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Show The Holy Land 223 sailed down the western coast of Africa, and also may have gone north to the British Isles. They were the leading navigators and traders of the Mediterranean world. They monopolized trade in the Cedars of Lebanon. Durable, strong, and resistant to insects and decay, these cedar trees were in widespread demand, especially in Egypt and India. On the mountainside Madelyn saw some of these cedars, old and new. The Canaanite people of Byblos also dyed their Tyrian silk cloth an elegant purple, carved exquisite ivories, and invented alphabet that was later taken over by the Greeks and modi fied for use by all "Western" nations. Settled as early as 8,000 an B.C., Byblos was captured by the Crusaders in 1103. The principal Phoenician cities, in addition to Byblos, includ ed Tyre, Sidon, Ptolemias (Acre), Tripoli, and Carthage. Byblos, Madelyn, was a town of narrow streets, ruins, and restora tions. She watched the grinding of grain, the working of ancient to instruments, and observed old-fashioned pipe smokers. To the east of Beirut were the Anti-Lebanon (Anti-Liban) mountains, and on the western edge was Baalbeck, a city of considerable size and importance in ancient times, just thirty five miles north of Damascus. The name comes from the wor ship of Baal, the Semitic sun-god (which caused the Greeks to name the town Heliopolis, "City of the Sun"). Julius Caesar made it a Roman colony; its ruins covered a wide area. Terraces constructed up the mountains by Maronites, a Lebanese Christian sect founded in fourth century A.D. The Maronites used Syrian liturgy; their priests married; but most of the mem bers were massacred in the 1860s by the Druses, a hill-dwelling Muslim sect. were Among the terraces of the mountain was the village Bshare, the symbolist poet and painter Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931) lived before he came to the United States in 1910. Madelyn, who admired Gibran, had long since read and acquired his books, including Broken Wings, The Prophet, and The Wanderer. Madelyn remembered Gibran's statement: "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent where forth." In Baalbeck camels were tramping on the grain sheaves, just |
