Lebanon THE CEDAR AS A CULTURAL ASSET

The cedar, Lebanon’s national emblem, is an important asset in the country’s national heritage. At first sight it may seem strange that something belonging to the vegetable kingdom should be part of the cultural patrimony. But, as M. Joseph Chami rightly says in an interesting study which inspired this article, the cedar can be classified as an archaeological monument. The 400 cedars of Becharreh are just as valuable historical remains as the ruins of Byblos, Baalbek or Tyre. What is more, they are still-living witnesses of the time when Hiram-Abi of Tyre built the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.


In his book on Carthage and its Phoenician antecedents, Pierre Hubac writes: “The cedar is precious, more than precious, it is sacred. In Egypt, the cedar is the Zed tree, the tree that is a god, it is Osiris. It is also incorruptible material that bestows immortality. It is the wood for religious objects. Later, the cedar was to remain the religious wood par excellence: the cedar is the Church. For Islam, the cedar is the sacred wood, the pure wood...”
In nearly all religions and in most literature the cedar - not just any cedar - but the Cedar of Lebanon, has a place apart. It is an object of veneration. It is also a subject of meditation, comparison, exaltation.




All Eastern travelers speak of it, but Lamartine gives the most beautiful description of it: “The Cedars of Lebanon, he says, are the most famous natural monuments in Universe. Religion, poetry and history have all celebrated them because of the reputation for magnificence and holiness that these prodigies of vegetation have enjoyed since the earliest antiquity...These ancient witnesses of past ages know history better than does history itself...”. The Cedar of Lebanon is mentioned in the works of Ovid, in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, in Horace and Persius. There are references to it in Egyptian inscriptions, on Babylonian and Assyrian Steles, in the Universal History of Diodorus Siculus, on the monuments of Greece and Rome and, of course, in Phoenician inscriptions.






It is mentioned in 70 different passages in the Bible. The Prophet Ezekiel gives a moving description of the “Tree of God”: “...a Cedar of Lebanon with fair branches and a shadowing shroud, and of a high stature, and his top was among the thick boughs. The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running about his plants... Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field... All the fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations...nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty. I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches, so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.”





The book of Kings describes the building of the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem by engineers and workmen sent by Hiram the King of Tyre. There was a lavish use of cedar wood: “And he built the walls of the house within with boards of cedar, both the floor of the house and the walls of the ceiling. And he built twenty cubits on the sides of the house both the floor and the walls with boards of cedar, he even built them for it within, even for the most holy place... And the cedar of the house within was carved with knobs and open flowers: all was cedar, there was no stone seen.”.



Isaiah uses the cedar to point a moral when he says that: “ it is the Lord that deals severely with all pride and arrogance, with all greatness, with all the cedars of Lebanon, high and lofty”.
The Psalms tell us that “the righteous shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon”.



The most beautiful of all love songs, the Song of Solomon, describes the beloved as follows: “His countenance is a Lebanon, excellent as the cedars”.
Such is the place occupied by the Cedar of Lebanon in the religious and literary monuments of humanity, a place so important that we can without any exaggeration regard the cedar as a cultural asset.

The Coco De Mer Exotic Fruit

The Coco de Mer (Lodoicea maldivica), the sole member of the genus Lodoicea, is a palm endemic to the islands of Praslin and Curieuse in the Seychelles. It formerly also occurred on St Pierre, Chauve-Souris and Ile Ronde (Praslin) in the Seychelles group but has become extinct on these islands.

It grows to 25-34 m tall. The leaves are fan-shaped, 7-10 m long and 4.5 m wide with a 4 m petiole. It is dioecious, with separate male and female plants. The male flowers are catkin-like, up to 1 m long. The mature fruit is 40-50 cm in diameter and weighs 15-30 kg, and contains the largest seed in the plant kingdom. The fruit, which requires 6-7 years to mature and a further two years to germinate, is sometimes also referred to as the Sea Coconut, double coconut, coco fesse, or Seychelles Nut.

Formerly the Coco de Mer was known as Maldive Coconut. Its scientific name, Lodoicea maldivica, originated before the 18th century when the Seychelles were uninhabited. In centuries past the coconuts that fell from the trees and ended up in the sea would be carried away westwards by the prevailing sea currents. The nuts can only float after the germination process, when they are hollow. In this way many drifted to the Maldives where they were gathered from the beaches and valued as an important trade and medicinal item.
Legend has it that sailors who first saw the nut floating in the sea imagined that it resembled a woman’s disembodied buttocks. This association is reflected in one of the plant’s archaic botanical names, Lodoicea callipyge Comm. ex J. St.-Hil., in which callipyge is from Greek words meaning ‘beautiful rump’. Other botanical names used in the past include Lodoicea sechellarum Labill. and Lodoicea sonneratii (Giseke) Baill.

Until the true source of nut was discovered in 1768, it was believed by many to grow on a mythical tree at the bottom of the sea; European nobles in the sixteenth century would often have the shells of these nuts cleaned and decorated with valuable jewels as collectibles for their private galleries. The Coco de Mer is now a rare protected species.

The name of the genus, Lodoicea, is derived from Lodoicus, the Latinised form of Louis, in honour of King Louis XV of France.

The species is grown as an ornamental tree in many areas in the tropics, and subsidiary populations have been established on Mahé and Silhouette Islands in the Seychelles to help conserve the species.

If the people of Congo save the mountain gorilla, might the gorilla return the favor?

That is the hope of environmental activists, who realise that wildlife conservation and tourism could be the key to survival for people as well as animals in a part of Africa where conflict has been the norm.
Mountain gorillas are gentle giants that range across the borders of Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa. These primates are considered extremely endangered, with fewer than 720 in existence.
After a decade of relative calm for these animals — the same cannot be said of the humans around them — wildlife officials report at least 10 have been killed this year.Photographs documenting the slaughter are heartbreaking, mostly because of the peaceful, human-like expressions the dead gorillas wear.These pictures are part of the tool kit brought to the United States by Arthur Mugisha, a former game warden in Uganda and now manager of the International Gorilla Conservation Programme.Mugisha acknowledged that the people of Congo can well survive without the mountain gorilla, even though they may not survive the continuing conflict between government forces and rebels in the Virunga National Forest.But he said the plight of the gorillas is one way to focus attention on the plight of the humans.
“If we were not talking about gorillas … the story would be very different,” Mugisha said. “It would be another group of people who are suffering and dying, and the world continues.”No one really knows why mountain gorillas are being killed now, though jealousy may play a role, according to Craig Sholley of the African Wildlife Foundation.In this area of rich biodiversity, Uganda and Rwanda have been able to capitalise on gorilla tourism, Sholley said, with tourist permits alone accounting for some $15 million in annual revenue.Democratic Republic of Congo’s unstable government has been unable to do the same.“Folks in Congo are taking a look at the successful situation in Rwanda and Uganda, which have revitalized over the last several years, and they’re jealous,” Sholley said. “A degree of jealousy has led to a degree of institutional breakdown that is causing problems in terms of enforcement on the ground.”Personal animosity may also be a factor, Mugisha said, with gorilla killings becoming a way to settle scores against those charged with protecting the creatures.
What is clear is that fighting between Congolese military and rebels in the park has left gorillas unprotected as park rangers and civilians flee from violence.
“They live hour by hour, not even day by day, because any time they can die,” Mugisha said of the people living in the area.
“These are communities that are looking for livelihood, but they are not sure if they will be able to see tomorrow, so it’s a very frustrating and empty life that they are living.”
The possibility for change may lie in saving the gorillas and their environment, Mugisha said. His program works to make sure that, through the gunfire, wildlife professionals are still able to go into the gorilla areas to do their jobs.
The program also encourages such activities as bee-keeping and mushroom cultivation that individual families can do in and around their homes and that can bring in money.
A trans-boundary strategy to protect mountain gorillas has been supported by the political powers in Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda, he said. It lets wildlife organisations like Mugisha’s take a neutral stance to warfare while trying to preserve gorilla populations.
It also aims to save the forests where the gorillas live, rather than clearing the trees for cropland.
For those whose fields lie just outside the forest, the gorillas can be a nuisance. So Mugisha and others have set up Human Gorilla Conflict Organizations — like neighborhood watch groups, except instead of keeping the area clear of crime, they aim to keep it clear of crop-raiding mountain gorillas.
“These gorillas are intelligent and they know they are crop-raiding,” Mugisha said. “So when there is an organized group that comes, we can actually chase them without harming them.”
Though they can appear threatening and are certainly large and strong, mountain gorillas are very timid, Sholley said.
“If you put a force of 10 people between them and the gardens, the gorillas are in no way, shape or form going to go into the gardens,” Sholley said.
What is clear is that fighting between Congolese military and rebels in the park has left gorillas unprotected as park rangers and civilians flee from violence.
“They live hour by hour, not even day by day, because any time they can die,” Mugisha said of the people living in the area.
“These are communities that are looking for livelihood, but they are not sure if they will be able to see tomorrow, so it’s a very frustrating and empty life that they are living.”
The possibility for change may lie in saving the gorillas and their environment, Mugisha said. His program works to make sure that, through the gunfire, wildlife professionals are still able to go into the gorilla areas to do their jobs.
The program also encourages such activities as bee-keeping and mushroom cultivation that individual families can do in and around their homes and that can bring in money.
A trans-boundary strategy to protect mountain gorillas has been supported by the political powers in Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda, he said. It lets wildlife organisations like Mugisha’s take a neutral stance to warfare while trying to preserve gorilla populations.
It also aims to save the forests where the gorillas live, rather than clearing the trees for cropland.
For those whose fields lie just outside the forest, the gorillas can be a nuisance. So Mugisha and others have set up Human Gorilla Conflict Organizations — like neighborhood watch groups, except instead of keeping the area clear of crime, they aim to keep it clear of crop-raiding mountain gorillas.
“These gorillas are intelligent and they know they are crop-raiding,” Mugisha said. “So when there is an organized group that comes, we can actually chase them without harming them.”
Though they can appear threatening and are certainly large and strong, mountain gorillas are very timid, Sholley said.
If you put a force of 10 people between them and the gardens, the gorillas are in no way, shape or form going to go into the gardens,” Sholley said.