More than three millennia before Homer chronicled the voyage of Odysseus, maritime traders from the area now known as Lebanon were navigating the eastern Mediterranean, exporting cedar wood prized from the heights of Mount Lebanon. These early seafarers, later identified as Phoenicians, hailed from Byblos, one of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities and a prominent timber-shipping hub starting around 3000 B.C.
This summer, a significant exhibition featuring artifacts from Byblos opened at the Arab World Institute in Paris. Organized in partnership with Lebanon’s Ministry of Culture, which manages the country’s heritage and antiquities, the exhibit aims to highlight Lebanon’s rich historical and cultural legacy beyond the region’s recurrent conflicts. Anne-Claire Legendre, president of the institute, emphasized the exhibition as a call to protect Middle Eastern history from all forms of erasure.
The show was conceived to spotlight recent archaeological discoveries by French and Lebanese teams and promote tourism to Lebanon, portrayed by Marie-Antoinette Gemayel, curator at the National Museum of Beirut, as a land of "history, a civilization," rather than only conflict. However, escalating tensions in Lebanon complicated these plans. When the exhibition was initially slated to open in fall 2024, intensified fighting had erupted between Israel and Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group opposing Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Concerns over the safety of transporting valuable artifacts delayed the exhibition’s shipment to Paris.
In the opening days of the 2024 conflict, Israeli airstrikes caused damage to several Lebanese heritage sites, some severely. Israel maintains these sites are sometimes used by Hezbollah for military purposes, including as cover for arms caches and tunnels, a claim denied by Hezbollah’s media office. Despite hopes to reschedule the exhibition for spring, the onset of a broader hostilities involving Israel, the United States, and Iran in early 2025 further complicated the situation. Hezbollah intensified attacks on Israeli positions, prompting renewed Israeli airstrikes and troop deployments in southern Lebanon. Ultimately, curators decided to withhold several of the most valuable objects, including an irreplaceable obelisk, to prevent potential damage.
The artifacts that did travel to Paris were transported under armed escort, including personnel from the Lebanese Army and a private security firm, underscoring the precarious nature of preserving cultural heritage amid ongoing conflict. The exhibition traces Byblos’s extensive history as a cultural crossroads shaped by successive civilizations—from Persians, Greeks, and Romans to Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates, Mamluks, Ottomans, and Crusaders.
Included in the exhibit are stone anchors and iron fishhooks exemplifying the Phoenicians’ seafaring traditions, as well as miniature anchors once offered to gods for safe passage. The city’s prominence in maritime commerce is illustrated by its export of cedar, highly sought after for shipbuilding and burial chambers, and trade connections stretching as far as Egypt and the Iberian Peninsula. According to Julien Chanteau, chief archaeologist for the Louvre-led Byblos excavations, Egypt was Byblos’s largest trading partner, exchanging gold, lapis lazuli, and papyrus for Lebanese goods like olive oil, copper, and textiles.
The exhibition’s collection of roughly 370 objects features ornate metal dagger sheaths, golden breastplates carved with intricate natural motifs, Egyptian pharaonic depictions, and a Roman mosaic portraying the mythological abduction of the Phoenician princess Europa by Zeus.
Byblos has remained relatively unscathed by recent violence, partly due to its location north of Beirut and outside significant Hezbollah activity, making it less of a target. Earlier in 2024, the Lebanese Ministry of Culture secured “enhanced protection” status for Byblos from UNESCO, allowing it to designate the site clearly as a protected heritage area. By contrast, several other archaeological and historic sites, including the UNESCO World Heritage locations of Baalbek and Tyre, sustained damage in the recent conflicts. Additionally, the ministry confirmed considerable destruction of the Ottoman-era souk in Nabatiyeh and St. George’s Melkite Church in Dardaghaya in southern Lebanon.
The exhibition not only offers a window into an ancient civilization that shaped the Mediterranean but also underscores the ongoing challenges faced in protecting cultural history amid the upheavals of modern conflict.