City
Biblo
Jebeil
Listen to the story
Biblo stood on a rise not far from the sea, at Jebeil in modern Lebanon. Its Phoenician name was probably Gibel, meaning mountain, which the Greeks reshaped into the form later used throughout the Mediterranean. The Old Testament praises its people as skilled stonemasons and shipbuilders, and its linen was prized abroad. The Greek geographer Strabo knew it as the holy city of Adonis, whose legend grew here and merged with that of Isis and Osiris. Pompey ended its line of local kings by executing the last of them, Kinyras, and an earthquake in AD 529 destroyed the city.