Lebanon's national museum reveals long-hidden treasures

Beirut's National Museum has opened its basement of ancient treasures for the first time in four decades to show the public its stunning array of funerary art, including the world's largest collection of anthropoid sarcophogi.

The new exhibition's 520 pieces range from the Paleolithic period to the Ottoman Empire. They include Phoenician stelae and rare medieval Christian mummies along with the anthropoid coffins, which display a human face on the sarcophogus and were long a standard for the elite.

Some of the items have never before been on public display.

Other pieces have not been shown since the 1970s, when the museum was forced to shut down because it sat on the frontline that ran through the city during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.

"This is a lesson in courage and hope because 41 years after the museum was closed in 1975, we today are able to receive visitors on three floors," says museum director Anne-Marie Maila Afeiche.

The archaeological museum was renovated after the years of fighting and shelling damaged its building and exhibits, and reopened in the 1990s. But the current exhibit is the first time its basement has been open since the civil war.

Among the treasures of often-breathtaking beauty is a fragment of a Roman sarcophagus found in Beirut that depicts the myth of Icarus, who is shown alongside his father Daedalus, making his ill-fated wings.

Another gem is an extraordinary hypogeum, an underground tomb, accidentally discovered by a farmer in the Tyre region in 1937.

It is covered with restored frescoes inspired by Greek mythology, including a scene of Priam on bended knee begging Achilles to return the body of Hector.

"It was essential to show the public this...