Introduction

Lebanon holds a very special place as a country which shines in the history of the ancient world. The Bible praises it as the land of high cedars and running waters. The prophets of Israel regale its beauty, and its name is synonymous in Jewish lore with the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. The Gilgamesh Epic depicts its hero traveling from Mesopotamia to the land of the cedars, to ‘Hermon and Lebanon’. Homer in the Iliad refers to Sidon, and Herodotus in The Histories relates that he visited a temple dedicated to Heracles, known as Melkart in ancient Phoenicia, in Tyre. Phoenicians of millennia ago inhabited the mountains and the coast of Lebanon while fashioning a written alphabet. Archeological remains of houses and temples, statues and inscriptions, suggest their role in ancient architecture and religion. While of Phoenician descent, Thales was considered the founder of science in Europe. The daring and inventive Phoenicians settled in Carthage and circumnavigated the African continent, sailed to Brazil and Newfoundland, and acquired fame as sailors, traders and warriors. A center of Hellenic philosophy and Roman law, Lebanon appeared later as an appendage of Europe while in fact it provided Oriental origins for Western civilization.