How important really was ancient Lebanon in the history of wine?
McGovern: Although modern scholars are understandably skeptical about the often contradictory and fantastic tales of classical writers, a recurring element running through many accounts has Dionysos, the Greek manifestation of the Near Eastern wine-god, voyaging from Phoenicia to Crete as a daring seafarer. What could be a better metaphor for the Phoenician prowess in sailing the Mediterranean, and carrying not just the Near Eastern wine culture to Greece, Italy, Spain, and Carthage, but the western alphabet itself, the Royal Purple dye industry, and much more to other parts of the world. Long before the Phoenicians, the Canaanites and Natufians, as far back as 11,000 BP (Before Present), had probably already begun to make the ships that brought the wine culture to Egypt around 3000 B.C. We read in the 14th-13th century B.C. Ugaritic texts discovered at modern Ras Shamra (near Latakia) in Syria, part of Canaan, that “daylong they pour the wine…must-wine, fit for rulers. Wine, sweet a
