The Ibizan archaeologist Josep Garí spent the months of June and July excavating in Tyre, a Lebanese city with 5,000 years of history. Garí knows the country perfectly well, as he has been going there practically every year to work on this project for the last 25 years. He highlights the cultural links between Ibiza and Lebanon: “Digging there was like discovering the history of my great-grandparents”, he says.
An archaeologist from Ibiza, Josep Garí (Ibiza, 1964) has spent two months in Lebanon to excavate in the city of Tyre, with 5,000 years of history (from 3000 BC to the present day), as a member of the laboratory of Arqueología de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). For about 25 years Garí has been regularly visiting the country (almost every year, depending on the political situation) to develop his passion for archaeology in a project in which the UPF, the Lebanese Ministry of Culture and, since this year, the Polish Centre for Mediterranean Archaeology of the University of Warsaw (PCMA UW) collaborate.
General image of the excavation of the city of Tyre in which Josep Garí is participating. J. G.
The Ibizan was located from 3rd June to 28th July in the city of Tyre, located in the south of the country, bordering Israel. In conversation with Diario de Ibiza, he highlighted the cultural similarities between Ibiza and the Lebanese city : “There are certain similarities with Ibiza and with the West in general, especially in the remains from the Phoenician period in the area where we worked,” he explained. “We have to take into account that Ibiza was founded by the Phoenicians, specifically by Phoenicians who originally came from Tyre”, adds Garí, who concludes that both places have, in some way, a cultural similarity. This is even more evident when we study the ancient archaeological finds, mainly from the early days of the founding of the city of Ibiza.
Image of the excavation in Tiro. | J.G.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.