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Who Are You?
RACHELLE GEORGES
Byzantium & Phoenicia ~ 400 Years of Love
As Byzantium was the wealthiest nation in Europe and Western Asia, it led much of the world in art, jurisdiction, trade and architecture. Phoenicia had a big contribution to the luxury lifestyle of the Romans and later Byzantines and to their flourishing culture. In this article, I will take you to the beautiful country of Lebanon, where the first converts to Christianity outside the Jews lived, to the “Mother of Laws” Beirut, to the city of Tyre, the hometown of the prized purple dye worn by the imperial Byzantine family, and to the ancient city of Sarepta, where the most expensive wines were produced and praised by Byzantium’s most influential ascetic bishops.
Born in Beirut on the eve of the Lebanese Independence Day, I grew up with an immense love to my Phoenician heritage. Phoenicia was the birthplace of the alphabet from which the Greek and later the Romans borrowed extensively to create their own. My beloved country was later influenced by a mosaic of ruling empires throughout thousands of years. Among them, the greatest empire of all times, the Byzantine Empire, which was able to fulfill the “Byzantine Dream” long before the Americans did.
Between the 4th and 7th centuries, the Phoenician coast was under the domination of the Byzantine Empire. Lebanon corresponds more or less to the ancient Roman region of Phoenice Prima (I), which went from Arados to Ptolemais and included the plain of Beqaa. This area was part of the Byzantine Empire until the Arab conquest in the 7th century.