LEBANESE-PHOENICIANS are from Lebanon-Phoenicia and from nowhere else

Yes! Tens of locations were said to be the cradle of the Lebanese-Phoenician nation.

Many scholars have collected tens of sources on the subject in important studies. Most exhaustive is that of Father Pierre-Marie Martin in his giant work entitled: "L'Histoire du Liban"¹ in which he mentions several locations considered by certain ancient, and in their wake some modern authors, as the cradle of our ancestors, including: the shores of the Red Sea beyond Eritrea ² . Others make their origin Persian or Assyrian: Strabo (XVI, 3 and 4) spoke of the "isles of Tyros and Arados in the Persian Gulf" and of their temples that "resemble Phoenician temples." Pliny (VI, 43) called the isle of Tylos, Tyros. Martin adds (HL, p. 413-415): "The inhabitants of these islands claim that the Phoenician Arados and Tyre on the East Mediterranean Coast are colonies of their emigrants. But it must be stressed that when the Persians found Phoenicians established in the isles of the Persian Gulf, they understood that immigrants had established these colonies to facilitate their trade with India."

Another original homeland for the Phoenicians was mentioned on the shores of the Black Sea (Strabo, XVI, 1, 2)³ . Others, referring themselves to the description of their Spanish and Greek colonies, by various authors, including Homer (Il, II, 499), gave them a Spanish or a Greek origin (Martin, HL, p. 109). They were also given a French or English origin, more precisely, from Brittany, or Great Britain ⁴ , which bear the name of Beirut ⁵ . Many names in England and Brittany are certainly Phoenician, e.g. l'Île D'Arz, off French Bretagne, Cornwall (From Cronos-El)... To others, our ancestors came from Venice, Italy, - the name Venice is derived from Phoenicia (Mazel, AP, pp. 154-155) - or from Etruscan stock ⁶ . It was also said that the Phoenicians descend from the Vikings whose name is a deformation of Phoenician, giving as evidence, that their Saga (their folk songs) are echoes of the songs of the Phoenician gods: Ea (El), Thor (Hermes), Odin (Adon = lord in Phoenician) and others ⁷.

But the most famous historian who imposed the extraterritoriality of the Phoenicians was Herodotus - falsely considered "Father of History"⁸ - who said once that they came from the shores of the Indian Ocean ⁹ and another time from the shores of the Sea of Eritrea, i.e. the Red Sea (I, 1; IV, 37; VII, 89). He claimed that the Phoenicians themselves told him that they first lived on the shores of the Sea of Eritrea, but migrated and settled on the shores of the Sea of Syria (Sour = Tyre) adjoining the border of Egypt, and that the stretch of land adjoining the border of Egypt is called Palestine.

Before Herodotus, nobody called Lebanon-Phoenicia by another name. And although the Greeks borrowed his appellations, which the Romans adopted, these names were transitory and disappeared when the occupants left.

In Herodotus' text, historians found many errors. The country he called Syria never carried that name except by those who considered it the hinterland of Tyre, as trustworthy scholars, e. g. St Jerome and others tell us ¹⁰ . The southern part of the Land of Canaan was not called Palestine at that time, nor was it so called by its people - including Herod the Great (37 BC to 4 AD) (cf. Annex VI, map). The name Philistia remained that of the territory south of Jaffa and north of Gaza. Historians ¹¹ are aware that Herodotus was the first to give the names of Palestine and Syria to southern and eastern Canaan respectively (cf. Annex I, Map of Phoenicia by Rawlinson, 1889). He did so arbitrarily because of his ignorance of the history and geography of our Region. The Greeks adopted his appellation and the Romans followed them. But as soon as the Phoenician, Septimus Severus (146-211 AD) became Emperor of Rome, he restored to the Region the name Phoenicia.

Christ never called his country Palestine, and the name also does not appear in the Koran.

This explains why Christ never pronounced the word Palestine, and why this name does not appear in the New Testament. And if that was the name of His homeland, wouldn't Christ have called it by this name? On the contrary, we can infer from the Gospels (Mt 10:5-6; 15:24) that Jesus considered himself issued from Israel, a word mentioned in the New Testament 70 times, and in the Koran 52 times to affirm that Israel is the chosen people of God with whom He made an Alliance that He will never repeal!

Eminent historians refuted the theory claiming that the Phoenicians came from the Arabian Peninsula.

As for their coming from the shores of the Red Sea, it was refuted by the scholars who are familiar with the data, e. g. Father Martin (HL, pp. 410-412), who, after thoroughly analyzed the problem concluded: "It was impossible that the Phoenicians would have told Herodotus this that they came from the Red Sea or Erytrea, because they always insisted that they were autochthonous in Phoenicia. This is well-known to everyone who is familiar with their history, their narratives, their names and their inventions. We are consequently inclined to think that Herodotus either made a gross mistake in giving this declaration concerning the Phoenicians to assert his theory, or that it was one of his numerous vilenesses about which Plutarch admonished him more than once. Nevertheless, there is an expression in Herodotus' declaration that may exonerate him and at the same time prove the veracity of certain ancient traditions, namely, that the people of whom he speaks might have been Phoenicians from Sidonia who returned with the Hebrews from Egypt and settled in the littoral of South Canaan, in Herodotus' Palestine.

To Father Martin's remark, we may add that many Tyrian and Sidonian colonies were established in Egypt, alongside Jewish communities who followed there Joseph, son of Jacob, appointed Minister by Pharaoh Putiphar. And when Moses brought back the persecuted after the defeat of the Hyksos Kings (Pastors or Foreign Kings) - the last of whom was Agenor¹² , father of Cadmus and Europe -, there were, among them Phoenicians, mostly from Sidonia (i. e. Tyre and Sidon). The Hyksos were, as it is well-known ¹³ , from Canaan-Phoenicia and were called "Shepherds" of their people. Later, Christ also called Himself the "Good Shepherd" (Jn 10: 1 ff.).

But let us return to Herodotus and say that this ignorant of our problems and those of the Orient ¹⁴ spoke very lightly when he said that the Phoenicians came from the shores of the Sea of Eritrea, meaning the present Red Sea, hence Arabia, and was followed in this by some ancient and even modern historians, including misinformed Lebanese. As a matter of fact, the Ancients, including Herodotus himself ¹⁵ knew many other Eritreas. The allegations of these historians naturally cause surprise, since it is obvious that the Phoenicians, Antiquity's great mariners, gave their name to all the Eritreas known by the Ancients (Martin, HL, p 109) : beside that of the Red Sea (Herodotus, I, 1; VII, 89), we know those of the Atlantic Ocean (Herodotus, I, 202, 205; VII, 63, 69), of Qadesh (Spain), mentioned by Pliny (IV, 37), Strabo (IX, 2, 12) and others ¹⁶ , the Eritrea of Beotia (Homer, Il, 20, 499)¹⁷ , of Greece of whom many have spoken ¹⁸ , of Ionia (Asia Minor)¹⁹ , of the Indian Ocean (Polybius, V, 46, 54; IX, 43)²⁰ and of the Eritrea of the Persian Gulf (Strabo, 16, 3, 4)²¹ . As for the Red Sea, it was called in Antiquity, "Sea of Papyrus" - as in ancient inscriptions, including the Phoenician inscription of Paraiba ²² (Brazil) - and also Red Sea? And because the Phoenicians discovered purple, they wrongly concluded that the Phoenicians came from the Arabian Peninsula!²³

Furthermore, the "Lebanese were always differentiated from the Arabs", wrote Father Martin²⁴ , adding: "and neither the Egyptians nor the Semites in general, ever called the Phoenicians by that name".

No wonder, since the origin of the Phoenicians is from the Mediterranean Basin and certainly not from desert regions, because the people of the Mediterranean Basin differ drastically in their mode of life, customs and civilization? from the people of the desert. Eminent historians established this fact, and we follow in their steps, not because we dislike the Arabs - and how could we who love everybody, dislike them? - but because we wish them good ²⁵ , and are ready to afford them the benefit of our civilization to the utmost. But we will not coax them by saying we are Arabs, because we would be stamping upon Verity in view of obtaining material gains!

We wrote, some years ago ²⁶ an article in which we refute the allegations of a mercenary author who set out to write books that go against all scientific, patriotic and religious norms. In one of these books entitled: "The Bible comes from the Arabian Peninsula (=BCAP) he affirms (p. 14) that he took in consideration toponymy to the exclusion of all the other scientific disciplines. To justify himself, he says that "the field surveys in the Arabic Peninsula are not complete". He consequently listed the names of localities that bear names similar to those found in our country, in particular: Lebanon, Eden, Phoenix, Thor, Sidon, Tyr, Gebeil (Byblos), Arados... But, since he did not find cedars in Arabia, he simply replaced the cedar with 'ar'ar (a tree found in Arabia). He even made of Lebanon a hill between Hijaz, 'Assir and Yemen, and claimed that the Arabs were the founders of the Lebanese cities, feigning ²⁷ to ignore - because he couldn't have ignored it (cf. BCAP) - that the Lebanese cities were much older than those of the Peninsula, and that there are almost everywhere in the world cities whose names resemble those of our cities because our ancestors founded them. Disregarding such nonsense, distinguished archeologists and historians reversed the situation by assuring that the Phoenicians were the only great mariners in Antiquity and that their fleet was the only one capable of navigating the seas and oceans. It was therefore the Lebanese-Phoenicians who founded cities in the Arabian Peninsula and elsewhere. They sometimes were accompanied by Hebrew sailors - especially during the reigns of Hiram the Great and Solomon the Wise (1K 9:28, 10:11) - and/or other peoples whom they civilized during their glorious periods and their successive conquests of the earth. Opposite those whom V. Bérard ²⁸ called Phénicophobes because they were set at disparaging the glories of Lebanon and his true patrimony - and were unfortunately followed by sham Lebanese such as the one we feel repugnance at naming him -, our country counts Phenicophiles (friends of Phoenicia) who studied thoroughly our history and discovered that, in reality, our civilization was "The Civilization", to use the words of Pierre Hubac ²⁹ . They also proved that "our people conquered the world in Peace and Goodwill" and gave the names of our celebrities and cities to various regions and towns in the world, including the Arabian Peninsula, and the opposite is not true! Among these Phenicophiles, let us mention: Samul Bochart ³⁰ , François Lenormant ³¹ , Stéphane Gsell ³² , Father Pierre-Marie Martin ³³ , Victor Bérard ³⁴ , Pierre Hubac ³⁵ , Sabatino Moscati ³⁶ ... and many other European scholars who, without being Phenicophiles, furnished us with important information that enriched our patrimony, while depriving our ancestors of part of the admiration they are entitled to. Moreover, famous Lebanese writers broached the subject with great Devotion.

An example among thousands and we are on the track of the Phoenician conquests that astonished, and still do, the world's greatest minds.

In his very precious work Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssée, Victor Bérard based himself at once on antique inscriptions as well as geographical, topographical, nautical... data to prove that the Phoenicians were the great conquerors of Antiquity and that the Odyssey of Homer - who studied in Tyre, his parent's original homeland who probably emigrated to Greece ³⁷ - is the poetic transposition of a Phoenician periplus. Bérard also gave us a series of onomastic - names of localities - extensions that are very rich, if not exhaustive. To examine the veracity of our assertion, we shall choose, from this succinct survey an example, centered on the name of Phoenix, the father and true Phoenician representative.

It is in the second volume of his above-mentioned work that Bérard ³⁸ examines the words Phoenicia, Phoenicians, Phoenix... and shows that "these names could not be Greek since the Greek language does not form derivatives with the letter 'x'"³⁹ . Let us follow the extensions of these names: Other than our Lebanon-Phoenicia, comprising Syria and Palestine, Athenaeus (IV, 174), quoting Corinna and Bacchylides, gave the name Phoenike to Caria. To this Phoenician Caria, the Ancients annexed Lycia, Pamphylia, Pisidia, Cilicia, hence almost all of maritime Asia Minor. The word Phoenike remained attached to a Carian mountain peak according to Strabo, who mentions another mountain called Phoenix in Rhodes ⁴⁰ . Cyprus also was a Phoenike ⁴¹ . The same applies to Malta and its neighboring isles. "An onomastic extension made the same Phoenike of the Aegean shores and countryside." Moreover, the "names Phoenikous, Phoenike, Phoenix ⁴² are to be found on all the southern or western coasts of the Hellenic domain facing Libya".

"And on the Libyan coast, but a little to the east of Crete - just opposite Carpathos, says Strabo ⁴³ - the Hellenes had their port Phoenikous."

"In front of Malea and Tagyte is the same orientation as Phoenikous the port in the Cythera island, of which Herodotus wanted to make a counter of the Phoenician thalassocracy and one of the sanctuaries founded by the Phoenicians ⁴⁴ ."

"At the extreme southern point of Messina, in the region where Venitians and Franks had, for many centuries, their famous ports of Colon and Modom, there was also a Phoenikous port ⁴⁵."

"In Sicily, Ptolemy knew a Phoenikous port in the South of the eastern littoral near the river Heloros."

At the time when the early Hellenes could "barely catch a glimpse" of the Southern world, the name was transported to the Phoenike of Libya which was the territory of Carthage. As a matter of fact Polyen gives us the name Phoenike to the Carthaginian country, just as Athenaeus did to the Carian country ⁴⁶ .

According to Thucydides ⁴⁷ , the first Phoenician navigations should be carried back to a time anterior to Minos of Crete (XVI-XVth century BC). The Phoenicians and the Carians were then allies.

"Moreover, nothing prevents us considering that off the Italian and Ligurian coasts, the Eolian island Phoenikodes, Ph?nikoussa or Ph?nike and the Stoechade island Ph?nike, were other starting or final points of this onomastic."

We could also find on the Epirean coast a port of this Phoenician-Libyan epoch in the city of Phoenike, which is now connected to the continent by the alluvium ⁴⁸ .

"One can imagine the help the Ph?nikion and Ph?nikis of Béotia can afford to replace the legend ⁴⁹ of Cadmos in its true date in Carthaginian history.

More: It is all the Mediterranean sea, first called Yam El (Sea of God)⁵⁰ by the Phoenicians and then became a Phoenician Sea ⁵¹.

One of the most important stations to classify under the Phoenix vocable is the city of Thor Phoenikon ⁵² : it is the Elim, city of the Gods, of which the Bible ⁵³ speaks of its twelve sources and seventy palm gardens ⁵⁴ ...

This onomastic extension of the word Phoenix is the least that can be said. No wonder then that we wrote about 1000 pages on the Phoenicians, builders of the World One.

Because of their countless vestiges discovered all over the world, many places of origin for the Phoenicians were invented, some of which we already related. And the greatest people of Antiquity sought the honor of belonging to the "superior, divine"⁵⁵ , Lebanese-Phoenician race, spread all over the globe, and the creator of the first "World One"!

In the past, every time we read about a new cradle for our ancestors, we were surprised and sometimes angry. But then we understood that such a matter is rather a source of pride, because it proves not only our presence in the various parts of the world since prehistory, but also that we civilized the world and ruled it by knowledge and friendship. Our innumerable vestiges found in various countries establish this fact. In our manuscript entitled "" Les Phéniciens bâtisseurs du premier Monde Un", we presented many references affirming that we conquered and civilized the world, including the Americas ⁵⁶ , at least since 3000 BC.

Speaking of Samuel Bochart (XXVIIth century), the author of Geographia Sacra, Victor Bérard ⁵⁷ wrote: In his second book, Canaan, Bochart considers the Phoenician colonization and the Phoenician and Punic languages... "Following the example of the legends and the names of localities, and because of an admirable knowledge of all the authors of classical Antiquity..., he was able to reconstitute a Phoenician Mediterranean: in Egypt, in Cilicia, in Cyprus, in Pisidia, in Caria, in Rhodes, in Samos (by the sole enumeration of the thirty six first chapters, we could continue all the periplus of the Interior Sea), everywhere, he found evidence of Sidonian or Tyrian colonization. No littoral escaped his seizure on behalf of the Phoenicians. He even hesitated to deny that America was beyond their practice. He knew that the Gallic language had more than one resemblance with their language." It is said that all the great cities of Europe were founded by the Phoenicians. Thus Paris ⁵⁸ is none other than Faris, the Knight; London also was Phoenician; Denmark was Dan Malek, the King Dan ⁵⁹ .

Almost the cities of Iberia, about a thousand, says Strabo (III, II, 113-114) were built by the Phoenicians, and in his time (1st century), two hundred were still occupied by them. The same applies to the Greek cities founded by Cadmos of Tyre and the Cadmeans ⁶⁰ ... Cadmos also built 100 cities in Libya (Nonnos, II, XIII, 260-265) which he called after his grandmother. Strabo (XVII, 3, 3 and 8), quoting Erastothenes, also said that, before Carthage, the Phoenicians had built on the shores of North Africa 300 emporions...

For lack of space, we will not speak of all the other countries of Europe and elsewhere. We broached the subject in other studies.

And we ended by discovering that our past is unique in greatness and that our country, once known as "Paradise, Eden" (Ez 31:16), the aim of many covetous nations. And so the annalists set about to discover, or invent, to their sponsors or any nation it commissioned them, the honor of being related to our ancestors, or else to invent an origin for the Lebanese-Phoenicians outside Lebanon-Phoenicia ⁶¹. The scholars should have reversed the allegation by proclaiming that only the Lebanese-Phoenicians, unrivalled navigators of Antiquity, could set out from here to the far corners of the world ⁶² , including towards the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and elsewhere. Knowing all this, we were no more surprised to learn that the peoples of Antiquity, especially the great among them, proudly proclaimed their Phoenician origin, and sometimes paid genealogists to draw up for them a "Certificate of Lebanese-Phoenician descent," especially from great Phoenicians, in particular Thor-Hermes of Byblos and his cousins and companions, Canaan-Phoenix, Asklepios-Eshmoun, 'Anat-Athena... our deified heroes, known as the gods"⁶³ . Among the gods of the second and third generations, let us mention Cadmos and the Cadmeans, Homer, Thales, Pythagoras, Zeno, Hippocrates, Euclid... Alexander called the Great (Arrian, II, 18, 1), Julius Caesar, and many others were among those who procured a Phoenician ascent.

And how can this false situation that makes of us Arabic be corrected?

This is not the first time that the Lebanese are struck by the misfortune of having their identity withdrawn to be replaced by that of an invader. At the time of the Ottoman occupants, the gallows were the lot of whoever refused to label Lebanon Ottoman. Recently, the Syrian Minister Khaddam called every Lebanese who did not believe in an Arab Lebanon to leave Lebanon forever. The Syrians are constantly making good on their threat. We hope to be rid of them soon and pray God to keep us from newcomers who, in turn, will seek to crush our identity.

Yes, we are in dire need to correct this situation that forces the Lebanese in a state of falsehood with himself and with his country in perspicacity and courage. But how can this be done? By reverting to the methodology that every objective historian must follow when investigating the origin of a people: to consult, in the first place, these people themselves and their historians. He then may consult "what information other scholars, ancient and modern, may have collected about this people, and seek inspiration from the archeology, available written documents, inscriptions, traditions." Had Herodotus and those like him done this, they would have solved many of the problems pertaining to the origin of the Lebanese-Phoenicians. "But historians were at that time ignorant and relied only upon unreliable yarns. Furthermore, the Phoenicians from whom the Greeks should have learned history, did not know what the Greeks had imputed to them ⁶⁴."

Fortunately, the truth was never stifled, and in every age there were noble messengers to defend it and refute the falsehoods. The ancient Orientals put in doubt the probity of the Greeks and Romans: "They accused and condemned their ignorance." Furthermore, the Greeks and Romans attacked and contradicted each other. Among the Orientals who exposed the ignorance of the Greeks, we shall mention the commentator of Sanchoni Aton of Beirut, Philo of Byblos (born in 42 AD). Philo, supported by Porphyry of Tyre, violently battered the Greeks (SA, 1, 9, 27-28; 1, 10, 8; 1, 10, 40-41), and his antagonist, Eusebius of Caesarea, the "Church's first historian", who reported the extant passages of Sanchoni Aton and their comments, did not contradict him on this point ⁶⁵ . We shall also mention Josephus (Against Apion, chs. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6), the greatest Jewish historian, who not only accused Greek authors, with Herodotus in the lead, of fabricating yarns, but affirmed that the Greeks were indebted in all their writings and knowledge to the Phoenicians, especially to Cadmus and his kinsmen. And the reliable historians, basing themselves upon Sanchoni Aton's passages (I, 10, 7), in which he quotes his antecedent historians to assert that the first two humans "lived in Phoenicia" - as is confirmed by Ezekiel (31:16), who declared that the Garden of Eden was situated between the Cedars of Lebanon -, and on our soil they multiplied, invented and discovered?

And after the Greek authors, including Diodoros Siculus (I, 69), Roman authors, e. g. Cicero (Defense of Flaccus), Tacitus (II, 88), Pliny (III, 6), Juvenal? vied with each other in attacking the guile of the Greeks, especially Herodotus. However, those who have sieved the histories of the Romans, realized that they also were not trustworthy, especially because they relied for their knowledge of the Orient on the Greeks. And, "aspiring to replace our ancestors in the leadership of the world, they piled slander on them"⁶⁶ .

We can conclude from our studies that the Ancients, refuted ahead of us with or without premeditation, the allegations of Herodotus and his equals. As for the modern scholars, of whom we mentioned the most eminent, in particular Father Pierre-Marie Martin, who assured that the Phoenician historians have always affirmed that "the Lebanese are from Lebanon and from nowhere else", and that "they are trustworthy"⁶⁷ .

The names of the Lebanese-Phoenicians are derived from the names of their heroes.

Father Martin affirms ⁶⁸ in his History of Lebanon, that the Phoenician historians proved that the Lebanese-Phoenicians are "natives of their country" and that "since the beginning they lived in Lebanon-Phoenicia and nowhere else". Farther Martin also proved that their most recurrent names: Lebanese, Cananeans, Phoenicians and other appellations, Beirutis, Giblites, Sidonians, Tyrians... "by which they called themselves and of which they were proud", emanated from themselves and not from the Greeks ⁶⁹ . We are mentioning this because some people claim that it was the Greeks who called our ancestors "Phoenicians"! Examining thoroughly this question, Father Martin concluded: "The Greeks were never in the Orient at the time when it is claimed that they named our ancestors Phoenicians". He then adds: "Can we believe that when these foreign merchants came to them, the Greeks immediately invented a name for them, without asking them how they called themselves in their country?" Then, with reference to Stephanus Byzantinus ⁷⁰ and others, he affirms that the name of the Phoenicians is issued from their "father and hero, Phoenix.

For various other reasons it is necessary to differentiate between the Lebanese-Phoenicians and the Arabs.

How much more there is to say! We have discussed them in detail in our book carrying the same title as this memorandum. We proved at length that between the Mediterranean countries geographically similar to Lebanon and those, for example, of Saudi Arabia, the center of Arabity, there is no similitude that can be signaled. As far as race is concerned, nothing binds the Lebanese to the Somalians other than the features inherent to all men. The mode of living of the Lebanese and the other Mediterraneans are also very different from those of the people of Arabia and other desert countries of the interior who have barely emerged from the sand. The Arabic language also is drastically different from the Lebanese language, daughter of Phoenician through Aramaean, the language of Christ. The Koran owes to the Syriac language derived from Aramaean, a third of its vocabulary ⁷¹ ... Arabic also differs from the languages spoken in North Africa whose people demand that their languages be declared at least as official as Arabic.

And this is what we also demand for our language. Anyway, Arabic is no more spoken anywhere: it is arabo-script and not arabo-phone... Teaching it at the expense of the other languages of culture, leads to a stagnation of culture, especially since this language, like any other, carries with it its patrimony which is meager and pertains to the desert that slowly destroys our own patrimony and everything that is not itself...

The religious question is even more arduous. Islam is a State religion in all the Arab and Islamic countries except Lebanon. The Arabs have all sorts of schemes to clean Lebanon of all those who oppose his arabization, including slaughtering since close to a century.

Their scheme consists: 1- to impoverish us in order to force us to sell our land; 2- to drown Lebanon in the sands of foreign Arabs, generally uncultivated and fanatical, who often carried arms against us in order to prevent anyone from speaking of a Lebanese race, especially on the cultural level...

We have examined all these points in other studies.

After sieving the most significant works of the modern, trustworthy and even not so trustworthy, historians we believe that we can reverse the issue and assert that it was the Lebanese, also called Cananeans and Phoenicians - and say all the genealogy of Adam and Noah - who emigrated from their land and settled all over the world which they divided among themselves as is written in Genesis (ch. 10). This is confirmed by Josephus (Ant. Jud., I, I-IV) and all those who wrote about these ancient epochs. We can also assert that "they could not have come from the Arabian Peninsula"; and that "there was never a racial or cultural merger between them and the Arabs". We can especially assert that the so-called "gods" ("Elohim") and "Cabirim" ("Gibourim" or Giants) are Lebanese people who were deified and that their land is Lebanon-Phoenicia and none other ⁷² .

We shall terminate with these words by Melkart-Hercules, the first God-King of Tyre to his descendant Dionysios-Bacchus, the grandson of Cadmus, about their ancestors, during his visit to Tyre: "From the beginning of time, people lived here, a people of a divine progeny; their age is that of the universe"⁷³ .

These words by Melkart are not the fruit of a fertile imagination. They are corroborated by archeology, history and other disciplines, which enable us to say that the "first man was born in Lebanon, and so was the homo sapiens and the homo sapiens religiosus?" It also appears that most of the beginnings of Civilization were inaugurated here. The continuous presence of people on our land exclude the possibility that a broom swept away the original inhabitants of this land in order to replace them with newcomers from Arabia and produce in this land a new race that spontaneously created a civilization and cities of unequalled greatness, either in the Arabian Peninsula or anywhere else!

Extract from May Murr's book: Lebanon-Phoenicia, Land of God, seen through its Prehistory and History, Giants of Prehistories and Histories.

Site Author's Note: Research by the Genographic Project on the origin of man that sampled genetic material from huge numbers of men from around the world proves that 1 in 17 persons from the countries around the Mediterranean are Phoenician -- carry Phoenician blood today.

References:

¹ Martin, History of Lebanon (=HL), Arabic translation by Rachid Chartouni, pp. 96-116; 226-342; 397-422. The original version in French is still manuscript.
² Martin, ?HL, pp. 410, 419. He writes that the Greeks imagined that it was so mentioned by Homer, in the Odyssey, 4, 83 and 84.
³ Martin, HL, p. 103.
⁴ Jean Mazel, 'Avec les Phéniciens (=AP). -- la Poursuite du Soleil sur les Routes de l'Or et de l??tain, Paris, Robert Laffont, 2^nd ed., 1968, pp. 165-174.
⁵ Joseph Sheeban, One White Race, or Following the Gods (= OWR), New York, Philosophical Library, 1963, pp. 113-121.
⁶ The opposite is true says George N. Schoueiri, in La Cl? du Myst?re des ?trusques se trouve au Liban, Beyrouth, ed. FMA, 1995.
⁷ Wagner, Les po?mes mythologiques de l?Edda, French translation, Paris, Druz, 1936, passim.
⁸ We say falsely, because the true "Father of History" is Thor of Byblos ? about whom we wrote several articles ? who lived at the beginning of the third millennium BC. With him began History which he named Tarikh after Erekh, his cousin, son of Canaan, grandson of Noah and builder of the Lebanese city Arqa and the Erek of Mesopotamia (Gn 10:10; Josephus, Ant. Jud., I, VI, 2, 139). It was Eusebius of Caesarea who, in? his Evangelical Preparation, Book I, ch. 9 and 10, reproducing passages of? Sanchoni Aton (XIIIth century BC), abbreviated his work and introduced him to us.
⁹ Martin, HL, pp. 105-106, quoting Herodotus, ?I, 180, 202; II, 8?
¹⁰ Concerning St Jerome and G. Rawlinson, (History of Phoenicia, ondon, 1889) cf. Maan Arab, Tyre, a Phoenecian Metropolis (= TPM), (in Arabic), Beirut, Dar Al-Machrek, 1970, p. ح, notes 12 and 13. As for Victor Bérard, Les Phéniciens et l'Odyssey, in 2 volumes: vol. I: Les Ìles de la Très Verte; vol. II Mer Rouge et Méditerranée, Paris, ed. Colin, 1927, he clarifies in vol. I, p. 252, how and why the appellation Syria came from Tyre. He quotes Kippert to say that the name of the island of Syros is a Greek deformation of the Phoenician word Tyre. He explains this by saying that the Greeks translated the first letter of the Phoenician word either by ?S? or by ?T?, whence the words Syria and Tyria. He adds: It is the name of a Phoenician city, now forgotten in the form of a modest city, under a veil and ?an Arab mask?, but has played the role we know?. He meant the preponderant civilizing role of which he spoke elsewhere.
¹¹ Cf. Hitti, Lebanon in History (= LH), Arabic translation by Anis Freiha, revised by Nicholas Ziadé, published in association with Franklin, New York, 1957; Beirut, 1959, p. 109, n 1.
¹² Samuel Bochart, " Geographia Sacra " (=GS), in 2 tomes, TI: ?Phaleg?; TII: ?Chanaan?,? Frankfurt, ed. J. D. Zunneri, 1674. Cf. T. II, Part 2, ch. 4, The Phoenicians in Egypt.? Hitti, (LH), pp. 84-93, + notes.? Jean B?rard, Les Hyksos, in Syria, Paris, Geuthner, 1952, vol. 29.
¹³ Manethon (fr. 43-49), Egypt?s first historian, quoted by Josephus and J, B?rard, Les Hyksos, pp. 9-13
¹⁴ Martin, (HL, p. 108, n 1) says that the Greeks, including Herodotus, I, 1; 7 and 89, Eusthatius, Festus? believed that the Phoenicians came from the Red Sea, each copying his predecessor. He refutes them after proving that each belied the other.
¹⁵ Herodotus himself mentions 44 sources regarding the Eritreas, 16 of which concern the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean. We have chosen some of the others to include in our coming notes.
¹⁶ Martin, HL, p. 109...
¹⁷ Herodotus, IX, 15, 19.? Thucydides, III, 42. Cf. also Martin, HL, pp. 108-109.
¹⁸ Herodotus, 1, 61-62.? Thucydides, I, 15.? Polybius, XV, 11, 45, 18...
¹⁹ Herodotus, I, 18 and 142; 6, 8.? Pausanias, VII, 5, 5; 16, 6.? Thucydides, III, 24, 26; XXVI, 8, 34.? V. Bérard, PO, II, p. 25-26.
²⁰ Also Herodotus, I, pp., 180 and 202; II, pp., ?8, 158-159.? Martin, HL, pp. 105-106 + notes.? V. Bérard, PO, II, p. 39.
²¹ Strabo, 9, 2, 12; 16, 3, 4.? ?Herodotus, 3, 93; 7, 80.? B?rard, PO, II, pp. 39-40.
²² Cf. Father Emile Eddé, The Phoenicians and the Discovery of America (= PDA), (in Arabic), Beirut, Dar Al-Kitab Al-Lubnani, 1969, pp. 65 ff and our manuscript entitled The Phoenicians discovered America (of about 500 pages).
²³ Herodotus, II, 8; 2, 11; II, 158; 3, 9; IV, 37...
²⁴ Martin, HL, p. 111? with numerous references to this effect.
²⁵ Their ignorance of history has led our politicians to claim that Lebanon is Arab, and this has made of him a tool in the hands of the Arabs and a battlefield to settle their disputes. They spend huge amounts? of money to destroy each other instead of spending it on the advancement of their peoples. They often adopt policies contrary to their interest and commit exactions they would have avoided if they were not under the domination of arabity that works against geographical and historical data and all the verities.
²⁶ Cf. Alfred and May Murr, We wrote... because his book aims at the destruction of Lebanon, An-Nahar Al Arabi Wad-Duwali, 9/11/1985, N^o. 449. We shall call this historian Forger, since we knew long ago that he is a mercenary. Decked with a Lebanese and Christian identity, he accepted to have foreigners (Palestinians from Ramallah and Nablus) to write under his signature another book entitled ?Research on Jesus?, thereby ratifying all the evil they wrote. He even thanked them for this horrible book that attacks even the person of Christ. His book is distinguished by casting a slur on Christian verities and the Lebanese nobleness that respects religions.
This rush towards arabity and its lures that led some authors to falsify scientific data and all the facts, including those relative to God, is incomprehensible to all sensible and straightforward minds.
²⁷ The Forger mentioned the ages of some of these cities and it was obvious they were much more recent than their Lebanese homonyms, meaning no doubt that their inhabitants went to the Peninsula and founded its cities as well as a great number of other cities all over the planet.
²⁸ A word forged by Victor B?rard (PO, I, p. 17) to designate those who calumniated the Phoenicians.
²⁹ Pierre Hubac, ?Carthage ? (=C), Nouvelle ed. Bellenand, Paris, 1952, ?p. 56.
³⁰ Cf. note 12.
³¹ Fran?ois Lenormant, ? La L?gende de Cadmus et les ?tablissements Ph?niciens en Gr?ce ? (=LCEPG), in ?Les Premi?res Civilisations?, II, Paris, Maisonneuve, 1874. Passim.
³² St?phane Gsell, ?Histoire Ancienne de l?Afrique du Nord ? (=HAAN), in 8 Tomes,? Paris, Librairie Hachette, 1913-1928.
³³ Cf. note 1.
³⁴ Cf. note 27.
³⁵ Cf. note 29.
³⁶ Sabatino Moscati, L??pop?e des Ph?niciens (=EDP), translated from Italian by Carlo Sala, Paris, Fayard, 1971.
³⁷ B?rard spoke of it several times. Cf. PO, II, pp. 17, 27, 72, 67, 210, 371, 430-442... Many other authors have proven Homer?s Phoenician identity.
³⁸ B?rard, PO, II, pp. 16-35.
³⁹ Contrary to what is generally believed.
⁴⁰ Strabo, XIV, II, 2.
⁴¹ Strabo, XIV, II, 11.
⁴² Strabo, X, IV,3; B?rard, PO, II, pp. 26 ff.
⁴³ Strabo, X, V,17; B?rard, PO, II, p. 27.
⁴⁴ Herodotus, I, 165; and N 41.
⁴⁵ Pausanias, IV, 34, 12.
⁴⁶ Polyen, V, 3, 6 and N 43.
⁴⁷ Thucydides, I, 8.? B?rard, PO, II, p. 28.
⁴⁸ Strabo, VII, 7, 5 and N 45.
⁴⁹ We should really speak of story instead of legend after all the archeological discoveries made, in particular that of the city of Thebes, the capital of Cadmos of Tyre, inventor of the Alphabet and its propagator in the West which he conquered.
⁵⁰ Cf. the Ugaritic poem Baal and Anat, IV,2, 35...
⁵¹ B?rard, PO, II, p. 34 ff.
⁵² Diodoros Siculus, III, 42.
⁵³ Ex 15:27.
⁵⁴ B?rard, PO, II, pp. 34 ff.
⁵⁵ B?rard, PO, I, p. 231.? Hubac, C, o. 70, quoting Homer and others.
⁵⁶ Cf. Note 22.
⁵⁷ B?rard, PO, I, pp. 119-120.
⁵⁸ B?rard, PO, I, p. 121.
⁵⁹ Zvi Herman, Peuples, Mers, Navires (=PMN), translated from Hebrew by Mil Baver, Paris, Arts et M?tiers Graphiques ? Tel Aviv, Massadah, 1964.
⁶⁰ Cf. Fran?ois Lenormant, La L?gende de Cadmus et les ?tablissements Ph?niciens en Gr?ce, passim.
⁶¹ Regarding the boasting of many peoples that the Phoenicians set out from their land, cf. Martin, HL, pp. 413-414.? Strabo, XVI, 3-4.
⁶² Cf. Martin, HL, pp. 413-414, and especially pp. 419-420, where he mentions that Strabo (1, 2 and 35) refutes all these allegations and affirms that the kings and leaders of the Phoenician world, including Oceania and all the continents, came from Phoenicia.
⁶³ Cf. notes 28 and 29. We have published about 1000 articles on our gods whom we demythologized, i. e. removed them from the domain of mythology and returned them to the domain of history, and more explicitly, of our history. Cf. in the weekly Lebnaan, the articles by May Murr on Thor, Maya and the other gods, and also in the series entitled: ?Most Beautiful Stories of Lebanon-Phoenicia? (= MBSLP), N^o. 4: ?Thor and Maya?.? Cf. May Murr, The Historians of the Third Age of Gold and Felicity of Mankind, or The Millinery of Geniuses. ?We have written many articles on these Lebanese men of genius, e.g. Homer, Thales, Pythagoras, Zeno, Porphyry, Jamblichus, Euclid, Hippocrates... Cf. May Murr, Lebnaan,30/7/1980, No. 239. Cf. May Murr, The Historians of the ?Third Age of the Felicity of Mankind? or ?The Millennium of geniuses?, the Tyrian and Sidonian Homer, Thales, Pythagoras, Zeno, Porphyry, Jamblichus, Euclid, Hippocrates? in the weekly Lebnaan, 30/7/1980, No. 239...
⁶⁴ Martin, ?HL, p. 108, n. 1.
⁶⁵ Cf. Eusebius of Caesarea, Evang. Prep., book I, ch. 9 and 10.
⁶⁶ Cf. Martin, HL, pp. 111, 173, 207, 275, 326, 379, 409-416
⁶⁷ Cf. Martin, HL, pp. 111, 173, 207, 275, 326, 379, 397, 409-416...
⁶⁸ Cf. Martin, HL, pp. 332 ff., 397 ff., 441 ff., 488?
⁶⁹ Martin wrote: ?To say that the Greeks gave their names to the Phoenicians and their cities, is not only an impossible claim, but also a senseless one?, since their names are derived from the name of their heroes. The same applies to the names of their heroes. Cf. HL, pp. 98 ff., 104, 11-114...
⁷⁰ Stephanos Byzantinus, Lexicon, word Phoenix.
⁷¹ Many scholars proved this fact, e. g. Dr Raji Al-Kami Al-Hachimi, Les mots Aram?ens dans le Koran, Revue Al-Hab?s, published by the Ministry of Wakfs and Islamic and Cultural Affairs, Al-Rabat, Morocco, Tome III, study III, pp. 22-52.
⁷² Cf. Martin, HL, pp. 332 ff., especially, pp. 336-342, 387-422.
⁷³ Cf. Nonnus, ?Dionysiacs, 40, 430-435, in which he celebrates the Cadmeans, especially Dionysios-Bacchus, grandson of Cadmus. Cf. also May Murr, ?MBSLP, ?By Your Name I Shall call Tyre.?

© May MURR, translated by Alfred MURR
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THE LEBANESE-PHOENICIANS are from Lebanon-Phoenicia and from nowhere else © by the late May MURR, translated by Alfred MURR Reproduced as is by kind permission of the author and the © Great-Lebanon.

THE LEBANESE-PHOENICIANS are from Lebanon-Phoenicia and from nowhere else © by the late May MURR, translated by Alfred MURR

Reproduced as is by kind permission of the author and the © Great-Lebanon.