Lebanon, A Name Through 4000 Years: Entity and Identity
Source:Daily Star Newspaper
In 2000, Antoine Khoury Harb, secretary general of the Fondation du
Patrimoine Libanais, published what was to be his doctoral thesis. He
didn't suffer from a lack of ambition: the scope of his investigation
was nothing less than the historical nature of Lebanon's national
identity right up through the modern era.
Recently, thanks to the AUB Alumni Association in the US, Harb's work
has been translated into an English edition, entitled, "Lebanon, A
Name Through 4000 Years: Entity and Identity." The association had
been dismayed by what it saw as the US government's questioning of
Lebanon's identity and right to its territory, and saw the book as a
highly important corrective capable of setting the record straight.
Five hundred copies of the English edition were mailed to the US
Congress this New Year's as proof that Lebanon is hardly
the "geographic mistake" former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
once claimed it to be.
Undaunted by torrential rains, a handful of history lovers made it to
the Convent of the Franciscaines in Badaro on Feb. 16 to listen to
Harb present an overview of the material in his book.
In 1920, Harb began, the Lebanese delegation to the Peace Conference
demanded, in the name of the Lebanese people, the restoration of
Lebanon to its "natural and historical borders," a claim then granted
by General Gouraud when he proclaimed the "Grand Liban." To the
question of the nature of these borders, history gives an unambiguous
answer: the two mountain ranges extending, to quote the Bible, "from
the mountain of Baal-Hermon to the Entrance of Hamat" (Judges III,
3).
Awed by its snowy peaks, the desert populations of the ancient Middle
East unanimously bestowed upon this country a name derived from the
root LBN, which meant "white" in all the languages of the region. The
Lebanese are therefore among the few, if not the only, people who
bear the name of their land and not the other way around. Harb here
emphasized an underrated concept: Lebanon is not a historical entity,
but a geographic one, and whereas history is a variable, geography is
a constant.
Harb has gone through all the texts of the ancient Orient, searching
for references to Lebanon by name. The earliest mention of the name
is as old as writing itself, so we can only guess at how much older
it may be: It is found in the of the 12 tablets of the Epic of
Gilgamesh, dating from 2900 BC. There it is written Laabnana, and
preceded by a character that indicates the name refers to
a "mountain."
The same mountain-country is also mentioned by all the other cultures
of the period and by those that came later: Egyptian, Accadian,
Sumerian, Hittite, Hebrew, Arab, etc. We find it in the texts of the
library of Ebla, 2400 BC, and of the Assyrian king Shamsi-Adad, who
wrote in the 18th century BC : "I have erected my name and my stela
in the territory of Laban on the shores of the Great Sea."
It is mentioned again in Egyptian texts, especially in the account of
the journey of Wen-Amon, an envoy of the Pharaoh.
When Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Levant in 605 BC, he left a little-
known stela in Wadi Brisa, Hermel, claiming: "I made this country
happy. I made it so that the inhabitants of Lebanon live together in
safety and nobody bothers them."
As for the Bible, the Old Testament contains no fewer than 75
instances of the name Lebanon, and almost as many of its cedars. Both
land and tree were regarded by the Hebrews as divine, and evoked the
highest praise. On the other hand, the New Testament does not mention
Lebanon once: instead, it speaks of Phoenicia, the Greek nickname
used by embryonic Europe to designate the country.
Evidence of the name Lebanon has been found in Europe however,
attesting to the parallel existence of LBN and Phoenicia: for
instance, a seventh century BC artifact in Cyprus mentions "Baal
LBNN." Nine Roman emperors struck coins mentioning "Libanon." In the
days of Byzantium, maps were drawn that name Phoenice Parhalus,
or "Phoenicia of the shore," and Phoenicie Libanensis, "Lebanese
Phoenicia," whose capital was Damascus (Syria defined then as two
states north of this entity).
Of the numerous Arabic texts, Harb only mentioned one by Al-Taraby, a
historian of the third century best known for his commentary on the
life of the Prophet. Taraby stated that stones from Mount Lebanon
were used in the construction of the Kaaba, and that Lebanon was
venerated by the Arabs along with three other sacred mountains the
Sinai, the Mount of Olives and Ararat.
To this geographical survey, Harb added a word about the human
element. "People seem to think that some sort of cataclysm emptied
the country of its original inhabitants. Why?" he asked. "The
original, prehistorical stock was never driven away. We have, in
Lebanon, an indigenous population that has been absorbing foreign
elements for over 4000 years."
Hopefully the book will achieve its educational objectives. It is not
just the ignorance of foreign politicians that is worrisome, however.
The lecturer deplored the problem of education in Lebanon itself."Students are not made aware of the country's ancient identity, or
made proud of it," Harb said. "They are made to think of it as
insignificant in the midst of much larger nations." Yet of all the
world's nations, Lebanon's name is the oldest. Its borders were
recognized long before the rise of politics. How can we not embrace
such a heritage with the respect it is due?
-----------------------------------------------
Ambitious scholar lays waste to the notion of Lebanon s `geographical
mistake' in new work Doctoral thesis is translated into English, sent
to US politicians
By Joumana Medlej,
Special to The Daily Star Newspaper
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