Haret ech Cheikh (also Haret-Ech-Cheikh), is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality ...

in the

Matn District Matn ( ar, قضاء المتن, '), sometimes spelled Metn (or preceded by the article El, as in El Matn), is a district ('' qadaa'') in the Mount Lebanon Governorate of Lebanon, east of the Lebanon's capital Beirut. The district capital is ...

in the

Mount Lebanon Governorate french: Gouvernorat du Mont-Liban , native_name_lang = , image_map = Administrative divisions of Lebanon 2017-08 (Numbered).png , map_caption = The governorates of Lebanon, including Mount Lebanon (in pink, label ...

near Bouchriyeh.

Archaeology

The archaeological site at Haret Ech Cheikh is east of the road between Dekwaneh and

Jdeideh Jdeideh ( ar, جديدة المتن Romanization of Arabic, translit. al-Judaydat), also Jdayde, Jdaideh and Jdeidet el-Matn, is a coastal municipality and the administrative capital of the Matn District in the Mount Lebanon Governorate. Jdeideh ...

, about above sea level, on the top of a wooded hill. It was discovered by Paul Bovier-Lapierre and Raoul Describes who suggested it may be a ''

high place "High place", or "high places", (Hebrew במה ''bamah'' and plural במות ''bamot'' or ''bamoth'') in a biblical context always means "place(s) of worship". This rendering has etymological justification, as appears from the poetical use of the ...

''.Tallon, Maurice, Les Monuments Megalithiques de Syrie et du Liban. MUSJ, vol. 35, 1958. The hilltop has several outcrops of sandstone slabs suggested to be

megalithic A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea. The ...

building foundation or enclosure. The suggested foundations have big stones at the corners that were not securely determined to be

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use o ...

. Materials collected from the site were

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several part ...

Chalcolithic The Copper Age, also called the Chalcolithic (; from grc-gre, χαλκός ''khalkós'', " copper" and ''líthos'', " stone") or (A)eneolithic (from Latin ''aeneus'' "of copper"), is an archaeological period characterized by regul ...

in form and was possibly mixed with that of the adjacent site of

Ain Cheikh Ain (, ; frp, En) is a department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Eastern France. Named after the Ain river, it is bordered by the Saône and Rhône rivers. Ain is located on the country's eastern edge, on the Swiss border, where it ...

. Lorraine Copeland and Peter Wescombe collected some fresh, unpatinated flint tools from a position west of the hilltop enclosure where a large amount of factory waste was also found. All material is in the Museum of Lebanese Prehistory, marked with the label "Ain Cheikh". A grandiose villa dominates land covering part of the hill.

References

External links

www.geographic.org - entry on Haret ech Cheikh
Populated places in the Matn District Archaeological sites in Lebanon Chalcolithic sites of Asia Neolithic settlements Neolithic sites of Asia {{Lebanon-geo-stub