About
A name from the oldest port of the Levant
Byblos International Co. is a licensed import and export company based in Damascus, Syria. We take our name from one of the great ports of the ancient world.
Our name
Byblos
Byblos, known today as Jbeil and in ancient texts as Gubla, stands on the coast of the Levant, in the land of Canaan. People have lived there since Neolithic times, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
For centuries it was the chief harbour for the cedar of Lebanon’s mountains, shipped by sea to Egypt, and the goods of Egypt came back to the Levant through it. It was one of the great ports of the ancient Mediterranean.
What Byblos stands for
A port between shores
The people of the Canaanite coast, whom the Greeks called Phoenicians, treated the sea as a road rather than a border. From independent cities such as Byblos, Sidon and Tyre they built a trading network that reached across the Mediterranean.
The written word
The alphabet developed at Byblos, and almost all of the earliest known Phoenician inscriptions come from there. Because papyrus passed through its harbour, the Greeks gave the city’s name to papyrus itself, and from it came biblion, a book.
What the name means to us
We chose the name because it describes our work: connecting Syria with markets across the sea in both directions, and getting right the documents every shipment depends on, as the merchants of Byblos did thousands of years ago.
Through time
- Neolithic
First settlement on the coast at Byblos.
- 3rd millennium BCE
Chief harbour for the cedar shipped to Egypt.
- 10th century BCE
The earliest Phoenician alphabet inscriptions, among them the sarcophagus of King Ahiram.
- Today
Byblos International Co., Damascus.
Company details
Byblos International Co.
- Activity
- Licensed import and export company
- Address
- Golden Tower, Dahiyat Qudsaya, Damascus, Syria
- Phone
- +963 939 706 105