The 'Kharayeb Project' and the history of CNR researches in Lebanon.

The first activities of the National Research Council in Lebanon date back to the seventies of the last century, when Antonia Ciasca, director of the Centro di Studio per la Civiltà Fenicia e Punica created thank to Sabatino Moscati in 1969 at the CNR, carried out an exploration in the Akkar Plain. The activities were interrupted because of the civil war in Lebanon and only after the end of the terrible conflict it was possible to rethink a resumption of work in the country. A new phase of collaboration between CNR and Direction Générale des Antiquités du Liban was started by Paolo Xella with a project on the objects with Phoenician inscriptions of the DGA. The volume is in print in a number of BAAL hors serieIn recent years, the collaboration between CNR and DGA and the Lebanese University has been strengthened thanks to the "Kharayeb project", co-directed by Ida Oggiano and Wissam Khalil, that has been started in 2009, with the study of coroplastic material from the favissa of Kharayeb and has been continued with the resumption, in 2013, of work in the area of the ancient cult. The Kharayeb project is an articulated program of research with different branches: the study of the ancient cult place and quarries, the study of the figurines (since 2015 in collaboration with the Mohammad Roumieh of CNRS-L for the ION beam analysis) the Survey of the Kharayeb territory, and, the project "Where the Litani river flows" supported by the Honor Frost foundation.