GEBAL ge’ bəl (גְּבַל, H1488, boundary; Ugar. Gbl; Egyp. Kubni; Gr. Βύβλος; Akkad. Gubla); GEBALITES, gē’ bel īts; GIBLITES, KJV gĭb’ līts.

1. A Phoen. city on the Mediterranean N of Beirut, called Byblos by the Greeks; modern Jebeil. The inhabitants were called Gebalites (Giblites, KJV, Josh 13:5).

Once a flourishing port and trading center known to the Greco-Roman world as Byblos and to the Assyrians and Babylonians in earlier times as Gubla. Its most valuable export was pine and cedarwood from Lebanon. The city was also noted for shipbuilding and stonecutting.

Excavation began in 1921 at Gebal by Pierre Montet, later joined by Maurice Dunand. The work has revealed successive layers of occupation. Traces of ancient magnificence in the ruins of its wall, castle, and temple were uncovered. Occupation of the site has been traced to Neolithic times. By the latter half of the fifth millennium, villages were in existence all over W Asia, including Gebal. Remains have been found of a people in late Chalcolithic Gezer and Gebal of small, slender, bony structure, long-headed, and delicate of feature. They lived in rectangular or circular huts, used silver for personal ornaments, and buried their dead in large earthen pots.

Late in the fourth millennium, as the protoliterate culture flourished in Mesopotamia, there was widespread cultural exchange. Even at that early period, Egypt was in contact with Gebal. Seal impressions found there suggest that a major route of exchange lay through Pal. and Syria.

In c. 2800 b.c., fire swept through the city causing a setback in its progress, but it was reconstructed on an even grander scale. It was at this time that Egypt was experiencing her great classic flowering—the Old Kingdom period. She had not yet organized an Asiatic empire, but was already protecting her commercial interests there with military force. Gebal was virtually a colony during this period, supplying the cedars of Lebanon, which were of vital importance to Egypt. The temple of Baaltis in Gebal received votive offerings in great quantities from Egypt all through the Bronze Age.

Before the end of the third millennium, Canaanites in Gebal had developed a syllabic script modeled on the Egyp. hieroglyphics. A number of these inscrs. on copper have been found. The names of the kings at the end of the third millennium indicate that the rulers were Semites, prob. Amorites.

At the beginning of the second millennium, the most prosperous period of Egyp. history was about to begin—the Middle Kingdom period. Egypt enjoyed prosperity during the twelfth dynasty that was rarely matched in all her history. Most of Pal. and southern Phoenicia were under Egyp. control at this time. Gebal was an Egyp. colony. Objects found in tombs there bear the cartouches of rulers of the twelfth dynasty. The native princes wrote their names in Egyp. characters and vowed their loyalty to the Pharaoh.

As the Middle Kingdom was coming to an end (c. 1797 b.c.), the twelfth was followed by the weak thirteenth dynasty. There was a brief revival under Neferhotep I (c. 1740-1729), when nominal authority was exercised over Gebal.

During this period Mari reached its zenith (1730-1700) under Zimri-lim and had widespread trade with many cities, including Gebal.

Gebal is mentioned in the Amarna letters. King Rib-addi of Gebal sent more than fifty letters to the king of Egypt proclaiming his allegiance and complaining of imminent invasion by the Habiru. At the beginning of the reign of Rameses II (c. 1290-1224), Gebal was a border fortress for the Egyp. province of Canaan and in 1194 was destroyed by the Sea Peoples in their march on Egypt. A period of extreme Egyp. weakness followed, c. 1080, so that Gebal, which was almost as Egypt. as Egypt herself, received the royal representative, Wen-Amon with mockery and insolence, demanding cash for the trees he had been sent to acquire for constructing a sacred barge.

The sarcophagus of Ahirim of Gebal (c. 1000) was discovered with inscrs. of a Phoen. type script. These inscrs. use the twenty-two consonants of the Heb. alphabet and are written from right to left. The Gebalites were considered master builders and able seamen (1 Kings 5:18; Ezek 27:9). Joshua 13:5 mentions their land as not conquered.

Gebal paid tribute to a number of the Assyrian kings during their era of domination. Tribute was paid to Ashurnasirpal II (883-859), Tiglath-pileser III (745-727), Sennacherib (705-681), Esarhaddon (681-669), and Ashurbanipal (669-627). The Gebalites also were dominated in turn by the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The remains of a castle built by the Crusaders in the 11th cent. a.d. are there.

2. A geographical area S of the Dead Sea, near Petra of Edom (Ps 83:7).

Bibliography E. Robertson, “Jebeil,” EBr, XII (1957), 985; J. Bright, A History of Israel (1959); L. Cottrell, ed., The Concise Encyclopedia of Archaeology (1960), 123; M. Noth, The Old Testament World (1966), 213, 214; Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible (1967).