Byblos

Byblos is an ancient Phoenician city in modern Lebanon. Emilio Spedicato has pointed out that since this harbour city dates back to at least the third or fourth millennium BC, it can be used to demonstrate the relative stability of Mediterranean Sea levels over that period. The proponents of the idea that there had been a Sicilian Landbridge that was destroyed in the second millennium BC will have to consider either:

(i) Revising the dating of the existing harbour in Byblos,

(ii) the Sicilian landbridge was destroyed earlier than the building of the harbour, or

(iii) the landbridge did not exist within human memory.

>Emmet Sweeney in Empire of Thebes ^[1867] returned to the debate regarding the identity of the Queen of Sheba where he follows the conclusions of Immanuel Velikovsky and argues for her having been the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut, whose funerary monument details her trip to the land of Punt. Sweeney offers Byblos, in modern Lebanon as the location of Punt, which is also similar to the theories of Velikovsky.<

Temple of the Obelisks – Byblos

Twenty years ago the underwater archaeologist Ibrahim Noureddine had voiced the opinion that the current port at Byblos is too small to have accommodated the Phoenician fleet as recorded by the likes of the Palermo Stone^(b)*. The current harbour is only 2.8 meters deep and with a solid rock floor could not have been deeper in the past. Noureddine is now researching alternative sites. If the content of the Palermo Stone is accurate and not an exaggeration it would appear that the matter of ancient Mediterranean sea levels may be still open to question. The resolution of this matter is critical for supporters of a Mediterranean Atlantis.

>He returned to the subject in a 2010 paper^(c) noting that “in the Phoenician heartland, today’s Lebanon, no Phoenician harbor structure has been clearly identified to date in the main cities of Tyre, Byblos, Beirut, and Sidon. Tyre, the most famous Phoenician city, has particularly attracted many scholars who dedicated their efforts to finding remains of its illustrious harbor. Some of them failed in their quest, while others were able to secure some, but certainly not all, of the answers.”<

A November 2016 report claims that the discovery of the ancient port “is close”, quoting George Papatheodorou, professor of environmental and geological oceanography at the University of Patra’s Department of Geology^(a).

^(a) https://www.ekathimerini.com/213862/article/ekathimerini/life/patra-university-experts-helping-establish-location-of-ancient-byblos-harbor

^(b) https://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/000755.html  *

^(c) https://www.academia.edu/3305769/New_Light_on_the_Phoenician_Harbor_at_Tyre  *