Byblos | Giant Kings and the Egyptian Connection in Ancient Lebanon | Megalithomania

We're just walking through Byblos, which is the ancient city of Canaan. Now, you've got to remember this site dates back to 8,800 BC. We're talking like over 10,000 years ago, and this is, it's amazing. It's been continually occupied since 5,000 BC, but there's evidence here that dates it back even further to the time even of Gobekli Tepe in Southeast Turkey. Now, this is interesting because if you look at the route, from Southeast Turkey through the whole Bible lands and Israel and so on and so forth, you do actually get this kind of route that goes all the way to Egypt. This is something obviously that Andrew was discussing on the whole tour in Egypt itself, where we just finished. So the fact is that there's also connections not only with the ancient Egyptians in pre-dynastic times, going back to potentially 4,500 BC, but there's also connections with the giants. Now, this is a quite strange one, but they found an inscription here about Og, King Og of Bashan. Now, the inscription itself dates to 500 BC or more or less, and it says, if you disturb the graves of the people here, King Og will avenge you. Now, so this is a direct reference, which was discovered in 1974 at this site. I'm going to try and locate it while we're here. We also have a connection with the giant king, Khaz Khomei, or Khaz Khomei, who was the king of the late second dynasty, Hieroncompolis, in southern Egypt, who was connected with Saqqara, but he was also connected here. There's an inscription here. It's the first mention of a pharaoh or king of ancient Egypt in Byblos, in the whole of Lebanon. But we know, for instance, that his tombs, the tombs he was connected with, the Hieroncopolis and the whole area, had cedarwood from Lebanon in it, in Egypt. So this was the second dynasty, and we know there were connections going all the way back to the first dynasty, because there's first dynasty tombs as well, with cedarwood. So we have to sort of notice the connections here with ancient Egypt, and that's something Yousef's going to be sharing with us. So it could also explain how and why Baalbek was built like it is. Huge stones, and we know the Egyptians could certainly do that in ancient times, going back many thousands of years, with the pyramids, the Assyrian, the obelisks, and so forth. So there's multiple connections here, which just makes this a fascinating place, and the fact that it was occupied so long ago, at the time of Gobekli Tepe, right up to relatively recent times, to medieval and crusader times, with constructions all the way through from 5,000 BC. So just behind me here, Yousef just pointed out, very large blocks. So these are potentially some of the earliest phases here. Could be, you know, extremely old. It's more likely about 3,000 to 2,500 BC, at the time that many of the megalithic sites in Egypt were being built. But there is debate. They could be much older, of course. So it's fascinating that we spotted these. These are absolutely massive. We're probably like six feet by four feet, probably the same depth, so probably weighing in excess of 40 tons. So these are the mega blocks that we saw from up there. Absolutely huge. This one here is particularly big. We've got this one around the corner, which is just above it. You can see the size of that. We're looking at, what, 15 feet wide. That's actually part of this block here, so it's about four feet deep. So it's probably, what, 40 tons again, something like that. So even at Byblos, which is supposed to be a Phoenician or a Canaanite site, with many, many layers of prehistory and history, they're using megalithic blocks. Who and what culture would have put these here? Again, we've just come around the other side, and again, some very large blocks making up the foundation stones of this particular spot, this supposed crusader castle. This city has four names, Gubla, Byblos, Jiblet, and Shbeil. Gubla is the Phoenician name. Byblos, that the Greek will give them this name. Jiblet, the crusader, and Shbeil is the Arab name. I read inside the museum here, and I saw one of the pages of the Phoenician history, and they actually say it has lots of hieroglyphic symbols, and I looked, and yes, it did. It has the eye, and it has some other symbols. Of course, in the Phoenicians, they use the hieroglyphic sign, of course, but they use it like a phonetic. Exactly. They said here in the tag that the Phoenician language was developed from the ancient Egyptian language. It's true, it's true. Developed from the hieroglyph, and the parallel, two of those language was working till that the Phoenician go to Greece, are in the 7th century, but you know that after the 7th century, we don't have any more Egyptian here. So when you don't have a civilization culture, they will be forgotten. That's why it will be the Phoenician that it will take the place of the hieroglyph in this area. So we're gonna go over this area now, look at the more ancient part of the sites, and look at the obelisks and some of the Neolithic areas. So this is the kind of part of the city gate built in the Bronze Age, 2000 to 3000 BC, some very large blocks up top there. The wall here is quite interesting. Although they're kind of small, it's like a cyclopean style construction when they sliced it across. So this would be one of the earlier phases here. They were doing major construction. Up there you can see some very, very large blocks. Can't really get any closer. It'd be great to have the drone here to see these, but you can see that they clearly were using megalithic blocks. There you go, you can see them up there now behind this smaller wall. So we're just looking at the Temple of the Obelisks. Now we can't go in there, it's all locked up for some reason. Now these, you know, obviously an Egyptian connection, but these were moved from their original locations. They got destroyed by the Amorites in around, what, 1800 or so BC. And we know the Amorites were most likely giants, so they probably did some major destruction here. But this is what's left of them. They've been reconstructed and how they would have looked probably. This just shows you the plan of the temple. Here's some of the offerings with the pottery jar. And this is one of the niches with one of the figures. And you can see this is like a door to nowhere. It's like one of those doorways that lead to nowhere, but have some sacred meaning. So almost like a portal to another world. So I'm just walking through the so-called L-shaped temple. This is near the Obelisk Temple, which you can see over there. We can't really see it, it's over there behind this wall. So this is the other L-shaped temple. Again, this is Bronze Age, 3000 BC to 2700 BC. But in 2100 or so BC, it got dismantled with the Amorite invasion. And so this is where things got shifted around and the Obelisk Temple got readjusted and replaced. So there's a lot of movement, a lot of change constantly going on here, but it gives you a sense of the deep antiquity of this site. It's not just a couple of cultures, it's like multiple cultures going back to 5000 BC and beyond. We know obviously it dates to a much earlier time than that, the pre-pottery Neolithic. And so it's hard to kind of get a grasp on this. It's actually quite disorientating being here because you're kind of constantly trying to work out which era the temple or the construction you're standing in is actually from. But its location on the coast would suggest it was a very important location. Obviously you can move around from Turkey all the way through obviously Syria and Lebanon, Israel, all the way down to the Sinai and Egypt along the coast. So it's probably a very important trade route as well as we know the connections with ancient Egypt are very strong and very prominent here. But anyway, we're going to the older part of the site now, heading out towards the seaside and this is where it gets a bit more ancient and we're hopefully gonna find this dedication to King Og. So I'm just standing next to the temple, which was part of the whole tradition with ancient Egypt. This is potentially an early Hathor temple. Baal Gebel was the name and it was like a female Baal, like a female ancient god who was a very powerful god and it may have been originating here because we know it dates to 3000 BC and there was inscriptions of Hathor or her counterpart in Lebanon right here. You can see this is what the temple would have looked like. It's been compared to Hatsheput temple in ancient Egypt. This is the bas-relief that was of the goddess Hathor or Baal Gebel and this just shows you the out of the plan of the temple. To me, it's fascinating. There's not much left. This is all that's left. You can just see the sort of shape of it here. We also have a connection with King Keshk Emuy, probably pronounced correctly, but he was the eight foot six king of the second dynasty from Hieroncompolis and he was here as well. He could have even been here and in fact, he could have even been part of the Canaanites, the giants or even the Amorites who came later but it does suggest there's a direct connection with not only the giants of the Bible lands, i.e. this area here at Byblos or Canaan but actually with his presence, the great eight foot six king in ancient Egypt in the late second dynasty and there is just an inkling of evidence that he instigated the megalithic construction in ancient Egypt. He was there just before Saqqara was built, just before the pyramids were being built and the new dating on the pyramids puts it into exactly when he was around and the fact that he's all over Egypt, the Saqqara, Abydos is down south and is now in Lebanon. Could he be connected with the megalithic construction here? Now, we're kind of like speculating here, whether he was here or not is unknown but it seems very likely because we know there's connections with ancient Egypt going back to 4,500 BC. We know the cedar wood boats, the wood came from Lebanon, ended up in Egypt and they were there even in Kashmiri, the eight foot six king's temple way back in 2,700 BC. So behind me is the main spring and this huge dip here, this huge hole in the ground like a chasm and it's been used for over three, since the third millennium BC, even by the Amorites who invaded in 1,200 to 800 BC. So there is even a story that, the whole story of Osiris and Set and Set cutting up his brother Osiris and sending him to different parts of the country. Parts of him came up to Byblos. They even mentioned the word Byblos, which was one part of his body but another story from Plutarch, a second century AD Greek writer, suggests that all of his body was embedded in one of the pillars here by Set. So there's different variations on this but Byblos is connected with the ancient story of Osiris and Isis. So here's another part, another Neolithic building and the illegal part of the site we just wandered into. So just below us here is a quarry from the Neolithic period. Let's take a look in there. Now we don't think they were using particularly mega-sized blocks but this is where the stones came from for much of the construction here at Byblos. When we see the quarry at Baalbek, we can see something quite spectacular compared to this but this is still very interesting because of the prehistory that takes it back such a long time. So there's some strange cut stones here, kind of anomalous but they're here at the site of Byblos. So just in here in this huge square cut chasm is a very, very important part of Byblos or ancient Canaan. The reason being is that there's an inscription to the great giant king Og of Bashan. It basically reads, although it's in Phoenician, if you disturb this grave, King Og will avenge you. It was discovered in 1974 and it gives a reality check to the idea that King Og was indeed a real person. Although this is dated 500 BC, it's known he was around in the Bronze Age because it was him that was defeated by Moses during the whole story of the Exodus. So to find that here with all these tombs and sarcophagi nearby does suggest that it was a memory of something very strong, a tradition, probably based on reality as the Exodus may well have been. And we have the evidence here. So to see this and to witness this in person is a real privilege. So we're just heading into a royal tomb here at Byblos. This dates back to about 1880 to 1990, apparently BC. There's something funny down here, clearly. So we're just heading in, it's sort of a hypogeum. This is one huge sarcophagus. The protrusions all over it. The Middle Kingdom, Egypt time, 1800, 1900 BC. It's pretty incredible. Much like, similar size to some of the ones in the hypogeum even, even like the Osiris shaft. That is very large. Look at the strange protrusions on top of that. They must have tied ropes around them. But this is just, this must be, if that's one piece of rock, that's like 30 or 40 tons, yeah, Yusef? That's one piece of rock, 30 or 40 tons? It's amazing. They actually wrote here in the official explanation, it reminds them of their boxes in Saqqara. Yes. So the tombs were those of King Abi-Cemul and his son, Ip-Cemul-Abi, which were the 12th dynasty, 1990 to 1880 BC. So this is what is down right at the bottom there, at least one of them. There are more in the area, but they've been destroyed. There are some up on the surface here, but this is the first royal burial that's been proven to be found here, way back in 1922. So we're just at the port side, the probably Phoenician port of Byblos here on the coast of Lebanon. And you can see behind me, some of the constructions. We're just sort of, it's a bit noisy here, there's cars going by, but this is a site that goes back to 8,800 BC potentially. So it's a very interesting place. We're already seeing some stonework and some reused potentially columns that were from originally, the granite was from Aswan in Egypt. We know there's a deep age-old connection between these ancient countries. So JJ's just investigating this very interesting port wall, which has these huge, what looks like black granite columns, just coming out of the wall. These were probably used to support it, but the site has been used by so many generations, so many thousands of years, and no doubt they were reusing ancient sites to even prop up and make ports. So you can see how they've reused again, the megalithic granite columns inside the port wall here at Byblos.