The Beirut National Museum is a particular space that serves as a stage for the production of the idea of the Lebanese state, despite its often fragile stability. Founded in 1919 by a mandate-era French, The Beirut National Museum in Lebanon amassed a collection of antiquities between 1919 and the outbreak of war in 1975. Situated on the infamous ‘green line’ that divided east and west Beirut during the war years, both the building and the collection were threatened with destruction during the war years. In 1991, the museum was reconstructed, and today, visitors to the museum see a video detailing the attempts to ‘save’ the building and the historically valuable objects within it from war and destruction. The museum, the video detailing its resurrection and the objects within it construct a narrative of Lebanon’s history. Today, the space of the museum evokes a particular experience of history. The visitor who navigates through the objects is meant to experience moving through time, a particular historical narrative of Lebanon’s ancient past. The arrangement of works, the story of the museum’s destruction and rebuilding and the video documenting this process present a version of history in which elements of ‘civilization’ – Phoenician, Roman, French – are threatened by ‘uncivil’ but unnamed forces posited as external, destructive, violent and alien. In my paper, I discuss the production of time and history within the space of the Beirut National Museum. I will also explore the ways in which the museum legitimates Lebanon as a modern state with its own ancient historical trajectory, emphasizing connections to European historical narratives rather than Islamic ones.