BYBLOS

modern Jubayl, also spelled Jebeil, biblical Gebal ancient seaport, the site of which is located on the Mediterranean coast about 20 miles (32 km) north of the modern city of Beirut, Lebanon; it is one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world. The name Byblos is Greek; papyrus received its early Greek name (byblos, byblinos) from its being exported to the Aegean through Byblos. Hence the English word Bible is derived from byblos as the (papyrus) book. Systematic excavations were begun at Byblos by Pierre Montet in 1921; in 1926 Maurice Dunand resumed the work and continued it for many years. The excavations revealed that Byblos was occupied at least by the Neolithic period (c. 8000c. 4000 BC) and that during the 4th millennium BC an extensive settlement developed. Because Byblos was the chief harbour for the export of cedar and other valuable wood to Egypt, it soon became a great trading centre; it was called Kubna in ancient Egyptian and Gubla in Akkadian, the language of Assyria. Egyptian monuments and inscriptions found on the site attest to close relations with the Nile valley throughout the second half of the 2nd millennium. During Egypt's 12th dynasty (19381756 BC), Byblos again became an Egyptian dependency, and the chief goddess of the city, Baalat (The Mistress), with her well-known temple at Byblos, was worshiped in Egypt. After the collapse of the Egyptian New Kingdom in the 11th century BC, Byblos became the foremost city of Phoenicia. Byblos has yielded almost all of the known early Phoenician inscriptions, most of them dating from the 10th century BC. By that time, however, the Sidonian kingdom, with its capital at Tyre, had become dominant in Phoenicia, and Byblos, though it flourished into Roman times, never recovered its former supremacy. The crusaders captured the town in 1103 and called it Gibelet, but they later lost it to the Ayyubid sultan Saladin in 1189. The ruins today consist of the crusader ramparts and gate; a Roman colonnade and small theatre; Phoenician ramparts, three major temples, and a necropolis.