Tale of Wenamun

The Egyptian emissary Wenamun, commissioned by the High Priest Herihor of the temple at Egyptian Karnak, sails in a Phoenician ship to Byblos to obtain cedar wood for the construction of a ceremonial barge for the god Amun. Being robbed in the sea and arriving empty handed, Wenamun is ultimately forced to send to Egypt for additional  gifts to Zakarbaal King of Byblos. The precious metals his ship was carrying were to be exchanged for the cedar, the proposed estimate that there was enough to obtain 1,000 cubic meters of wood. These gifts to Zekarbaal were gold and silver,  linen, papyrus, oxhides, rope, lentils, and baskets of fish.

The tale gives evidence of partnership and associations since Zakerbaal talk about partnership with the King Smendes ofEgypt and with a business man named Warkatil probably an Anatolian This area between gift giving, barter, and even market exchange comes to the fore in the  tale of Wenamun.

The translation of the whole inscription is  as follows:

Sarcophagus which Itthobaal son of Ahiram, king of Byblos, made for his father Ahiram when he placed him in the tomb: if a king among kings, or a governor among governors, or a leader of an army rises in Byblos and open this sarcophagus, that the scepter of his power be broken, that his royal throne be thrown down and that the calm disappears as for Byblos and (as for) him, that his inscription is obliterated in the face of Byblos.

Rib-Adda the mayor of Byblos in the fourteenth century BCE and an Egyptian vassal is a  unique character in the Amarna letters (correspondence with the Pharaoh of Egypt). Around 64 are thought to have been written to or by Rib-Adda of Byblos to the Pharaoh. The Rib-Adda correspondence is characterized by its magnitude but also by the writer's frequent repetitiveness. The subjects of these letters are complaint about neglect made by the Pharaoh. The letters  are considered as having been written under the rule of Pharaohs  Amenophis III and Akhenaton. The suggestion that Akhenaton was negligent in foreign policy due to his preoccupation with religious reform. The  accepted view tended to lay the blame for the supposed neglect of vassals on both Amenophis IlI and Akhenaton.

In the Middle and New Kingdom texts mention the country of Negaou and it appears as a country of forests of fir and pine. Hence  this wood was sent to Egypt. Nega is mentioned in texts from the 6th and 12th Dynasties. Though this country had been known to Egyptians in much previous time. It is mentioned in the texts of the pyramids of Pepi I and Teti under the Sixth Dynasty and the Pharaoh Teti identified himself with the god of Nega. The country of Negaou had become Gaou in the New Empire. Byblos was the port of Nega. The distance between Nega and Byblos was no greater than a few days walk. The passage from the Pyramid Texts name the local god of Nega Khay-tau. The name of this divinity is engraved on a cylinder with a legend prior to the end of the Old Kingdom and found under the paving of the temple of the Goddess of Byblos. An anonymous character declares himself loved by the god and goddess of Byblos and by this god Khây-tau.

Among the texts that evoke the foundation of Byblos some testimonies connect Byblos and a homonymous Roman general called Bibulus. The first that of Jean Malalas a sixth-century historian from Antioch. And another that of Eustathius a twelfth-century Archbishop of Thessalonica. Malalas places the founding of Byblos during the last years of the Seleucid monarchy between 69 and 64 BCE. Malalas mention a certain Bibulus who had an important role in Byblos and Antioch. Bibulus powerful strategist who discovered a village in maritime Phoenicia and who made it a city by endowing it with a rampart and called it Byblos after his own name. Bibulus requested the statue of Athena made by Seleucus and the statue of Zeus Keraunios and he sent them to Rome for the Capitol as objects of great spectacle. These statues exist until today.

 The travel diary of the jurist of Hermoupolis Magna Théophane  in the early 320AD mentions a Bibulus in his chronicles.

Byblos who's Eustathius has mentioned as a sacred city of Adonis founded by Kronos and a very old royal residence of Cinyras named after a certain Bibulus a roman strategist who founded it or after Byblè a woman according to the ancients.It is where the conservation of the very first papyrus could be ensured. Or because Isis mourning Osiris placed there the diadem of his head made of papyrus from Egypt. Eustathius lists here the most venerable traditions of the city. The female character responding to the name of Byblè could distantly recall the Lady of Byblos. The name of Byblè is close to that of Byblis the sister of Kaunos and the daughter of Miletos. 

The eponymous hero of Miletus in Ionia. This myth is taken up by Stephen of Byzantium and calls the city of Byblos as the oldest Phoenician city of all founded by Cronus and named after Byblè the daughter of Miletos.  According to him the Phoenicians would have colonized the island of Melos in the Cyclades and those of Byblos are said to have given Byblis its name.

The Tanou country where Sinouhit takes refuge and his itinary  is being in relation with a country of Qedem that scholars considered as identical to the biblical Qedem, the Orient. It seemed to some scholars obvious that Tanou had to extend over the Palestinian region to the north and the story of the exile of Sinuhit does not seem to take place in Palestine but  in a region which is described to us by numerous documents of the New Kingdom as populated, cultivated, strewn with fortified towns, and endowed with an advanced civilization and a formidable military organization. In the stele of Abydos on which an officer of Sanousrit III recounts an expedition to the countries of Sekmem and Lotanou and a certain number of papyri manuscripts of the history of Sinouhit in Berlin in the Ramesseum the name which precedes that of Qedem was the name  Kepni or  the name of Byblos as spelled by the Égyptien. Byblos or Kepni is spelled as as well by Anastasi, where we cannot hesitate to admit that the city is indeed in the history of Sinouhit the Byblos of the Levantine coast. Scholars affirmed that part of the history of Sinouhit takes place in the region of  Byblos.

The name Adonis is a west Semitic synonym of "Lord" the appellation of God or Baal. He was compared with the Egyptian god Osiris and a young god called Tammuz in the 14th Century BCE in Babylon. Hesiod was the first to described Adonis as the "son of the Phoenix".  Adonis was the lover of the great goddess Aphrodite, he was usually worshiped within her temenos. In Byblos Adonis sanctuary was probably located in the building in the southeast of the Lady of Byblos  sanctuary. It had seven rooms of nearly equal size which was according to Plutarch. 

Byblos as a cross point between Greek, Eastern and Egyptian religions it was probably the place where Adonis developed his multicultural appearance. Across the region the cult spread over three different routes to the west and south and finally to the roman. 

A legend by the poet Panyasis and related to Herodotus. Adonis was the son of the Cyprian king Cinyras and his daughter Myrrah cursed by her father for seducing him  she fleet to Byblos where she was transformed into a myrrah tree. She gave birth to a boy. Raised by nymphs, because of his beauty he became the lover of Aphrodite herself until her first lover Ares discovered this affair. Charmed by his beauty Aphrodite put the newborn infant Adonis in a box and handed him over to the care of Persephone the queen of the underworld. Persephone afterwards refused to give him up. An appeal was made to Zeus who decided that Adonis should spend a third of the year with Persephone and a third with Aphrodite the remaining third being at his own disposal. 

A better-known story hinted at in Euripides Hippolytus is that Artemis avenged her favorite by causing the death of Adonis. Aphrodite pleaded for his life with Zeus who allowed Adonis to spend half of each year with her and half in the underworld. 

At least since roman times the main cult place of Adonis was the Phoenician town of Byblos. For the Latin poet Ovid also said that Adonis is the son of a king of Cyprus. The adonai were also related to the Ptolemaic rulers family. After mourning and crying on the first day, on the second day  the return of Adonis was personated in a hero  games ceremony. 

The legend says, while Adonis was on a big game hunt the god of war transformed into a boar killed the boy by piercing his thigh with a tusk. At his cries Venus comes running lays it on a strewn grass. But the blood spurted out and her gift of life passed into the flowers. From its drops germinated the delicate anemone that dots the slopes of the Lebanese mountains in spring. His blood mingled with the waters of the nearby river. Since that time its waters take regularly every year their red spring coloring. The Byblian god was worshiped with a summer festival which took several days. Adonis was first buried and grieved over as a deceased person and on the following day feasted as a resurrected god. When they have finished their mourning and wailing it is very likely that the god was carried in a portable shrine from his temple on the acropolis to a grave outside the acropolis. The god might have been carried in a procession to the sanctuary of Aphrodite at Aphaca at the sources of the Adonis river in the mountains of Byblos.

A text relating to the great temple of the Lady of Byblos provide the following information. "Some inhabitants of Byblos claim that the Egyptian Osiris is buried in their house and that mourning and orgies are not celebrated in honor of Adonis but that all this is accomplished in memory of Osiris". Every year there comes from Egypt to Byblos a head which swims on the waves for seven days, the winds push it by a mysterious power and it never fails to arrive in Byblos. The head made of papyrus. This would be around the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty. Osiris is said to be the sacred eye of the Sun. 

Upstream from Aswan and Elephantine were three islands, the rock-island of Konosso, the island of Philae where the temple of Isis stood and the island of Bigeh or sanctuary of Osiris. Osiris had once reigned over Egypt and had taught its people agriculture, animal husbandry and justice. 

Osiris had married his sister Isis. Their brother Seth was incapable of any creative act and had an evil character. During  a banquet Seth locked up Osiris in a coffin and threw it into the sea. Isis set out in search of her husband's body which she recovered at Byblos. She brought it back to Egypt where it was discovered by Seth in the marshes of the Delta. He cut up the body into fourteen pieces and scattered them in the Nile. Isis traveled all over the country and retrieved the dispersed fragments of her husband's body. The account is given to us by the Greek author Plutarch.

Another account is as follow. The coffin of Osiris was taken to the sea and then rolled by the waves. It washed up on the shore of Byblos, at the foot of a shrub. As it grew, the tree enveloped the trunk and sprang up so straight so beautiful that King Malandre had it cut down to make a column of it to support the roof of his palace. Informed by a divine wind, the goddess Isis, came to Byblos. The astonished queen sent for the stranger who became her friend and nurse it. One night, Isis was enveloped by a flame and turned into a swallow, fluttering and moaning around the column which incorporated the body of Osiris. The goddess finally made herself known. She asked for the column that supported the roof of the palace and extracted the coffin from the trunk and loaded it on a boat and took it back to Egypt.

In Egyptian mythology, the goddess of the sky was married to Re god of the sun and creator of all. But she also made love to her brother god of the earth Thoth lord of divine words. When Re discovered that Nut had secretly slept with her brother his heart filled with rage and he cursed his wife "You will not give birth to the child that is within you in any month of any year". Thoth pleaded to the moon and agreed to play games with him. For five days, if he wins he will win a day of each games he plays. Thoth won five days of the year and in these days was born Osiris.

Sanchun­iathon is the name of the scribe who had lived about the time of Semiramis queen of Assyria or in different words about the time of the war of the Greeks against Troy. Some have dated him to the mid of the second millennium. Philo of Byblos a greek philosopher who lived in the first century AD translated the works of Sanchuniaton into Greek and furnished evidence for all study and speculation about early Phoenician myth and legend. The Philonic material as being ancient and genuine peace of work is getting lately more and more recognition by scholars. The narration starts with the begin­ning of the universe and following that a story of successive pairs or generations of Gods that lived in Phoenicia as being titled the History of Phoenicia. The first principle cited is that the universe was dark and windy mist and a turbid and gloomy chaos. But  the wind fell in love with its own original principles and a mixture took place. By this kind of parthenogenesis of the dark wind there was produced Mot or some kind of mud, and after that from these there came forth intelligent beings and so did the sun, the moon and the stars. This caused the intelligent living beings. They lived in Phoenicia. Generations or pairs come after that and we get to the twelfth pair which are Amunos and Magos who made the discovery of villages and flocks. The next after it are Misor and Suduk. From them  was the  descended Taautos who discovered writing. He is the one whom the Egyptians call Thouth eand the Greeks Hermes. Taautos is the key persons this section of narration comes more or less to an end. 

Now with the names Misor and Suduk starts a new line of generations. In the first generation there was Elioun, the Most High, and a female called Beruth. they lived around Byblos. The second generation were Ouranos and Ge meaning heaven and earth. Ouranos who by his sister Ge had four children,  Kronos, Baitulos, Dagon and Atlas. Ouranos had more wives. The  jealous reproaches of Ge caused them to separate. Ouranos also tried to destroy his own children by her. Ge however got some allies to help her get rid of Ouranos the first of which was her own son Kronos. Kronos had two daughters Perse­phone and Athena. Kronos overthrew his father and succeeded to the kingdom. In this battle the beloved concubine of Ouranos was captured and Kronos gave her in marriage to his brother Dagon. Kronos surrounded his own house with a wall and he founded the first city of Byblos. He kills his own son Sadidos out of suspicion and his own daughter. Ouranos meanwhile sent along his virgin daughter Astarte with her sisters Rhea and Dione to kill Kronos , but Kronos caught them and made them his own wives. By Astarte he had seven daughters, by Rhea seven sons and by Dione some daughters also. By Astarte also two males Pothos and Eros. Kronos had in Peraea three sons, another Kronos, Zeus Belos and Apollo. Ouranos sent again Heimarmene and Hora, but these also Kronos made his own wives and kept. It is generally held that Demarous is the deity more familiarly known as Baal. This seem to be the basis of the theogony, having four generations from Elioun down to Demarous.