JEBEIL, a village of Syria, about 20 m. N. of Beirut. Pop. about i,000. There are traces of ancient magnificence in the ruins of its wall, castle, temple and in its numerous granite columns. Written in ink on earthen vessels recently discovered at Luxor were lists of foreign peoples, and heading the Asiatic group came the name of Byblos, i.e., Kpny, a name which passed into Kubn and then Gubl. Thus in the 3rd millennium B.C.-for such is the date of the vessels—Byblos took pride of place before Tyre and Sidon, confirming a tradition of Philo of Byblos as to its antiquity and importance. Byblos owed its position in those days to its flourishing trade in wood and resinous materials of which Egypt took large quantities. In biblical times its sculptors and ship wrights were famous.
A fortunate landslip at the south-east corner of the citadel in 1922 led to the discovery of a hypogeum containing a sarcophagus of great size. Since then a whole royal necropolis containing sar cophagi of the rulers of Byblos has been exposed. Nine such tombs have been examined, but all except three had been pre viously violated. The funerary furniture shows that Byblos of the 14th century B.C. was Egypt in miniature; although it had at its head indigenous rulers, they were in the pay of the Pharaohs. On a sarcophagus of Ahiram, king of Byblos, found together with cartouches of Ramses II. (13th century B.c.) is an inscription in Phoenician characters. This is 400 years earlier than any Phoeni cian inscription hitherto known and the forms of the letters are found to differ little (aleph is an exception) from the well-known inscriptions of the 9th and 8th centuries B.C. Byblos in the
course of time was eclipsed by Sidon and later by Tyre. It was taken by both Alexander the Great and Pompey. The citadel was built with ancient building materials on an old site. The crusaders captured the town in 1103 but lost it to Saladin in 1189.
The temple of Baalat (Aphrodite Byblia), the orgies in which Lucian has described (Dea. Syr. vi.), has been partially excavated. It appears to have been erected about 1900 B.C. and existed sub stantially in its original form until the middle ages when, following on the crusades, Muslim fanaticism destroyed its famous statues and wrecked the building. The modern epoch has exploited it as a quarry for building stones.
See C. Virolleaud, "Decouverte a Byblos d'un Hypo* de la dou zieme Dynastie Egyptienne," Syria, iii. (1922), 273 seq.; R. Dussaud, "Byblos et la mention des Giblites dans l'Ancien Testament," Syria, iv. (1923) 30o seq.; "Les Inscriptions pheniciennes du Tombeau de Ahiram, roi de Byblos," Syria, v. (1924) 135 seq.; "Le Sanctuaire phenicien de Byblos d'apres Benjamin de Tudele," Syria, vii. (1926), 247 seq.; G. Contenau, La Civilisation Phenicienne (1926) ; M. Pillet, "Le Temple de Byblos," Syria, viii. (1927), 105 seq.; R. Dussaud, "Nouveaux Renseignements sur la Palestine et la Syrie vers 2000 avant notre Ere," Syria, viii. (1927), 216 seq. (E. Ro.)