3400 BC to 1200 BC

Byblos and the cedar trade

Byblos is one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world. From the third millennium BC it ships cedar from Mount Lebanon to Egypt, whose pharaohs prize the timber for ships and temples. In the fourteenth century BC Egypt rules the coast, and letters from Byblos's king Rib-Hadda, found at Amarna, beg the pharaoh for help.