YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

June 10, 2009

On the Lebanon cedar

When I was looking at illustrations of the national flags the other day, I noticed a densely-leafed tree designed in the center of the national flag of Lebanon. “What kind of tree is this?” I thought, then immediately came to know from its country name, “This must be so-called Lebanon cedar”, so I searched it in the Internet to have found I was right.

http://www.sarago.co.jp/i/pictorial/pct-lb.html

Even so, this is a strange “cedar”. Speaking of a cedar in Japan, we think of a tall tree growing straight upward. Contrarily, Lebanon cedars are more like cherry or pine trees to make us think of a giant tree with a trunk and branches rudely crossing each other. I couldn’t wait to know more about it, so I tried to get information, and then I knew I had a right hunch.

Lebanon cedars, like Himalayan cedars, are called “cedar” because of similar shape of the leaves with so-called “cedar” but actually they do not belong to the cedar family but to the larch subfamily of Pinaceae. I found out they were entirely different in species from Japanese cedars. Surprisingly, its height reaches as high as forty meters with a trunk four meters around, and sometimes lives three thousand years.

According to “Naturalis Historia” (Plinius), it says, “The tree sap can preserve a dead body” and so in ancient Egypt they seemed to have used the refined sap of the tree to prevent decay of mummy. This fact tells us it is a precious tree but how come it is designed even in a national flag? It couldn’t stop my curiosity any longer, which was deepening my question still further until I reached out my hand for the Old Testament for the first time in years. The Old Testament is the only book that I was presented from Dr. H. Itokawa. It was given to me on the day of Apollo 11’s landing on moon as a reward for my brush stroking Chinese characters of “Ranjatai” (a kind of incense) at his office in Roppongi, Tokyo.

Be that as it may, after the death of Moses, his successor Joshua crossed the Jordan River by leading Israeli people to have stormed their way into Canaan and took control of Jericho on the other side of the Dead Sea, from where as a base he finally conquered whole land of Canaan to have built the foundation of unified kingdom. It is reported as of B.C.2150.

Through the years of moderate tribe alliances over a quarter- century, the first formal kingship collapsed due to arrogance of King Sauru in only two years and Israeli people faced the crisis from attack by Philistines, from which Israel was saved by the boy David. The boy grew up to have become the King of South Israel (Judah) at the age of thirty and eventually subjugated ten tribes of the north under control to have finally established the unified Israeli Kingdom for the first time in history. This was in B.C.993.

David realized, during his twenty-eight years’ reign, the greatest empire in Israeli history with Jerusalem as its capital by unifying territories from Syria to the north down to Edom to the south and Ammon and Moab to the east; “from the Euphrates to Aqaba” so to be said.

In the age of next King Solomon, Israel enjoyed the greatest prosperity. I very much regret that I have to skip the relative story on Queen of Sheba here, but what made the name of Solomon famous is building Tabernacles, in which he intensely persisted to the use of Lebanon cedar.

According to the “Kings 1 and 2”, King Solomon anxiously asked King Hiram of Tyre in Phoenicia (present city of Tyre in south Lebanon) to hew out Lebanon cedars in large numbers for building the temples. It is amazing indeed that he employed thirty thousand men for that purpose and sent each ten thousand unit to Lebanon as one-month shift. This is how he built many temples emphatically called “Houses of Lebanon woods”.

Lebanon cedars are said to be homogeneous in intensity suitable for constructing large structures. This is the reason why the then Phoenicia could build strong city-states with Lebanon in its center and assumed the hegemony in the Mediterranean. The reason why Phoenicians could monopolize sea trade of the Mediterranean was attributable to an excellent navigation of large ships made from Lebanon cedars. Lebanon cedars were very much valued in building the temples not only at Syria/Palestine but also at Thebes in ancient Egypt and Persepolis in far Persia. It was the source of wealth for Lebanon. Because of cutting down the trees continuously for over five hundred years, the number of trees remaining as of the year 2004 is twelve hundred among which about four hundred are over twelve hundred years of tree age.

At “Quadi Qadisha (the Holy Valley) and cedar woods of God” of Lebanon Mountains in central Lebanon, Lebanon cedars are still growing naturally, which was declared as a World Heritage site.

Incidentally, King Solomon died in B.C.926 and that was the end of the reign of prosperity over forty years. It is a well-known historical fact that in the following two centuries Israel repeated divisions and confusions of the nation to have been finally terminated of its existence as a sovereign country by emerging dominant Assyria.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

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