Cedar tree

The cedar tree (Cedrus Libani) is the national symbol of Lebanon, enjoying a central position on the Lebanese flag. The tree has always carried great significance: the resin was used to mummify Egyptian pharaohs, and the Bible mentions it 75 times — for example, as part of the temple in Jerusalem. In the 2000-year-old Babylonian epic of Gilgamesh, considered to be the world’s oldest work of literature, the hero Gilgamesh ventures to cut down a cedar tree in the forest inhabited by the gods. Deforestation has indeed always posed a problem to the coveted tree. In the year of 118, the Roman Emperor Hadrian issued a decree to protect the Lebanese cedar trees. Subsequent caliphs even placed it under their personal protection, and in 1876 the British Queen Victoria funded a wall to keep the grazing goats away from the 1000-year-old cedar trees in Horsh Arz el-Rab (Forest of the Cedars of God). Today Lebanon has six cedar tree reserves and a comprehensive conservation plan.