There are three main events that characterise if not define the early history of the National Museum of Beirut. First, in 1919 Commandant Raymond Weill, a French officer based in Lebanon, was given an antiquities collection that was initially housed in some of the rooms of the German Deaconesses Building on Georges Picot Street. Storing a collection hardly fits into our current understanding of museal activities, but this collection, in the end, did form part of the national museum’s collection, thereby marking a preliminary step in the creation of the institution.

Second, around the same time, in 1921, Claude Prost, the official representative of the French Antiquities Service in Syria and Lebanon, had a vision of establishing three museums in ‘Greater Syria’: in Beirut, Damascus and Aleppo. The Beiruti museum would be dedicated to ‘Phoenician’ antiquities, while the Damascene one would present the Arabic and Islamic periods. Furthermore, in Prost’s view, the Aleppine institution would be devoted to the Christian and Byzantine periods, whereas the artefacts from the Greek and Roman periods would be distributed across the three museums. It goes without saying that Prost’s view reminds us of the colonial attitudes towards the region in the 1920s.

The third act in this scene took place in 1923, when a founding committee was formed in Beirut. Led by a number of Lebanese and French intellectuals, the committee’s underlying mission was to create a museum near the Beirut hippodrome. The proposal of Antoine Nahas and Pierre Leprince Ringuet won the design contest and the construction for the new museum on Rue de Damas, near the racetrack, began in 1930. The museum was completed in 1937 but the official inauguration was delayed due to the outbreak of the Second World War. Eventually, the National Museum of Beirut opened its doors on 27 May 1942 with Alfred Naccache, President of the Lebanese Republic, officially inaugurating the institution. On the contrary to the vision of Prost, the museum’s collection was not restricted to Phoenician antiquities but presented artefacts and objects from all periods emerging from excavation sites throughout the Land of Cedars, including Roman, Byzantine and Mamluk as well as the Phoenician.

The institution witnessed three fruitful decades with rather high visitor numbers, eventually becoming one of the most significant museums in the region. In principle, the museum presented artefacts from all periods, as long as they came from Lebanese excavation sites. Although periods other than the Phoenician one were included in the museum’s collection and presented in the exhibitionary spaces, the focus of the museum’s narrative was heavily on the Phoenician era. This was a preference of the ruling class and reflected the importance of the Phoenician period in the creation of a shared national Lebanese identity.

The outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 marks a dark period in the history of the institution. The museum was forced to close down and Maurice Chéhab, the museum’s first curator, rushed to empty the display cases and hide the works of art in various storerooms and elsewhere in the country together with other employees. The staff was unable to relocate all the artefacts. The heavier objects were left at the museum and protected with sandbags and concrete coatings. The war had a disastrous effect on the museum, as it was located on the ‘green line’, also known as ‘Museum Alley’, that divided Beirut into East and West – right in the middle of death and danger. Within a matter of months, the institution of history, belonging and peace came a symbol of death, injustice and abduction as in front of its façade, hundreds of people were shot and thousands of people wanted for hours for permission to pass the checkpoint. An institution once hosting numerous civilisations became a strategic, lucrative military base where art galleries and exhibition halls were transformed into barracks.

Finally in 1991, after the war had ended, the museum staff was able to return to the institution. The museum was badly damaged and in desperate need of revitalisation. The militia had left graffiti and traces of their fires. The galleries were flooded. Thousands of artefacts had been sitting for over a decade in the groundwater that the museum had been built on. The laboratory equipment had been stolen. Inventories and identification tags had been destroyed. It seemed that very little apart from the memory of a once glorious institution was left of the country’s national museum.

The extensive restoration work was in full force between 1995 and 2000. Two teams shared the tasks of restoring both the edifice and the archaeological collections. In November 1997, the museum was opened for a couple of months for the Lebanese public – this was arguably an important symbolic act, a warm welcome for the people to reconcile itself with the past, present and future and to forget the war. Two years later in 1999, the museum opened for good.

The opening of the museum was met with great interest and it embodied a great deal of symbolism: a new beginning for the Lebanese Republic, a metaphor for unity and inclusion. Yet, later research has heavily criticised the museum for its inability to represent the entirety of the Lebanese heritage and identity – the main issue being the overemphasis and focus on the Phoenician era, arguably at the cost of misrepresenting or almost forgetting of the country’s Islamic past.

The museum underwent another tragedy on 4 August 2020 as a result of the Beirut blast. The explosion damaged the institution’s security system and blew out its doors and windows. It seems that the museum is yet again in a difficult position along with the entire cultural and heritage sector in Lebanon. Considering the recent events in the country, there surely is a desperate need for a truly inclusive, Lebanese museum. Let us hope for a better leadership to take care of the country’s institutions and memory.

Further reading:
Tahan, L. (2014). Challenging museum spaces: Dancing with ethnic and cultural diversity in Lebanon in I. Maffi and R. Daher, The politics and practices of cultural heritage in the Middle East (pp. 135-147). I.B. Tauris.