Back to Phoenician Cities Byblos

Byblos (Jbail), one of the oldest towns in the world, goes back at least 9000 years. The rise and fall of nearly two dozen successive levels of human culture on this site makes it one of the richest archaeological areas in the Middle East. Millennia ago Byblos was the commercial and religious capital of the Phoenician coast. Byblos also gave its name to the Bible and it was here that the first linear alphabet, ancestor of our alphabet, was invented. In the modern town, 36 kilometres north of Beirut, the Roman-medieval port has been repaired and nearby are the extensive excavated remains of the city's past which stretch from the Stone Age to the Crusader era.

Information supplied by: "http://phoenicia.org