The area is believed to have been first settled between and BC [ 1 ] and continuously inhabited since BC. Urbanisation is thought to have begun during the third millennium BC and it developed into a city [ 3 ] [ 2 ] making it one of the oldest cities in the world , if not the oldest.
It was in Ancient Byblos that the Phoenician alphabet , likely the ancestor of the Greek , Latin and all other Western alphabets, was developed. The name appears as Kebny in Egyptian hieroglyphic records going back to the 4th-dynasty pharaoh Sneferu fl. The name thus seems to have meant the "Well of the God" or "Source of the God". When the Arabic form of the name is used, it is typically rendered Jbeil , Jbail , or Jbayl in English.
During the Crusades , this name appeared in Western records as Gibelet or Giblet. This name was used for Byblos Castle and its associated lordship. Situated approximately 42 km 26 mi north of Beirut , Byblos holds a strong allure for archaeologists due to its accumulations of various strata resulting from countless centuries of human dwelling. This was succeeded by Pierre Montet 's efforts from to , and later by Maurice Dunand , who continued excavations from for a span of forty years.
Fragments attributed to the semi-legendary pre- Homeric Phoenician priest Sanchuniathon say Byblos was the first city erected in Phoenicia and was established by the god Cronus. According to the writer Philo of Byblos quoting Sanchuniathon, and quoted in Eusebius , Byblos was founded by the Phoenician shrine god El whom the Greeks identified with their god Cronus. During the 3rd millennium BC, the first signs of a town can be observed, with the remains of well-built houses of uniform size.
This was the period when the Canaanite civilization began to develop. Neolithic remains of some buildings can be observed at the site. Jacques Cauvin published studies of flint tools from the stratified Neolithic and Chalcolithic sites in Boynton in with further studies by R. Erich in and Van Liere and Henri de Contenson in Prehistoric settlements at Byblos were divided up by Dunand into the following five periods, which were recently expanded and re-calibrated by Yosef Garfinkel to correlate with Tell es-Sultan Jericho :.
