Six thousand years ago, a Mediterranean race already inhabited Byblos, the doyenne of the cities of Lebanon.

What proves it? Why, the discoveries!

Who digs, finds.

And so the archaeologists have found.

A jar with a man inside.

A copper blade.

And olive pits.

Let us bring all this to life a little; we shall see more clearly.

The copper blade hops up, climbs the wall, fixes itself there, and turns calendar! The Copper Age: 6,000 years.

The men in the jars are surely not Ali Baba's forty thieves, who ended in jars of boiling oil. At Byblos they number two hundred.

And Madame first: four carnelian beads?... Silver rings?... One can well see where all that must have nestled! Come now, do not keep us waiting... unveil yourself, Madame! Peekaboo!

Now for Monsieur: a long, long head... bands squeezed his head when he was a child! And for reasons entirely to his honor! In antiquity, did people not imagine that by deforming the head in this way they acquired prudence and warlike courage?

Relations between Egypt and the Lebanese coast are cordial. In an automatic, alternating movement that calls to mind a jacquemart, the Pharaohs offer vases of silver, the Phoenician kings offer cedars.

A decrepit Ramses II, on a stela of the Nahr-el-Kalb, will remain the sole vestige of Egyptian glory in Lebanon.

Curtain.

And on stage for the next tableau.