TYRE tīr (צֹ֔ר, rock; Τύρος, G5602). A famous port of the Phoenicians, some twenty-five m. S from the sister port of Sidon and fifteen m. N of the Lebanese border with Israel. It is a natural geographical frontier. Behind Tyre, the high coherent spine of the Lebanon Range is already broken down into the confused hill country that continues S to form the uplands of Galilee, and then, with the sole break of the Esdraelon Plain, to build the hill country of Ephraim and Judah. A dozen m. S of Tyre, a seaward thrust of hills and promontories forms a natural wall. It marks the modern border, a score of m. S of which lies the great Israeli port of Haifa. Both Tyre and Sidon still function as ports, but the ruins of Tyre are far more extensive and the subject of major archeological investigation and excavation.

The Gr. historian Herodotus (c. 490-430 b.c.) dates the foundation of Tyre as early as 2740 b.c.; Josephus, as late as 1217 b.c. Such wide discrepancy throws suspicion on both figures. Herodotus is more likely to be correct, but the missing factor in all such dating is the exact time of the coming of the Phoenicians to the coastal strip between the Lebanon mountains and the coast. Excavation at more than one point of settlement on the coast reveals a Neolithic layer under the mass of Phoen. remains, themselves heavily overlaid by the structures of Greeks, Romans, and sometimes Crusaders, a phenomenon visible from Byblos to Tyre. The Phoenicians, like the Greeks, were not a national unit, and never achieved anything like unity. Like the Greeks they were organized in city states, and rival claimants in historical tradition might fix varied points for a city’s significant beginning; hence, the discrepancy.

Isaiah (23:2, 12) seems to imply that Tyre was a colony of Sidon. She was a “daughter of Sidon” according to the prophet, and the phrase “Sidonian goods” in Homer might imply that Sidon was the more ancient city. “Then she went down to her fragrant chamber where were her embroidered robes, the work of Sidonian women, whom Alexandros himself brought from Sidon when he sailed over the wide sea” (Iliad 6. 288-290). Homer mentions Sidon several times, but not Tyre. In Lat. authors, the adjective “Sidonian” is often attached to Tyre. Dido, for example, daughter of Belus of Tyre, is called by Vergil “Sidonian Dido.” The Tell-el-Amarna letters, which at least precede Josephus’ date, contain an appeal from the local governor of Tyre, which must be dated about 1430 b.c., asking for help against the invading “Habiri.” Whoever these invaders were, the appeal addressed to Amenhetep IV shows that Egyp. power, having penetrated so far N, was wavering on the Phoen. coast, its strength too far extended. Joshua assigned Tyre to the tribe of Asher, but it does not appear likely that the Heb. invasion reached so northern a locality (Josh 19:29; 2 Sam 24:7).

There are no clear records over the next three or four centuries, but history becomes sharp and definite with Hiram, king of Tyre, the friend of David. Hiram seems to have enjoyed an extraordinarily long reign, for he is mentioned first when he sent cedar and craftsmen to David (2 Sam 5:11). He did the same for Solomon (1 Kings 5:1). Tyre seems to have been the center of Phoen. power at the time, for the Sidonians are described in the same context where Hiram’s servants and masons of Gebal, the ancient Byblos, are also listed. This town is twenty-five m. N of Beirut. It is interesting to note that Ethbaal, reputed to be a grandson of Hiram, is called a cent. later, “King of the Sidonians” (1 Kings 16:31). Power would appear to have oscillated between the two great ports. The canny Hiram profited greatly from the partnership with Israel. As the famous papyrus of Wenamon shows, the princes of the Phoenicians were preeminently businessmen, and it is clear that Solomon gravely embarrassed Israel by his heavy payments of wheat and oil (1 Kings 5:11), his supply of manpower for the Tyrian lumbering, and his unwise surrender of twenty Galilaean centers of population to the northern power (1 Kings 9:10-13). Hiram, however, later expressed his dissatisfaction with the Galilee acquisitions, and it is possibly an indication that Solomon had exercised a certain native shrewdness.

Together the two monarchs established a trade partnership based on the Gulf of Akaba, to the N of which Solomon had his oresmelting plants. Hiram was glad to trade Phoen. skill in shipbuilding and navigation for ready access across Heb. territory to the Red Sea and the trade routes to Ophir, India, and Ceylon.

In addition to the cedar timber, which was the first occasion of the commercial contacts with Israel, Tyre also traded in the incomparable crimson dye made from the murex shellfish on her coast. Timber, dye, dyed cloth, a mighty carrying trade, her cargoes of tin and tin ore from Cornwall, silver from Spain, and copper from Cyprus made the Tyre of Hiram one of the great commercial cities of the ancient world.

As far as the fragmentary record can be pieced together, it would appear that grave dynastic strife followed the stability of Hiram’s long reign. The shift of power to Sidon under Ethbaal has been noted above. It was the daughter of Ethbaal who became Ahab’s notorious queen, Jezebel, a dynastic marriage of convenience, which marked the transfer to the northern kingdom of the now sundered Heb. people, the profitable trading partnership that Solomon had established and exploited. Tyre and Phoenicia generally were poor in agricultural land, and the primary products of Israel were the natural exchange for her luxury goods.

Throughout the long two centuries of Assyrian domination in the Middle E, Tyre had her share in common with other communities of aggression and strife, but her naval power and her almost impregnable position on her offshore island gave her a measure of immunity. It is significant that she contrived to break free from the dominance of Nineveh a generation before that last stronghold of the Assyrian imperialist kings fell in the closing decade of the 7th cent. b.c. The date was either 612 or 606 b.c. This was another Golden Age of Tyrian affluence and power. Ezekiel’s chapters (Ezek. 27; 28) of stern denunciation give a striking picture of the wealth, might, and varied trade that gathered around the Phoen. port. When Babylon succeeded Nineveh as the great aggressor of the Middle E, Tyre resisted Nebuchadnezzar, but the strain of the long siege, the drain of her wealth and manpower, and the disruption of her commerce over this period of war ended the dominance of the great Phoen. port.

Tyre appears to have endured a time of dependence upon Egypt, then the rule of Babylon, and then that of Persia, which succeeded to Babylon’s empire and pattern of command. Ezra (3:7) quotes an order of Cyrus II to Tyre to supply cedar for the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem, which the Pers. monarch had sanctioned. Lebanon cedar at this time must have been increasingly scarce. The mountain forests had already suffered at least seven centuries of exploitation. Seafaring, however, remained a Tyrian expertise, and there is evidence that the mad Cambyses II conscripted a Tyrian fleet for his assault on Egypt, and that Tyrian galleys also sailed with the ill-fated Pers. expedition against Greece, which the Greeks shattered at Salamis in 480 b.c.

In 332 b.c., in the course of his march through the crumbling Pers. empire, Alexander appeared before Tyre, and the city, confident in her strong position, closed her gates against the small Macedonian army. The siege that followed became one of the epic stories of military history. Alexander built a causeway across the narrow strait, which still remains the core of the wedge-shaped promontory that to this day attaches the ancient island site of Tyre to the mainland. The modern town occupies the shore and the artificial isthmus. It was only by this vast engineering feat and the costly assault at the end that Alexander took Tyre. Ezekiel’s prophecy came true, and the great city became a drying place for the nets of fishermen (Ezek 26:5, 14; 47:10).

The site, however, retained its old prestige, and Tyre made a measure of recovery and functioned for a time as a republic. She recognized the rising star of Rome, established early political relations with the Republic and retained her independence until Augustus and the Empire. When the prince absorbed Tyre into his provincial system in 20 b.c., the city disappeared from history.

The remains, uncovered with some care, are extensive and the stratification reads like a history of the whole crowded and historic coast. The ruin of Phoen. docks and warehouses lies beneath the building of Greeks and Romans. An odd feature of the Gr. period is an oblong theater, unique in the Mediterranean world. A fine 1st-cent. pavement, a mosaic-floored street of shops and colonnades, has special interest for it dates from the time when Christ, following the hill paths from Galilee, visited the Phoen. coast. He might have trod this pavement on His further journey N. Today the hostile frontier lies across His path.

Bibliography CAH, I (1924); II (1926); III (1925); IV (1926).