Safeguarding Lebanon’s heritage: Inside the National Museum’s enduring Legacy

Museum security has never been a more relevant topic. For Anne-Marie Maïla Afeiche, Chief Executive Officer and Director General of the General Council of Museums within the Ministry of Culture, the question of protecting national treasures is both professional and deeply personal.

“In terms of security, our National Museum, because it was built in the 1930s with iron windows and access points, has a structure that is quite solid and capable of withstanding theft,” Afeiche says.

Afeiche knows the building well. Her career at the National Museum of Beirut began in 1993, just after Lebanon’s 15-year civil war ended. “At that time, everything had to be done,” she recalled. She later became curator and eventually director, serving from 2009 to 2018. In that role, she oversaw the management, preservation, and interpretation of the country’s national collections.

Her name has since become inseparable from the story of the National Museum’s rebirth a transformation from a war-torn ruin to a symbol of resilience and cultural pride. Once standing on Beirut’s Green Line, the demarcation that divided the capital during the civil war, the museum was both a witness to destruction and, later, a testament to Lebanon’s enduring identity.

 When it comes to museum security, theft is a concern shared by everyone. It’s not just in Lebanon all museums around the world have made it a priority,” Afeiche says. She prefers not to reveal details of the museum’s safety measures. “Like all museums, we have dedicated teams handling it, and we do our best with the means we have.

Museum security today has little to do with what was once common in Lebanon namely, the illicit trafficking of antiquities.

The fight against illicit trafficking

Throughout her career, Afeiche has been deeply involved in efforts to repatriate looted artifacts. “The thefts didn’t happen at the National Museum itself but in storage facilities and archaeological sites, such as Byblos, during the war,” she says. “Objects were stolen and trafficked intentionally.”

“Years later, with the help of researchers like Rolf Stucky, a Swiss scholar who created an online platform listing looted objects, we were able to track items appearing in auctions and identify them as part of Lebanon’s national collection. That’s how we recovered pieces from the site of Eshmoun that had been stored and stolen from Byblos.”

In 2016, during a conference in Abu Dhabi, Anne-Marie Maïla Afeiche met Thomas Campbell, then director of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. He told her the museum might have an object originating from Lebanon. The piece turned out to be a bull head stolen in 1981 from the Byblos storerooms, originally from the site of Eshmoun. A New York prosecutor traced its journey through traffickers and private collectors. The sculpture had entered a private American collection in 1996 before being loaned to the Met. In 2017, after a year of research and archival work, Lebanon proved its ownership and secured the artifact’s return under New York state law.

“My work is my passion,” she says.

I’ve been lucky to do something I truly love. Not everyone has that chance. It’s been an honor to work with the National Museum’s collection.

Visitors to the museum can sense that passion immediately. Known for her warmth and openness, Afeiche often personally guides guests through the galleries, recounting the layered histories behind each artifact from the famed Tomb of Ahiram to the ancient Shepherd Mosaic.

Building a national identity

“The most beautiful story to tell is perhaps that of the museum’s construction between 1930 and 1937,” Afeiche says. “It was conceived as early as 1925 by a group of Lebanese who felt the need to bring together a common history and a shared past.”

Two architects, Antoine Nahas of Lebanon and François Leprince-Ringuet of France, won a competition to design a national museum that would house artifacts discovered exclusively in Lebanon. “There are no borrowed or purchased objects here,” Afeiche says proudly. “Every piece was found on Lebanese soil.”

The museum’s collection spans from prehistory to the Ottoman era, narrating the country’s evolution through thousands of years. The building is arranged on three levels: the basement devoted to funerary art, the ground floor showcasing large objects such as sarcophagi, statues, and mosaics, and the first floor displaying smaller artifacts jewellery, glass, and coins in 70 carefully arranged showcases.

A legacy of preservation

Any account of the museum’s survival would be incomplete without mentioning Maurice Chéhab, the former director who safeguarded the collections during the civil war. As fighting engulfed Beirut, Chéhab devised ingenious methods to protect the artifacts. Smaller objects were hidden behind walls, while larger statues and sarcophagi were encased in wooden planks and sealed in concrete to keep them intact.

“The measures taken at the National Museum, which stood directly on the demarcation line during the war, have been cited as examples by museums around the world,” Afeiche says.

When the war ended in 1990, the museum was a shell of its former self. Bullet holes scarred its walls, and parts of its collection had been lost or damaged. Yet, what remained and what was later restored came to symbolize national resilience.

Treasures that tell a story

Among the museum’s masterpieces is the Sarcophagus of Ahiram, the ancient King of Byblos, bearing one of the earliest known Phoenician inscriptions dating back to the 10th century B.C. “This is very important,” Afeiche explained. “Here, for the first time, we have an inscription that includes 19 of the 22 letters of the Phoenician alphabet. By the 10th century B.C., the alphabet had reached maturity, and it became the ancestor of the Greek and Roman alphabets. Before that, writing systems had thousands of characters cuneiform, hieroglyphs. The Phoenician alphabet brought a simplification of communication and a democratization of writing.”

Another highlight is the 5th-century Shepherd Mosaic, discovered by Chéhab in the 1950s during the construction of Beirut’s airport. It depicts the Good Shepherd surrounded by animals — an early Christian allegory of Christ and paradise. The mosaic’s history, however, took a dramatic turn during the war.

“One of the militiamen who occupied the museum used the mosaic as a shield,” Afeiche says. “He believed the spot behind it was ideal for shooting at people, so he hid behind the artwork and made a hole for his rifle, destroying the lower left corner of the mosaic.”

When the museum reopened in the 1990s, the curators faced a difficult decision: what to do about the damage. “We asked ourselves, what story should we tell? Should we restore it and hide the past or should we keep it?” Afeiche says.

In the end, that’s what museology is about choosing a narrative. The most important role of a museum is to bring objects to life so they can tell their stories.

 

A symbol of renewal

For Afeiche, the National Museum of Beirut is more than a building or a collection. It is a living space where history, identity, and hope converge. “What was done at the National Museum during the war became a model for museums around the world,” she notes.

Under her leadership and through years of meticulous restoration, the museum has reclaimed its place as a cornerstone of Lebanon’s cultural heritage. Today, it stands as both a guardian of the past and a symbol of renewal a reminder that even in times of devastation, history can be protected, and identity can endure.

For Afeiche, museums are more than buildings that preserve the past they are spaces where history, identity, and hope intersect. Through her vision, the National Museum of Beirut has not only become a guardian of Lebanon’s heritage but also a symbol of renewal