A brief history of the Settlement Population

The Neolithic settlement in Byblos had an extension of at l east 15-20 dunams. During this era Jugs and jars were usually decorated by punctuated or stroke bands on the neck and on the shoulders. Byblos was probably an Egyptian colony during much of the Old Empire in Egypt. The house served at the same time as a habitat and an economic entity in a system of storage, production and commerce and trade and remained so for many millennia. Early Bronze II witness the emergence of a larger population, imported good were in large quantities and copper was used for tools. Early Bronze III Combed Ware jars facilitated transport of greater quantities. At the turn of the third millennium and in the Middle Bronze I there was a great nomadic movement from the north into the Levant and the pottery carried on the tradition of Early Bronze III. Early Middle Bronze Mesopotamia and consequently Byblos were absorbed into a more advanced and populated civilizations. Middle Bronze I was a caravaneering culture. Links ranged from the Baltic to the Mediterranean and from the Atlantic to the Black Sea . In Middle Bronze II  the Minoans of Crete underwent a period of great cultural and economic expansion characterized by excessive consumption that affected largely Byblos. We see in the Middle Bronze new habits from shaving to sitting on campstools. Indo-Europeans infiltration from the north at the turn of the 3rd Millennium influenced the civilization in Byblos and we see the emergence of a chiefdoms culture as by the tradition of the Indo-European culture. These Kings were bound together by oaths of aristocratic loyalty and fraternity. This new civilization introduced original pastoral package and the use of wheeled vehicles and secondary-products revolution as dairy products, textiles and large-scale herding and wool became the main woven material produced in large quantities and was the mean of payment for goods. International trade in textiles expanded. Regional cultural, social interaction and economic zones emerged as a result of the distribution of metal. Early 2nd millennium Byblos belonged to a  the new dynasty  founded by Abi-shemu I till Middle Bronze II. During the Middle Bronze Age 16th–13th centuries BC the entire Mediterranean was integrated into a full Bronze Age economy. The 15th– 13th centuries BC were a period of intensive socio-political development. During most of the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt Byblos was a direct colonial dependency. The transition between the Middle and Late Bronze Age,  trade with Cyprus flourished and the Levant is characterized by political and economic changes. Byblos hosted a garrison at the time of Thutmose III and an Egyptian administrative presence was in the city. In the vicinity of the port area on the foothill of the mound of Byblos Thutmose III in the Late Bronze Age had ships built there as well as furnished the ports, his activities on this shore area was such that it was considered a settlement itself. And a hypothesis was advanced that he built a fortress in Byblos maybe on the seashore were his increased activity was.

Most of the Chalcolithic houses in Byblos are characterized by being a single-room stone-built houses. Housing in Byblos in the Early Bronze IB were houses with a wooden roof supported by wooden pillars. The most typical house in this urban environment is composed of a room and a court and a more modest subsidiary storage room, the system is called a T-shaped house where usually the inner partition is at two thirds of their length. The number of rooms ranged from two to five with an average of around three rooms. All the plans consist of an assembly of rooms gathered around an open air courtyard. The block of juxtaposed houses or the regrouping of houses are open onto a street or a common court. The habitats then would gather and be organized in small blocks. 

A hypothesis is that the archaic palace in Byblos in the Early Bronze I was at the foot of the Baalat Gebal temple to the north at the foot of the northern fortification. The palace is clearly segregated from the surrounding domestic quarters. At the end of the 3rd millennium the palace is located on top of the hill behind the Baalat Gebal temple and overlooking the seashore. At this time the hall of the palace was just adjacent to the Baalat Gebal temple, to mention that the temple had a back entrance towards the palace, the hall served as an audience and for buisiness and archiving. On the south side of the mound of Byblos we see a palace in the bit-hilani style  characterized by two long narrow rooms and service quarters and stores were added as outbuildings . 

The Chalcolithic zone on the western side of the mound of Byblos overlooking the seashore contains dwellings and paved roads. In this epoch the site has 2,059 jar burial that were either inside or in the immediate vicinity of the dwellings. We see in the early Neolithic nucleated villages. Early Bronze IA installations were scattered over the northern upper mound and towards the south-west downward towards to the seashore . The Early Bronze II witnesses a change in the settlement pattern with a large fortified complex and the development of a protective rampart and glacis.  Stone paved street were in use as well as large stairway preceding temples.The domestic area or village was on two small hills, a higher one at the North-West and a lower one some 160 m away at the South-East with a depression containing the spring in between. The ancient city lies on and between these two hills. The southern lower mound has a terraced slope down to the sea-shore. The houses were grouped forming a system of cluster-house type. The  pattern of grouping was a semi-orthogonal urban blocks with a dense settlement pattern in which each individual house abuts one or more other houses . A double concentric circular layout was built inside a practically circular enclosure with a diameter of 1,300 m. The residential and temples areas are compact and marked off by a system of roads marked A B C and D as it was. That pattern of roads that served the city divided it into seven main areas. Various residential quarters have been identified. There were as well minor roads or lanes which radiate from within the compact residential and temples areas to the foot of the fortifications. 

The temples area is dissociated from the residential area and follows a concentric plan within the circular layout defined by the city fortifications. All the main sanctuaries were connected through a concentric path. The earliest temple dating from very early bronze age is the Enceinte sacrée following a Breitraum plan enclosed within a stone wall and may be at some time it enclosed the water spring. From a little later comes the Temple in L built in antis topology which is the ancestor of the temple of the Obelisks and next to it is the Chappelle orientale forming a group in Antis with the Temple in L. The Baalat Gebal temple or the temple of the Lady of Byblos is the most important temple in the City built in the Early Bronze Age and stayed in use till Roman times, it is located on the eastern shoulder of the upper hill of the site. A Sacred Pool surrounded by a battered wall was carved between the Baalat complex and temple in L.  The Champ des Offrandes arose in the Middle Bronze Age over the razed ruins of a previous Sanctuaire Meridional. The temple Champs des Offrandes was shaped as an open courtyard equipped with a chapel as it was the customs in the Middle Bronze Age temples with open-air cult. It was located between the temple in L and the sacred spring. Another Middle Bronze Age temple is the Tower temple located behind the spring next to a palace and rising on the south of the mound overlooking the southern seashore and shinky bay. It is built over the ruins of the previous Temple des Escaliers.