The royal necropolis of Byblos is a group of nine Bronze Age underground shaft and chamber tombs housing the sarcophagi of several kings of the city. Byblos (modern Jbeil) is a coastal city in Lebanon, and one of the oldest continuously populated cities in the world. The city established major trade links with Egypt during the Bronze Age, resulting in a heavy Egyptian influence on local culture and funerary practices. The location of ancient Byblos was lost to history, but was rediscovered in the late 19th century by the French biblical scholar and Orientalist Ernest Renan. The remains of the ancient city sat on top of a hill in the immediate vicinity of the modern city of Jbeil. Exploratory trenches and minor digs were undertaken by the French mandate authorities, during which reliefs inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs were excavated. The discovery stirred the interest of western scholars, leading to systematic surveys of the site.
On 16 February 1922, heavy rains triggered a landslide in the seaside cliff of Jbeil, exposing an underground tomb containing a massive stone sarcophagus. The grave was explored by the French epigrapher and archeologist Charles Virolleaud. Intensive digs were carried out around the site of the tomb by the French Egyptologist Pierre Montet, who unearthed eight additional shaft and chamber tombs. Each of the tombs consisted of a vertical shaft connected to a horizontal burial chamber at its bottom. Montet categorized the graves into two groups. The tombs of the first group date back to the Middle Bronze Age, specifically the 19th century BC; some were unspoiled, and contained a multitude of often valuable items, including royal gifts from Middle Kingdom pharaohs Amenemhat III and Amenemhat IV, locally made Egyptian-style jewelry, and various serving vessels. The graves of the second group were all robbed in antiquity, making precise dating problematic, but the artifacts indicate that some of the tombs were used into the Late Bronze Age (16th to 11th centuries BC).
In addition to grave goods, seven stone sarcophagi were discovered—the burial chambers that did not contain stone sarcophagi appear to have housed wooden ones which disintegrated over time. The stone sarcophagi were undecorated, save the Ahiram sarcophagus. This sarcophagus is famed for its Phoenician inscription, one of five epigraphs known as the Byblian royal inscriptions; it is considered to be the earliest known example of the fully developed Phoenician alphabet. Montet compared the function of the Byblos tombs to that of Egyptian mastabas, where the soul of the deceased was believed to fly from the burial chamber, through the funerary shaft, to the ground-level chapel where priests would officiate.
^UNESCO World Heritage Centre 2009.
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sarcophagus of a Phoenician King ofByblos (c. 1000 BC), discovered in 1923 by the French excavator Pierre Montet in tomb V of the royalnecropolisofByblos. The...
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to jido Byblos Castle is a Crusader castle in Byblos, Lebanon. In Crusader times it was known as the Castle of Gibelet /ˈdʒɪbəlɪt, ˈdʒɪblɪt/, also spelled...
in Byblos in 1936, published in 1945. Currently in the National Museum of Beirut. KAI 2 is the ByblosNecropolis graffito and KAI 3 are the Byblos bronze...
Land of Punt. He also maintained trade relations with Byblos as well as continuing the Egyptian presence in Nubia. Amenemhat IV built some parts of the...
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to refer to the patron goddess ofByblos, Baalat Gebal, as a local form of Hathor. So strong was Hathor's link to Byblos that texts from Dendera say she...
finding the royalnecropolisof the Twenty-first and Twenty-second Dynasties: those finds almost equalled that of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings...
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the centre of a wider necropolis which comprised the tombs of the royal family and further afield those of the high officials of the state administration...
under Senusret II to the royal court and was sent on several missions, one of them to the Red Sea, another one to Byblos. He became high steward and...
Retrieved 17 August 2011. "Byblos". UNESCO. Retrieved 17 August 2011. "Ouadi Qadisha (the Holy Valley) and the Forest of the Cedars of God (Horsh Arz el-Rab)"...
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Intermediate Period royalnecropolis in Abydos, at the foot of a natural hill known to the ancient Egyptians as the Mountain of Anubis. The necropolis is located...
Albright, W. F., and William L. Moran, "Rib-Adda ofByblos and the Affairs of Tyre (EA 89)", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 163–68, 1950...
temples and tombs of the west bank Theban Necropolis, which includes the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. Thousands of tourists from all...
vicinity of the royal funeral cult and to benefit from the generous redistribution of food offerings. With the disappearance of these necropolises, Abydos...
the roof of a palace in Byblos on the Phoenician coast. She managed to remove the coffin and retrieve her husband's body. In one version of the myth,...
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Gebal - A Canaanite goddess, patroness of the city ofByblos, adopted into Egyptian religion Beset -- Guardian of women in childbirth and infants who appeared...
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