Byblos

Byblos, known locally as Jbail or Jbeil, is an ancient port city on the Mediterranean coast of Lebanon, about 42 kilometers north of Beirut, and ranks among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on earth, first occupied between roughly 8800 and 7000 BC and inhabited without interruption since about 5000 BC. In antiquity it was a major Phoenician port so closely tied to Egypt that it functioned almost as an Egyptian colony during Egypt's Old and Middle Kingdoms, exporting papyrus in such volume that the Greek word for the city, byblos, came to mean papyrus and gave English the word Bible. Its standing remains span millennia: the L-shaped Temple of about 2700 BC, the Temple of the Obelisks with its bronze votive figurines, a royal necropolis holding the tombs of ancient kings, a Roman theater built around AD 218, and later Crusader fortifications including Byblos Castle. UNESCO inscribed Byblos as a World Heritage Site in 1984.