THE BUILDER JANUARY 1918

GIBLIM

Who were the Giblimites and where were they from?
J. W. K., Illinois.

We shall let Brother Robert Morris answer your question by citing
an account of his visit to Gebal, which first appeared in "The
Evergreen," a Masonic journal published at Dubuque, Iowa, in 1868.
Dr. Morris' description of his visit follows:

The town of Gebal lies about twenty-four miles up the coast from
Beyrout. It stands upon an easy and regular slope from the sea,
eastward, the slope extending about two miles along the coast, and
from one to two miles back. All this space and more, was once
thronged with Temples, palaces and other splendid erections, the
remains of which in granite, marble and Liboman limestone are
visible in every stone fence, upon the surface, and appear in
excavations at distances varying from ten to thirty feet. But now
Gebal is a poor and forlorn little village of five hundred
inhabitants. There is not one edifice standing that has the least
attraction, unless it be the old Maronite Church, and that does not
date much beyond the Crusaders. The soldiers constitute a force of
about one hundred and fifty red-legged Turkish Zouaves, who live in
some new buildings, the remnants of more costly structures; while
the grand old Castle next the sea, is suffered to fall into
irreparable decay. Desolation and neglect are written upon all the
remains of Gebal.

Gebal derived its name originally from the hill on which it stood.
The Greeks changed the name to Byblos, but in this case, as in many
others, the title imposed by the conquerors fell into oblivion,
while the original name was retained. Gebal gave its name to the
country around it, which in Joshua XIII, 5, is termed "the land of
the Giblites;" this, it will be remembered, was more than fourteen
centuries before Christ, or 3,300 years ago. In the days of Solomon
the people of Gebal were the most skillful sailors and artists
under the dominion of King Hiram. So eminent were they in
architecture that the word "Giblites" in Hebrew is translated
"Stone-squarers" a most remarkable circumstance. (Read I Kings, v.
18). In the tremendous denunciations by Ezekiel against all
Phoenicia, he says, concerning the city of Tyre "the ancients of
Gebal and the wise men thereof were in thee, thy calkers." (Read
Ezekiel XXVII, 9). This was written about four hundred years after
the building of Solomon's Temple, and refers to the city I am now
describing.

My visit to Gebal as it was the first of my more extended Masonic
explorations, has impressed itself more deeply upon my mind than
any other visit can be expected to do. Here I find upon the
monstrous ashlars of Phoenician ages (hewn stones eighteen feet
long and upwards), the distinguishing mark, the "rebate" or "bevel"
of which I have so much read, but now for the first time in my life
seen. This is the "Mason's mark" of ancient Craft Masonry. Our
fathers wrought them and set them up in useful places in great
edifices and we, their lineal descendants in the mystical line,
have not forfeited our inheritance therein. The stones themselves
strike an American, unused to such architectural prodigies, as
enormous. They are twice as heavy as any wrought ashlar I had ever
seen.

Gebal is full of the days of Hiram. Hundreds and thousands of
granite columns are here, both of the red and white varieties,
taken from the quarries of Egypt, with all the enormous labor which
the working of that primitive stone requires; brought a thousand
miles down the Nile, shipped thence on Phoenician vessels or rafts
to this coast, landed here, drawn up this steep hill by human
hands, and reared up, doubtless, with shoutings and rejoicings;
thousands of them I say are here from twelve to thirty inches in
surface as smooth and unaffected by the weather as on the day they
left Egypt, two, three or four thousand years ago. They prop up the
stalls in the bazaars; they sustain the filthy roofs of stables;
they are built into the military castle and other public buildings
in numbers; they are worked into stone walls; in short they are
used with a profuseness that shows the inexhaustible number of them
that lie among the ruins.

It is but a brief seven miles east of this place that Aphaca, the
principal seat of the worship of Adonis or Tammuz, existed for an
indefinite period. This was the original Freemasonry of the heathen
and that upon which King Solomon engrafted the revealed precepts
given to his fathers upon Sinai. As the wild stock into which the
inspired Word was engrafted, these Rites of Tammuz deserve the
attention of Masonic writers. This is not the place to enlarge upon
the theme but I must be permitted to say that a system which had
the favor and support of the wisest and best cultivated o the
human race for two thousand years, that led to the cultivation of
the fine Arts as they have never been cultivated since, and that
was thought worthy by so far-reaching a mind as King Solomon's, of
adoption and incorporation into the true theology, cannot have been
altogether vile. That by the age of Constantine it may have become
so corrupt that zealous reformer thought it necessary to uproot the
last traces of it, is quite likely; but the same thing may be said
of the prevailing system of Christianity a few centuries later. By
the age of Constantine, the Rites of Adonis had probably
accomplished whatever good was involved in them, but they must have
presented many innocent and pure traits to attract the admiration
of a Solomon. It was then, doubtless, that this wide spread system
of worship gave to the poet his idea of the Age of Gold.

I reserve to this place, however, to justify Freemasons in
selecting Gebal as one of their seven prominent Masonic Localities.
It is, that here was the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences. Here in
the days of Hiram, the Widow's Son, was a congregation of earth's
wisest (let us believe earth's best also), to whom a seeker of
knowledge like himself could come for instruction and where such a
genius could be fitly schooled. From this center of learning went
the men who planned that unparalled Temple, across the hills
eastward, that crowns the plateau of Boalbec; just as from here
went southward down the coast, to build a matchless Fane on Mount
Moriah at Jerusalem. The Paphian Temple on the Island of Cyprus,
yonder, which was thought in its day unapproachable for beauty,
doubtless received its inspiration from those men, as many a
temple, palace and stronghold did during a succession of ages. I
stood within the tombs of some of these Giblites--excavations
painfully chiseled in the hard, blue limestone of yonder hills; I
saw a row of their stone coffins (Sarcophagi) opened. I purchased
many of their funeral lamps, scarabaei, and other tokens of their
faith, and coming back to my house-top, I walk and muse upon the
hopes embodied in these emblems. Hopes of some kind (the
resurrection and the soul's immortality) we know these old Masons
had; the rites handed down through so many generations from them to
us clearly prove that. But a resurrection to what? an l an
immortality for what ? what secret was so heled within these
emblems of theirs, what made them so anxious to express it in
outward marks but to conceal it, even at the risk of its being
forever lost, as to its esoteric meaning?

Did he who prepared the rituals of the Select Master's Degree have
in mind that exquisite passage from an English poet ? 

Silence and darkness, solemn sisters, twins,
From ancient night, who mark the tender thought 
To reason, and on reason build resolve,
That column of true majesty in man.

The "twenty-two from Gebal" who constituted so large a portion of
the mystic number "twenty-seven" in a Lodge of Select Masters, were
of course drawn from this city, and each of them must have seen, as
I see today, this enormous ashlar that forms the base of the old
castle wall. It is nearly twenty feet long and broad and deep in
proportion. To whom can I dedicate it with so great propriety as to
King Solomon himself, who ordered a number of stones cut upon this
model, bevelled as this is, and built into the foundation of the
Temple wall on Mount Moriah, as may be seen to this day.

Before leaving Gebal I sought out the entrance to one of the great
Phoenician tombs, carved out of the face of the cliffs, high above
the town, and there cut deeply with my chisel the Square and
Compass, dedicating it to a number of active, working and renowned
members of the Craft.
