politics of Historical Representation,” Middle East Report (1995): 20–23.

³⁴ See “Mashruʿ Taʾhil Athar Nahr al-Kalb Intalaqa wa-Tadshin Marhalatihi al-Ula fi ʿId al-Istiqlal” (The Revitalization Project of the Heritage at Nahr al-Kalb Has Begun, and the Inauguration of Its First Phase Will Be on Independence Day), Al-Anwar, 2 November 2003.

³⁵ Edward Said, as cited in Jennifer Jenkins, “German Orientalism: Introduction,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24 (2004): 97.

³⁶ Gottfried Hagen, “German Heralds of Holy War: Orientalists and Applied Oriental Studies,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24 (2004): 145–62.

³⁷ See Marchand, Suzanne, “German Orientalism and the Decline of the West,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 145 (2001): 465–73Google Scholar, for a discussion of some German Orientalists's contributions to what she calls German “Aryanophilia.” Marchand also points out that other German Orientalists used their “philological expertise to demolish the historical testimony of the Bible,” thereby undermining Western (Judeo-Christian) ethnocentrism.

³⁸ The articles in the special issue on “German Orientalism” in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24 (2004) make the argument that the German case both proves and disproves Edward Said's thesis on the link between European colonial and scholarly practices in the so-called Orient and that it should therefore be considered “another Orientalism.”

³⁹ Weissbach, Die Denkmäler und Inschriften, 18. The information in the rest of the paragraph is based on Weissbach's descriptions.

⁴⁰ Anis Sayegh, Jidar al-ʿAr (The Wall of Shame) (Beirut: n.p., 1956).

⁴¹ Ibid., 115. Sayegh's lament about the sad state of heritage preservation is mirrored by the observation of Condé, a European travel writer, who notes that Nahr al-Kalb's inscriptions had “suffered greatly from the seepage of a cliffside aqueduct above them and by a lush growth of vines” and that only in 1955 was a view-impending banana grove pulled out, bringing the valuable inscriptions to the light and attention of the public. Bruce Condé, See Lebanon: Over 100 Selected Trips, with History and Pictures (Beirut: Farah G. Farah, 1955), 55.

⁴² Yasmine Makaroun, “Nahr el-Kalb: Aménagements et Mise en Valeur des Stèles.” Unpublished Report. Beirut: n.p., 2003.

⁴³ Weissbach, Die Denkmäler und Inschriften, 18–19.

⁴⁴ The word Spahis refers to Algerian and Senegalese cavalry units that fought in the French army during the war. Originally, Spahis (or Sipahis) were Ottoman cavalry units, organized on a feudal basis from the 14th century on.

⁴⁵ The 1920 French inscription translates to “While General Gouraud was the commander-in-chief of French troops in the Levant, French troops under commander General Goybet entered victoriously into Damascus.”

⁴⁶ Cohen, Michael, The Origins and Evolution of the Arab-Zionist Conflict (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1987)Google Scholar, chap. 1.

⁴⁷ May Abud Abi ʿAql, “Rafaʿ al-Lawha al-ʿAlaniyya ʿan Nahr al-Kalb khilal Ayam: Musa li-l-Nahar: Naltazim Tatbiq al-Qawanin” (Raising of the Advertisement Billboard at Nahr al-Kalb within Days: Musa to Al-Nahar: We Have to Apply the Laws), Al-Nahar, 21 April 2001. Musa was environment minister.

⁴⁸ Chami, Joseph G., Le Mémorial du Liban, 6 vols. (Beirut: Chemaly & Chemaly, 2002), 2: 188–89Google Scholar. The article Chami cites also mentions that representatives from the Syrian and Iraqi governments attended the unveiling ceremony and that six Syrian military planes flew over Nahr al-Kalb as 101 canon salutes were fired.

⁴⁹ See, for instance, Çelik, Zeynep, “Colonial/Postcolonial Intersections: Lieux de Mémoire in Algiers,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 28 (2002): 143–62Google Scholar, on the removal of French colonial monuments in Algiers.

⁵⁰ May Abud Abi ʿAql, “Lawha Ukhra li-l-Jalaʾ fi Nahr al-Kalb: Shahid ʿala Hazimat Israʾil fi Lubnan” (Another Withdrawal Plaque at Nahr al-Kalb: A Witness to Israel's Defeat in Lebanon), Al-Nahar, 22 September 2000, 6. See also Joanne Farchakh, “Une Nouvelle Stèle à Nahr el-Kalb.”

⁵¹ The poetic expression on President Lahoud's stele might be a reference to a popular song by Julia Butros, “Ghabat Shams al-Haqq” (The Sun of Justice Has Set) (1985), which received Lebanon's President's Award for its contribution to Lebanon's resistance against Israeli occupation.

⁵² I was unable to verify the exact date of the mounting of the Beaufort inscription.

⁵³ When I visited Beaufort in January 2007, there was only Hizbullah's flag on top of the castle's main tower. On my return visit in January 2008, the rival Shiʿi party, Amal, had added its green flag to a second tower, installing a flagpole so that the two flags flew at exactly the same height.

⁵⁴ The mission statement and current projects of the National Heritage Foundation can be found at http://www.lebanonheritage.com/french/about.htm (accessed 12 July 2007). According to its website, the foundation was incorporated as a nongovernmental institution on 20 September 1996. Its revenue is largely based on private donations (72 percent) as well as membership fees (6 percent) and fundraising events (22 percent).

⁵⁵ According to Abud Abi ʿAql, “Another Withdrawal Plaque at Nahr al-Kalb,” the General Directorate of Antiquities had been asking the government (unsuccessfully) since 1937 to fund a restoration project of Nahr al-Kalb.

⁵⁶ “Le Site de Nahr el-Kalb Rénové,” L’Orient Le Jour, 25 November 2003. The original French text reads: “. . . les stèles de Nahr el-Kalb . . . témoignent ‘un people don't l’une des constantes est d’avoir su résister à la logique de la force.’”

⁵⁷ Saydani, Rula al-Ajuz, “Sukhur Nahr al-Kalb inna Hakata” (If the Stones of Nahr al-Kalb Could Speak), Cedar Wings 81 (2004): 14–20Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Rym Ghazal, “UNESCO to Preserve Lebanon's Ancient Phoenician Documents.”

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ See, for instance, the discussion of the role of Mesopotamianism in building the modern Iraqi state in Eric Davis, Memories of State, or the role of Phoenicianism in modern Lebanese history, mentioned in note 4.

⁶¹ May Abud Abi ʿAql, “Raising of the Advertisement Billboard” or “Taʾhil Mawqiʿ Nahr al-Kalb al-Athar wa-Tarmim Lawhat al-Tarikhiyya” (Revitalization of the Heritage Area of Nahr al-Kalb and the Restoration of the Historical Inscriptions), Al-Nahar, 29 July 2003.

⁶² For a comparative view on the uses and meanings of graffiti in a conflict zone, see Peteet, Julie, “Writing on the Walls: The Graffiti of the Intifada,” Cultural Anthropology 11(1996): 139–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶³ See “Une Manifestation Aouniste Dispersée à Nahr el-Kalb,” L’Orient Le Jour, 26 June 2000; or Gary Gambill, “Lebanon after Assad,” Middle East Intelligence Bulletin 2 (2000), http://www.meib.org/articles/0007_l1.htm (accessed 15 July 2007).

⁶⁴ Majdoline Hatoum and Samer Wehbe, “FPM Begins Final Countdown to Aoun's Return: Thousands Celebrate Syria's Pullout,” Daily Star, 3 May 2005. General Aoun, who entered Lebanon's 2005 elections and whose political block garnered twenty-one of the available 128 parliamentary seats, is currently a member of the Lebanese opposition and a presidential hopeful.

⁶⁵ A series of recent political assassinations of Lebanese parliament members openly critical of Syrian policies in Lebanon has demonstrated that disagreeing with the current Syrian government has its price.

⁶⁶ Joanne Farchakh, “Les Stèles de Nahr el-Kalb Racontent l’Histoire du Liban: L’Aménagement du Site par la Fondation Nationale du Patrimoine et la Direction Générale des Antiquités,” L’Orient Le Jour, 25 November 2003.

⁶⁷ Humphreys, R. Stephen, Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1999), 271Google Scholar.