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Byblos is
perhaps the most ancient city in the world. Its origins go
back more than 7,000 years. Neolithic men founded not only a
port open to the high seas, but also an urban community, a
centre more ancient than Paris, Rome or Athens.
We Lebanese evoke what were the first works of our fathers,
our first installations to emerge from history, and then our
exchanges with others, with the Pharaohs of many thousand
years ago, with the mysterious peoples of the sea, with
other peoples of high antiquity. From century to century we
have welcomed men, myths and idols, and have supplied them
with cedars for the building of their temples and for their
prayers to their gods. We taught them the alphabet for their
communications with others.
The Ancient Egyptians had every reason to call our land the
Coast of the Gods. Here we received Isis and Osiris, mourned
together for Adonis, and gave the features of their goddess
Hathor to our Lady of Jebal. We have blended their beliefs
with ours and exchanged our purple for their papyrus.
We have always been able to have compassion on the gods, but
on men also, for to help them know and love one another we
at Byblos we invented the alphabet.
In front of us the sea, this coming and going of ideas and
of merchandise, tirelessly renews its call for liberty and
for brotherhood, the two twins. |
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