Episode 1923
Royal necropolis of Byblos
Wed, 2022-Aug-10 00:14 UTC
Length - 3:30
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Wednesday, 10 August 2022 is Royal necropolis of Byblos.
The royal necropolis of Byblos is a group of nine Bronze Age underground shaft and chamber tombs housing the sarcophagi of several kings of the city. Byblos (modern Jbeil) is a coastal city in Lebanon, and one of the oldest continuously populated cities in the world. The city established major trade links with Egypt during the Bronze Age, resulting in a heavy Egyptian influence on local culture and funerary practices. The location of ancient Byblos was lost to history, but was rediscovered in the late 19th century by the French biblical scholar and orientalist Ernest Renan. The remains of the ancient city sat on top of a hill in the immediate vicinity of the modern city of Jbeil. Exploratory trenches and minor digs were undertaken by the French mandate authorities, during which reliefs inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs were excavated. The discovery stirred the interest of western scholars, leading to systematic surveys of the site.
On 16 February 1922, heavy rains triggered a landslide in the seaside cliff of Jbeil, exposing an underground tomb containing a massive stone sarcophagus. The grave was explored by the French epigrapher and archeologist Charles Virolleaud. Intensive digs were carried out around the site of the tomb by the French Egyptologist Pierre Montet, who unearthed eight additional shaft and chamber tombs. Each of the tombs consisted of a vertical shaft connected to a horizontal burial chamber at its bottom. Montet categorized the graves into two groups. The tombs of the first group date back to the Middle Bronze Age, specifically the 19th century BC; some were unspoiled, and contained a multitude of often valuable items, including royal gifts from Middle Kingdom pharaohs Amenemhat III and Amenemhat IV, locally made Egyptian-style jewelry, and various serving vessels. The graves of the second group were all robbed in antiquity, making precise dating problematic, but the artifacts indicate that some of the tombs were used into the Late Bronze Age (16th to 11th centuries BC).
In addition to grave goods, seven stone sarcophagi were discovered—the burial chambers that did not contain stone sarcophagi would have housed wooden ones which disintegrated over time. The stone sarcophagi were undecorated, save the Ahiram sarcophagus. This sarcophagus is famed for its Phoenician inscription, one of five epigraphs known as the Byblian royal inscriptions; it is considered to be the earliest known example of the fully developed Phoenician alphabet. Montet compared the function of the Byblos tombs to that of Egyptian mastabas, where the soul of the deceased was believed to fly from the burial chamber, through the funerary shaft, to the ground-level chapel where priests would officiate.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:14 UTC on Wednesday, 10 August 2022.
For the full current version of the article, see Royal necropolis of Byblos on Wikipedia.
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This has been Kevin Neural. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
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