Cedars of God

The Cedars of God (Arabic: أرز الربّ Arz ar-Rabb "Cedars of the Lord"), located in the Kadisha Valley of Bsharre, Lebanon, is one of the last vestiges of the extensive forests of the Lebanon cedar that thrived across Mount Lebanon in antiquity. All early modern travelers' accounts of the wild cedars appear to refer to the ones in Bsharri; the Christian monks of the monasteries in the Kadisha Valley venerated the trees for centuries. The earliest documented references of the Cedars of God are found in Tablets 4-6 of the Epic of Gilgamesh, six days walk from Uruk.
The Phoenicians, Israelites, Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, Arabs, and Turks used Lebanese timber. The Egyptians valued their timber for shipbuilding, and in the Ottoman Empire their timber was used to construct railways.
The mountains of Lebanon were once shaded by thick cedar forests and the tree is the symbol of the country. After centuries of persistent deforestation, the extent of these forests has been markedly reduced.
It was once said that a battle occurred between the demigods and the humans over the beautiful and divine forest of Cedar trees near southern Mesopotamia. This forest, once protected by the Sumerian god Enlil, was completely bared of its trees when humans entered its grounds 4700 years ago, after winning the battle against the guardians of the forest, the demigods. The story also tells that Gilgamesh used cedar wood to build his city.
Over the centuries, cedar wood was exploited by the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, Arabs, and Turks. The Phoenicians used the cedars for their merchant fleets. They needed timbers for their ships and the Cedar woods made them the “first sea trading nation in the world”. The Egyptians used cedar resin for the mummification process and the cedar wood for some of “their first hieroglyph bearing rolls of papyrus”. In the Bible, Solomon procured cedar timber to build the Temple in Jerusalem. The emperor Hadrian claimed these forests as an imperial domain, and destruction of the cedar forests was temporarily halted.
All early modern travelers' accounts of the wild cedars of Lebanon appear to refer to the Bsharri cedars.
Pierre Belon visited the area in 1550, making him the first modern traveler to identify the Cedars of God in his ‘’Observations’’. Belon counted 28 trees:
Leonhard Rauwolf followed in 1573-75, counting 24 trees:
Jean de Thévenot counted 23 trees in 1655:
Laurent d'Arvieux in 1660 counted 20 trees; and Henry Maundrell in 1697 counted 16 trees of the “very old” type:
Jean de la Roque in 1722 found 20 trees. In 1738 Richard Pococke provided a detailed description.
From the 19th century onwards, the number of writers recording their visits increased substantially, and the number of cedars counted by the writers was in hundreds. Alphonse de Lamartine visited the place during his travel in Lebanon (1832–33), mentioning the cedars in some texts. In 1871, Edward Henry Palmer of the Palestine Exploration Fund described the cedars as follows:
Concern for the protection of the biblical "cedars of God" goes back to 1876, when the 102-hectare (250-acre) grove was surrounded by a high stone wall, paid for by Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein (often erroneously attributed to Queen Victoria of Great Britain, as Augusta Victoria was Queen of Prussia and hence ‘Queen Victoria’) to protect saplings from browsing by goats. Nevertheless, during World War I, British troops used cedar to build railroads.
Henry Bordeaux came in 1922 and wrote, Yamilé, a story about the place.
Time, along with the exploitation of the wood and the effects of climate change, has led to a decrease in the number of cedar trees in Lebanon. However, Lebanon is still widely known for its cedar tree history, as they are the emblem of the country and the symbol of the Lebanese flag. The remaining trees survive in mountainous areas, where they are the dominant tree species. This is the case on the slopes of Mount Makmel that tower over the Kadisha Valley, where the Cedars of God are found at an altitude of more than 2,000 metres (6,600 ft). Four trees have reached a height of 35 metres (115 ft), with their trunks reaching 12–14 metres (39–46 ft).
In 1998, the Cedars of God were added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
The forest is rigorously protected. It is possible to tour if escorted by an authorized guide. After a preliminary phase in which the land was cleared of detritus, the sick plants treated, and the ground fertilized, the "Committee of the Friends of the Cedar Forest" initiated a reforestation program in 1985. The Committee planted 200,000 cedars, with 180,000 surviving. These efforts will only be appreciable in a few decades due to the slow growth of cedars. In these areas the winter offers incredible scenery, and the trees are covered with a blanket of snow.
The Cedar Forest of ancient Mesopotamian religion appears in several sections of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The Lebanon Cedar is mentioned 103 times in the Bible. In the Hebrew text it is named ארז and in the Greek text (LXX) it is named κέδρου. Example verses include: