Byblos and the Levantine ports
Cedar, purple dye and shipping make the Canaanite coast rich.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1.8 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 200 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Byblos trades cedar to Egypt from the early third millennium BCE, and the Levantine coastal cities — Byblos, Sidon, Tyre, Ugarit — become the maritime carriers of the eastern Mediterranean. They also produce Tyrian purple, extracted from murex snails at enormous cost and reserved for royalty. Byblos gives its name to the Greek word for book, and thence to the Bible.