[lbo-talk] toponyms

Bill Bartlett billbartlett at enterprize.net.au
Thu Jun 12 09:17:51 PDT 2003


At 11:10 AM -0500 12/6/03, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:


>>bible (the Phoenician city byblos)
>
>that's a new one, to me. to biblion is simply greek for "the book", and that comes from the word for the inner bark of the papyrus (according to my handy-dandy little liddell and scott). i haven't checked the OED on this, but i'll bet that's where they trace the derivation.

http://www.lau.edu.lb/general-info/city-byb1.html

Byblos City

Byblos (Jbail), one of the oldest towns in the world, goes back at least 9,000 years. The rise and fall of nearly two dozen successive levels of human culture on this site makes it one of the richest archeological areas in the Middle East.

Byblos is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Even the ancient Phoenicians considered it to be a city of great antiquity. Millenia ago Byblos was the commercial and religious capital of the Phoenician coast. Byblos also gave its name to the Bible and it was there that the first linear alphabet, ancestor of contemporary alphabets, was invented.

The Phoenician alphabet traveled to Greece about 800 B.C. The Greek word for papyrus (bublos) and the Greek name for the Phoenician city are the same, indicating that papyrus came to Greece not directly from Egypt but through Phoenician intermediaries at Byblos. Since papyrus was used as a writing material in the ancient world, several sheets put together were called biblion, or "book." The book tradition is carried forward by LAU.



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