Byblos and Adonis

Port of Byblos

BYBLOS

bĭbˈləs, ancient city, Phoenicia, a port 17 mi (27 km) NNE of modern Beirut, Lebanon. The principal city of Phoenicia during the 2d millennium b.c., it long retained importance as an active port under the Persians. Byblos was the chief center of the worship of Adonis. Because of its papyruses, it was also the source of the Greek word for book and, hence, of the name of the Bible. Excavations of Byblos, especially since 1922, have shown that trade existed between Byblos and Egypt as early as c.2800 b.c. A syllabic script found at Byblos dates from the 18th to the 15th cent. b.c.

Adonis

Adonis ( Earths "lord"), in Greek mythology, the god of beauty and desire, is a figure with Northwest Semitic antecedents, where he is a central figure in various mystery religions. His religion belonged to women: the dying of Adonis was fully developed in the circle of young girls around the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos, about 600 BCE, as revealed in a fragment of Sappho's surviving poetry.[1]

Death of Adonis