Beirut 1921: The Paris of the Middle East and its first archaeological sensation

In 1921, Beirut was a small but ambitious port city under French Mandate, still bearing the scars of Ottoman rule and the wartime famine that killed a third of Mount Lebanon. Yet amid the rubble, an extraordinary discovery electrified the city: a perfectly preserved Roman sarcophagus, unearthed during construction near the Pine Forest. This episode follows the excavation of the so-called "Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women" and the debate it sparked between French mandate authorities, local intellectuals, and the emerging sectarian leadership over who owned Lebanon's past. Lucas and Luna walk through the dusty excavation site, the offices of the newly-founded Service des Antiquités, and the fragile political landscape of Greater Lebanon, where archaeology became a tool for forging a national identity. Along the way, they meet the pioneering Lebanese archaeologist Michel Chiha, the French orientalist René Dussaud, and the Maronite Patriarch Elias al-Huwayyik, each with a stake in how the ancient world was remembered. The episode reveals how one stone coffin, carved with scenes of grief, became a symbol of a nation trying to raise itself from the dead.

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