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Updated: May 14, 2025
As Jacob had promised to Joseph, Ephraim and half Manaseh had the richest portion, nearly in the middle, and Shiloh, where the Tabernacle was set up, was in their territory; Judah and Benjamin were in a very wild rocky part to the southwards, between the two seas, with only Simeon beyond them; then came, north of Manasseh, the fine pasture lands of Issachar and Zebulon, and a small border for Asher between Libanus and the sea; while Reuben, Gad, and the rest of Manasseh, were to the east of the Jordan, where they had begged to settle themselves in the meadows of Bashan, and the balmy thickets of Gilead.
A great number of houses were overthrown at Seyde, and many people buried under the ruins. It was felt through a space of ten thousand square leagues, comprehending the mountains of Libanus and Antilibanus, with an infinite number of villages, that were reduced to heaps of rubbish.
Tyre was a sort of presiding city, having a controlling political power over the other cities. Mount Libanus, or Lebanon, touched the sea along the Phœnician coast, and furnished abundant supplies for ship-building. In the year 700 B.C., the Phœnicians seemed to have reached their culminating power, and they had colonies in Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain.
It is needless to dwell on the remaining details of the Saracen conquest: how Tripoli and Tyre were betrayed; how Caesarea was captured; how with the trees of Libanus and the sailors of Phoenicia a Saraeen fleet was equipped, which drove the Roman navy into the Hellespont; how Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were ravaged, and the Colossus, which was counted as one of the wonders of the world, sold to a Jew, who loaded nine hundred camels with its brass; how the armies of the khalif advanced to the Black Sea, and even lay in front of Constantinople all this was as nothing after the fall of Jerusalem.
He raised a bank on that called the Broad Place, and dedicated that golden pillar which is in Jupiter's temple; he also went and cut down timber from the mountain called Libanus, and got timber Of cedar for the roofs of the temples. He also pulled down the old temples, and built new ones; besides this, he consecrated the temples of Hercules and of Astarte.
After going to Galad and Salkah, which are two days' journey from Damascus, Benjamin reached Baalbec, the Heliopolis of the Greeks and Romans, built by Solomon, in the valley of the Libanus, then to Tadmor, which is Palmyra, also built entirely of great stones.
And now there went a great fame abroad among the neighboring people of the courage of the Hebrews; and those that heard what a number of men were destroyed, were greatly aftrighted at it: so the kings that lived about Mount Libanus, who were Canaanites, and those Canaanites that dwelt in the plain country, with auxiliaries out of the land of the Philistines, pitched their camp at Beroth, a city of the Upper Galilee, not far from Cadesh, which is itself also a place in Galilee.
The timbers were framed for the most part of cedars of Libanus; the roof was covered with tiles, perhaps of gilt brass; and the walls, the columns, the pavement, were encrusted with variegated marbles.
Solomon, indeed, is said to have been acquainted with all the productions of nature, from the cedar of Libanus to the hyssop on the wall; and we may readily believe, that the curiosity which distinguished his temper would find some gratification in the researches of natural history, the first study of the opening mind in the earliest stage of social life.
Not a vestige remains of the temple of Emesa, which was equalled in poetic style to the summits of Mount Libanus, while the ruins of Baalbec, invisible to the writers of antiquity, excite the curiosity and wonder of the European traveller.
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