Cedars of Lebanon

   The general name used both in ancient and modern times to describe a huge cedar forest that covered large areas of what is now Lebanon in Palestine. The Phoenicians, especially the inhabitants of Byblos, grew wealthy partly through lucrative trade of cedar timber. Peoples who dwelled in Palestine regularly used Lebanese cedar for large-scale building projects, the most famous being the Hebrew king Solomon's temple in Jerusalem:

   He built the House of the Forest of Lebanon. Its length was a hundred cubits [about 150 feet (45m)] and its breadth fifty cubits, and it was built upon three rows of cedar pillars, with cedar beams upon the pillars. And it was covered with cedar above the chambers that were upon the forty-five pillars, fifteen in each row. (1 Kings 7.2-3)

   In addition to local use of the Cedars of Lebanon, Mesopotamian rulers regularly imported them for their palaces and temples because the Mesopotamian plains lacked hardwood forests. Workers transported the logs overland to the upper Euphrates and floated them downstream to building sites in Assyria and Babylonia. These cedars were so widely used and were seen as so important to constructing cities that they became a sort of metaphor for civilization itself. in the biblical book of Ezekiel, God tells that prophet that the Lebanese cedar "was beautiful in its greatness" and that "the cedars in the garden of God could not rival it." But these trees were destined to be destroyed. "Foreigners, the most terrible of the nations [perhaps a reference to Assyria], will cut it down ... and in all the valleys [of Lebanon] its branches will fall." (Ezekiel 31.7-8, 12) This prophecy was fulfilled, for the vast majority of Lebanon's cedars were gone by the end of antiquity. Today about three hundred trees from the original forest remain, some of them believed to be up to fifteen hundred years old.

   See also: Byblos; Palestine; Phoenicians