The Byblos figurines or Phoenician statuettes are approximately 1,500–2,000 ex-voto statuettes found in ancient Phoenician temples in Lebanon, primarily in Byblos, but also in Kamid al lawz. The statuettes date to the second millennium BC and are made of bronze, silver, or copper alloy.[1][2][3] The Byblos figurines are considered to represent the best example of their kind across the Levant.[4][2]
Most of the figurines were found in the Temple of the Obelisks, in which 20 votive deposits and pitchers containing a variety of such figurines were found, along with a smaller, but important group of them found in the neighboring Temple of Baalat Gebal.[5][1][3] The figurines have been adopted to represent the Lebanese Tourism Ministry.[6]
- ^ a b Hakimian, Suzy (2008). "Byblos: Standing Figures". Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art. pp. 52–53. ISBN 978-1-58839-295-4.
More than fifteen hundred male figurines...
- ^ a b Seeden 1980, p. 36.
- ^ a b Aubet, Maria Eugenia (31 January 2013). Commerce and Colonization in the Ancient Near East. Cambridge University Press. pp. 240–. ISBN 978-0-521-51417-0.
The most characteristic assemblage of offerings is without doubt the bronze figurines representing Baal, many of them covered in gold plate. Almost 2,000 figurines of this type have been found — an important group coming from the Temple of Baalat Gebal — the majority in the Temple of the Obelisks, where more than twenty votive deposits and pitchers with figurines of different typologies have been found
- ^ Philip 1988, p. 193.
- ^ WorldWide: Lebanon, Biblical Archaeology Review 34:5, September/October 2008
- ^ Steiner, Margreet L.; Killebrew, Ann E. (2014). The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of the Levant: C. 8000-332 BCE. OUP Oxford. pp. 441, 465–. ISBN 978-0-19-921297-2.