Brief History of Byblos from the Early Bronze to the Iron Age 

Cy the Great does it again

When the style of Rib-Hadda's letter to the Vizir Haya suddenly turned more casual, it caught me off guard. I think that the fragments of the written sources are my favorite parts of your videos.

My favorite part of a Cy upload is seeing how many other people are just as excited. Now let's have a watch!

To Cy, the historian, at your feet I have fallen. May RU-vid, the God of the Internet, bless your videos! 😅 Love when you read those ancient letters! 💕

Long overdue! Welcome back!

Please do some vids on Bronze Age Indus civilization and Shang China.

Watching from Byblos Lebanon .. we are the last remaining Christians of the land of Christ.. Very resilient till this day, against our neighboring hostiles. Surrounded by hizbollah / Persians at the south in the city of tyre, and the Assyrians to the north mainly the Assad regime. We remain.

Nice to see you producing content again.

Please continue this série on Phoenician cities especially Byblos!

Another great video Cy!!

Great job, as always, Cy. TY. I must say that I was a bit disappointed you went so quickly over the Neolithic+ prehistory of the city but that's largely because I did not read the title properly (clearly states: Bronze and Iron Age scope, my bad). I've been very intrigued by this prehistory because Byblos gives name to a regional culture (Byblos culture) which first used local type pottery but later somehow shifted to Cardium style pottery, the same type that (beginning surely at Epirus) was carried westward by the Neolithic settlers of Italy, SE France and Iberia (and would later, with "epicardial" variants, affect most of Western Europe as well). I'm aware of that and little more, so I was naively hoping for further info on this Neolithic culture of Lebanon and surrounding areas. This brings me to another most intriguing issue: Byblos' original name as Gubel or Gubla, and the fact they had a city goddess by that same name, reminds a lot of Cybele (Kubele in the oldest Phrygian texts AFAIK), which is almost necessarily the same as the goddessof Çatalhöyuk (lady of lions or whatever you want to call her) and somehow even a likely precursor of Germanic goddess Freja (who, like Cybele, rides a chariot pulled by felines... giant cats in the Nordic version). She's arguably also related to Egyptian deity Sekhmet-Bastet BTW and, of course, to the mainline Neolithic Earth Goddess (Gaia in the (pre-)Greek version, Mari/Morrigan in the Western one). This is something that I only considered now, as I watched the video, so it's sketchy, but still rings true (very plausible) to me. Another issue, already moving to the LBA collapse period, is how did the proto-Phoenician (North Canaanite) cities survived the collapse. My educated guess is that they must have been either the same or directly associated to the Shekelesh of the Egyptian narrative of the "sea peoples". These are described as circumcised, what makes them likely Semitic or otherwise under Egyptian influence (circumcision was probably an Egyptian thing before being also West Semitic or Canaanite/Jewish), also the very unusual Syro-Lebanese genetic tendency in modern Sicilians, strongly suggest that some group from that area (the Shekelesh quite apparently) conquered and (re-)settled the island in the Bronze-Iron age transition (plausibly associated to the Etruscans = Tyrsenoi = Teresh), also the very name seems related to "shekel" (= weight unit... of silver, later coin) and probably meant something like "mercenaries" or "pirates", maybe even "traders" (much like "viking" later in another time and geography). In other words: I speculate (with some basis) that the Shekelesh were proto-Phoenicians and that's how they got away from the collapse: turning from loyal vassals to pirate kings (or something in that line). Enjoy.

Thank you so much for another great video Cy.

Excellent work Cy. Thanks for releasing this excellent video!

Love the great content, thank you!

Thanks, for another classic, Cy!

ALWAYS learn something and enjoy your videos. Thanks 👏

As always, amazing video❣❣❣❣

Great stuff, as always!

Fantastic as usual

Was looking forward to this one!

Great stuff Cy Guy, thanks for sharing with us again.

A pure pleasure to listen to your historical stories! Storytelling, voicing is excellent! Thank you for your work, Im your fan!

love your content man

Thank you! Great work!

Hey Cy, Great work as always. I’m wondering when you plan on getting into more of the social history of a lot of these civilizations - since you mostly cover the political side of things?!

Yay!!!!! Thank you Cy 🤗

Eeeey new History with Cy- welcome back, βασιλεύς! 😊

Amazing video. Videos of channel helps linking so many little historical anecdotes together and interesting✨😎‼

Not only did I enjoy the well prepared video but your narration was easy to listen too. Thanks Cy. Liked and Subbed.

love to see you post

Hey, I love your content! I just would like to ask, have you considered doing a video on the city state of Rhodes?

As Assyrian i visited Byblos. Beautiful phoenicia.

Some of the Amarna letters of Rib-Hadda are currently on display at the Byblos exhibition at the antiquity museum of Leiden. The cuneiform is much smaller in real life as I had expected it to be. Smaller than an average person's handwriting today.

Very interesting!

I love this channel ! 🙌🏽👏🏻❤️❤️❤️😊

Concise, yet so informative! Loved it!

What an amazing channel

Great episode Cy. As always thank you very much for your hard work.

Welcome back :)

Hey, love the video! Wondering what (kind of) music you're using in the background, it's great.

ANOTHER HISTORY WITH CY!!!

Yehawmilk, huh? So you're telling me that 2500ish years ago there was a Texan king in the Levant? Fascinating.

Very interesting vid. ^-^

Hey Amazing video!! ❤ I am from Byblos actually !

Great and interesting video. Ezekiel 27:9 also states that the men of Gebal/Byblos were export calkers (people who helped make a ship water tight) which is not surprising seeing their position and reliance on the sea.

Awesome video 🥂🥂🥂🙏🏻🇱🇧💪🏻

Any idea when the next part of the Peloponnesian war will be posted?

History with Cy drop! 🎉

Im also excited to see s new video, CY seems busier during the past 3-4 mnths. I hope all is fine with him

4:45 ahhh archeologists and their creative and sometimes esoteric naming schemes. Its a wonder anyone can understand the functions and/or locations of important ancient structures.

I'd like to see more content on ancient goddess temples if you have the ability. It's interesting to me that the first major structure was a goddess temple.

long time no Cy!

Byblos is a word for book, or library. It would have been known in Alexandria.

❤ Jbeil!

Just when I thought the Sumerian King Dudu's name was awesome, Yehawmilk arrives. 🤣

The RijksMuseum van Oudheden in Leiden, the Netherlands has a decent exposition about Byblos at the moment 👌

Are Carthage and Utica videos in the near future? If you do Utica, are there extant native Utica sources since that city sided with Rome?

Why the never ending ad for magellan?

can yo do a video of Arslantepe

okay now do the extended version

7:48 It seems this "7 times I fall" expression is a canaanite expression which made its way into hebrew. It is also found in Proverbs 24:1

When you say the name yehawmilk I would have said more like yhwhmlk or yahweh is king. My personal opinion, but based on what know about the religion at the time and how widely Yehweh was worshipped in Canaan according to archological evidence I feel as if it was totally plausible

Please do on arabia bronze age

But why no mention of book production?

🙏

ITS BEEN A CY DROUGHT AND I'M SO THIRSTY.

👏🙂

👍👍👍

Hadda from reno

The Kings of Byblos were the rulers of Byblos, the ancient Phoenician city in what is now Lebanon. Early period c.1800s BC Abichemou I c.1790s BC Yapachemou Abi I c.1700s BC Rib-Hadda, Yakin c.1500s BC Yantin-Ammu, Abichemou II, Yapachemou Abi II, Eglia Egyptian period c.1340s BC Rib-Adda c.1320 BC Ilirabi / Ili-Rapih c.1320? BC Azirou / Aziru (King of the Amurru kingdom) 1100s BC Zakar Baal Phoenician golden age 1000s BC Ahiram c.1000 BC Zakar Baal (II?) c.980 BC Ithobaal c.940 BC Yahimilik c.930 BC Abi-Baal c.920 BC Elibaal c.900 BC Safatba'al (I) Assyrian period c.735 BC Safatba‘al II c.710 BC Urumilki / Urumiku c.670 BC Milkiashapa / Milkiasaph c.650 BC Yehawmelek Persian period c. 500 BC Safatba'al (III) c. 480 BC Urimilk II c. 470 BC Yeḥarbaal (son of Urimilk II) c. 450 BC Yehawmilk (son of Yeḥarbaal) c. 425 BC Elpaal (’LP‘L); possibly married to queen Batnoam c. 400 BC ‘Ozbaal (‘ZB’L; son of Batnoam)

Makes you wonder if the semitic cities along the coast invited the Sea Peoples there to free them from their Egyptian rulers.

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Let's be clear with "meaning" of words please. Etymology would be perfect when telling us what words actually mean rather than what people have said "it", the word, to mean. I am inclined to mention this because of this word "Byblos". Thank you for any consideration when giving us the meaning of words in the future. I do appreciate it.

all the gods are gone

It's always depressing to hear the cultural genocide committed by the Greeks in this region...

Yahweh-Malik

𝕡𝐫ｏ𝕄ｏ𝔰𝓶 🌈

Lebanese pronounce it Jibeil rather than Gabaal.

I must say your pretty incorrect 70 present then others

The Hapiru are the Hebrews.

can yo do a video of Arslantepe