Byblos

1 · POSITION

Byblos, the Phoenician port of Gebal on the Lebanese coast, has been continuously inhabited for more than seven thousand years and is a candidate for the oldest city in the world. UNESCO inscribed it in 1984. The register holds it as the deepest record it keeps of a port that received traders. [1, 2]

2 · CEDAR AND PAPYRUS

From a fishing village it grew into a prosperous trading city by 3000 BC. Its wealth came largely from Egypt: Lebanon’s cedar went out through its harbour for building, and papyrus came back. The Greeks took the city’s name for their word for a book, biblos, and its plural, ta biblia, gave the word Bible. [1]

3 · THE ALPHABET

The Phoenicians developed their alphabet of twenty-two letters here and on this coast, from the period of Egyptian rule after 1580 BC; it replaced cuneiform and reached Greece through trade around 800 BC. [1]

4 · WHAT REMAINS

Its ruins hold the layers of the civilisations that used the harbour — citadels, churches and Persian fortifications among them — and the town is still lived in. [2]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ A settlement date of 8800 BC is given by one source without citation and is not used. The register’s comparison with Japan is the register’s own. [1–2]