Gebal (Byblos)

1. One of the earliest villages in Phoenicia and Syria (along with Ras Shamra and Tell Judeideh); also called Byblos (“books”) by the Greeks. It was situated on the Mediterranean about 20 miles (32.2 kilometers) north of modern Beirut and was an important commercial center and outlet for the hardwoods of Lebanon in the period when it was an Egyptian colony and when the diplomatic and commercial interests of Egypt reached all over Syria. It was a city-kingdom according to the Amarna letters (c. 1400–1350 BC), and seal impressions found there from a very early period suggest that it was on a major exchange route through Palestine and Syria. Its inhabitants were called Gebalites (Jos 13:5). While it was a great commercial center, a more important achievement of the Gebalites was the development of a syllabic script modeled on the Egyptian. Passed on from Phoenicia to Greece, it became the ancestor of our own alphabet.