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GEBAL

(Heb. gĕḇāl)

1. A major Canaanite and Phoenician shipping center, located ca. 30 km. (18.6 mi.) N of Beirut. Its Canaanite name was Gubla, “mountain” (Ugar. Gbl, transcribed in Egyptian records as Kbn/Kpn). The Phoenician name Gbl is vocalized in biblical Hebrew as Gebal. The Mycenaean Greeks called the city Byblos, either a corruption of its Canaanite name or a name derived from the classical Greek term byblos, also biblos, “papyrus, book” — whence the word Bible originated. The inhabitants of Gebal may have manufactured and/or supplied this writing material to the early Greeks, or the Greeks simply obtained papyrus from this port city.

The tell of Gebal (modern Jebeil; 210391) was explored in 1860-61 by Ernest Renan and then again by a series of archaeological excavations conducted by Pierre Montet (1921-24), Maurice Dunand (1925-52), and Jacques Cauvin (1968). The finds revealed that the settlement was occupied continuously from the Neolithic to the Roman eras. The harbor complex of Gebal consisted of three natural bays located north and south of the ancient mound.

Literary sources and archaeological finds indicate that by 2500 b.c.e. the Egyptians used this port as their primary trading outpost in the Lebanon. Excavated finds included the discovery of a new linear syllabic script, which was utilized locally during the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1550). Dunand names this writing system the “pseudo-hieroglyphic” script of Byblos. Attempts to decipher these Byblian inscriptions were made by Édouard Dhorme in 1946 and George E. Mendenhall in 1985; both efforts read the language as an early Canaanite dialect. Other epigraphic finds at Gebal included several Phoenician alphabet royal inscriptions, notably, the inscribed sarcophagus of King Ahiram (10th century or later).

From the Amarna Letters (14th century) it is known that the king of Gebal, Rib-adda, remained loyal to the Egyptian pharaohs during the upheavals in Canaan. In the 11th century Byblos was still a major trading partner of Egypt, as is known from the tale of Wenamon (ca. 1075), which provides details about Canaanite shipping partnerships. Afterward, Byblos was eclipsed by the Phoenician ports of Sidon and Tyre.

Gebal is mentioned only three times in the OT. In Josh. 13:5 the “land of the Gebalites” is described as a northern boundary of the Promised Land. Later references list the stone masons of Gebal, alongside those of Israel and Tyre, as the builders of the Solomonic temple (1 Kgs. 5:18[MT 32]). The elders and artisans of Gebal are noted in Ezek. 27:9 as members of the commercial sphere of Tyre.

Bibliography. W. F. Albright, “The Eighteenth-Century Princes of Byblos and the Chronology of Middle Bronze,” BASOR 176 (1964): 38-46; H. Goedicke, The Report of Wenamon (Baltimore, 1975); G. E. Mendenhall, The Syllabic Inscriptions from Byblos (Beirut, 1985); R. Wallenfels, “Redating the Byblian Inscriptions,” JANES 15 (1983): 79-118; J. M. Weinstein, “Egyptian Relations with Palestine in the Middle Kingdom,” BASOR 217 (1975): 1-16.

Robert R. Stieglitz

2. A territory (modern Gibal) SE of the Dead Sea in the mountains of Seir near Petra, mentioned along with Moab, Ammon, Amalek, and others as continuing an alliance against Israel (Ps. 83:7[MT 8]). As Gobolitis it was part of Idumea (Josephus Ant. 2.1.2[6]).

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GEBAL

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)