Byblos Through the Ages

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With the approval and encouragement of the excavator, Mr. Maurice Dunand, Mrs Jidejian has written a book which meets the highest standard of up-to-date scholarship while yet presenting and admirably lucid and lively account of the millennial life of this remarkable city. G. Hanfmann This beautiful volume performs a quite indispensable function. Not only in English, as the author modestly says, but not in any language has there ever appeared a documented survey of the whole results of the excavations of Jubayl. Mrs. Jidejian gathers together all available information from any source, including inscriptions and histories with the relevant parts reproduced in all desirable fullness. But it is chiefly the excavated materials and the artifact-chronology for which her ample footnotes, neatly running along the inner margin instead of at the bottom, furnish a treasury which all archaeologists will acclaim. Robert North, Orientalia 38, Rome, 1969 Mrs. Jidejian has written an excellent survey, based on primary sources, of the more than 6000 years of Byblos' history. This is popularization of the finest sort, neither pre-masticated for the reader nor too abstruse for utility. To those who vaguely remember Byblos as part of Phoenicia, this book should come as a revelation. Alan R. Samuels, Graduate Library School, Pratt Institute Brooklyn, Library Journal (February 1, 1970). Although much has been published about Byblos, the results are scattered throughout archaeological, historical and philological literature and therefore difficult of access to all but the specialist. Now the long-felt need for a synthesis has been met by Mrs. Jidejian. This most useful and interesting book concludes with a list of kings of Byblos... High praise must be given to the production of this handsome volume. Dianna Kirkbride, Antiquity 44, Cambridge, March, 1970