The Ancients - Tyre: Jewel of Phoenicia

Episode Date: October 8, 2023

One of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, Tyre was a jewel of the Ancient World. A Phoenician metropolis, and the birth place of numerous legendary figures - the city provides an invaluable insight into what life was like millennia ago. But what do we really know about the people who inhabited Tyre, and just why did the city play such a pivotal role across ancient history?In this episode, Tristan is joined by Historian and Author Katherine Pangonis to talk about the vibrant history of Tyre, and it's new place in the modern world. Looking at Tyre's mystical history, it's important location, and how Alexander the Great's siege literally changed the earth's landscape as we know it - why did so many people value Tyre so highly - and what legacy has it left behind today?Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code ANCIENTS. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, we're talking about one of the great cities of the ancient Mediterranean world. It's situated today in Lebanon on the eastern Mediterranean coastline. And at its height, this city was a great trading hub with connections across the Mediterranean and beyond. It was renowned for its maritime prowess and its independence. I am of course talking about the Phoenician city of Tyre.

Now, in this episode, we're going to be going through Tyre's ancient history, what the literature and the archaeology has revealed about this city and its people. We're going to be going from the third millennium BC all the way down to the Romans including a great assault against Tyre by none other than Alexander the Great. Talking through the story of Tyre's ancient history well I was delighted to go and interview roughly a week or so ago the author Catherine Pangonis. Catherine, she's written a new book all about several great centres of the ancient Mediterranean world, sometimes overlooked compared to the likes of Rome and Athens. So we've also got in there Antioch, Syracuse, Carthage and

Ravenna. But we want to talk all about Tyre because rather than doing an overview of all of them, well this is the ancients, we love the detail and the story of Tyre has enough for a podcast episode in its own right as you're going to hear right now. I really do hope you enjoy and here's Catherine. Catherine, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Thanks so much for having me. You are more than welcome. And we're doing it in this really cool Spotify studio in London to talk about one of the most incredible cities of the ancient Mediterranean world and a city continually inhabited since the third

millennium BC, Tyre. It's an oldie. It's an oldie. And it's interesting to be talking about such an old place in such hyper-modern surroundings, but why not? I mean, absolutely. Well, let's delve into it right at the beginning, The origins of the city. Do we know much about when Tyre emerges on the eastern Mediterranean coastline? Well, as far as historical records, it's hard to pinpoint a year, but generally what's given is 2750 BC. What exactly that means in terms of whether that's huts on the waterfront or the beginnings of this amazing mythic city that will emerge through later texts. It's not exactly clear, but we know that there's continuous inhabitation, as you say, since the

third millennium. And that's an important point to stress straight away, isn't it? That this isn't just a city of ancient history, but also one with so much mythology surrounding it too. Yeah, exactly. I mean, so as I'm sure we'll come to, Tyre became sort of iconic for splendor, vanity, and wealth in the ancient world. And it was the mother city of these trade networks that crisscrossed the Mediterranean. So it had a huge cultural impact. Its memory looms very large in ancient texts. So you have in the Aeneid, Virgil rhapsodizes about the Tyrian towers.

And also in the Old Testament, you have the prophet Ezekiel who compares Tyre to a treasure ship, who really holds it up as the epitome of the wealthy, splendid city of antiquity that would then be humbled. So it does have this sort of mythic legacy and presence, which makes it a familiar name, even though a lot of people wouldn't even be able to point out Tyre on a map nowadays, but yes. Well, let's talk about putting Tyre on the map. So I've said already the Eastern Mediterranean, but whereabouts in the Eastern Mediterranean are we talking with Tyre? So it's the southernmost city of import in Lebanon.

So it's just north of the blue line that divides sort of Israeli-Palestinian territories and Lebanon. And it's on the coast and it's on an outcrop. It's a little peninsula off the coast of Lebanon. But of course, it wasn't always a peninsula. In ancient times, Tyre was an island that as for reasons will come to was eventually connected to the mainland well definitely comes those reasons because it's a quite a big figure in ancient history isn't it one of your favorites i'm told oh yes he's got his problems but we can't help but go back to him once in a while but if we go back a millennium or so before that, the origins of this city, as you say, roughly like the early third millennium BC,

are there any kind of mythical stories about how it's founded or why it's founded? Yeah, there are quite a few foundation legends. None is particularly more believable than another. But my favorite is the story of the Phoenician deity god Melkart taking a nice beach stroll with his girlfriend who's called Tyrus or Tyrus and she's walking her pet dog. I think this might be the earliest reference to a pet dog in the canon. And then she sees the dog and it's got red fluid, purpley red fluid bursting from its mouth and she's like, oh my god, my dog is dying.

And then realises that in fact the dog isn't dying it's just bitten into this sort of sea snail this seashell which has erupted with this purple dye this dye becomes one of the most precious traded commodities in the ancient world and tiris asks for a dress made in the same color as the fluid coming from her dog's lips a bit weird but why not and then the city is founded there in her honor and becomes famous for trading the purple dye. But there are a handful of other legends as well. That's interesting because that purple dye link will also become such an important part of this city's story. I mean, it sounds like therefore we have these myths, we have this literature. If you go to Tyre today, can you see the ancient archaeology surviving? I mean, how much endures to this day?

Oh yeah, you can 100% see it and it's really incredible. And I actually really recommend everyone should go at some point. I'm quite immunized now to the security concerns because I live out in Lebanon, but I guess everyone should check and stay vigilant and such. But for me, it's always been a very peaceful and safe place. And the archaeology is incredible here. You have one of the largest hippodromes in the ancient world there. You also have a necropolis, a Phoenician Byzantine necropolis, and everything in between. So Roman tombs with Greek inscriptions, tombs with Latin inscriptions, some Phoenician art, these incredible tombs. On top of that, what else do you have? You have from the Roman period, a sort of square sunken amphitheater that people think may have been used for sort of reenacting

sea battles. I think they may have made it into a little swimming pool and done sea battles. You see these amazing things. And then you also have these glass furnaces, these ancient glass furnaces still with fragments of ancient fired glass inside. So you really can get a sense of the different industries and different civilizations and cultures there at this time. But also you have these amazing sort of white paved processional roads. The thing is, Tyre is just beautiful. The location is stunning. There's Bougainvillea, there's Oleander, and the sea surrounds it on three sides. In the archaeological sites, one of which is the Almena site, which is the center of the Roman metropolis of Tyre, built over the Phoenician

metropolis of course, you have this white colonnaded road that goes straight out to the sea and you stand on this road and you just see the glittering Mediterranean at the end of this beautiful white road that has been there for millennia and that's quite an amazing experience and they've rebuilt the columns along it and then you have these different parts of the city you have baths there's so much there it's such an archaeologically rich place and that's not even taking into account the later medieval stuff, the Ottoman and Mamluk stuff, and indeed a sort of recently discovered temple and other things. So it's really rich. The sea is such an important part of Taya's story, isn't it? And I guess also when you're looking at the archaeology, if I remember right from your book, underwater, there is more archaeology that you can see too. Yeah, exactly. So at the end of that white road that I'm going on about is what's known to archaeologists as the submerged quarter.

So that road originally went even further and there was even more of the city which has now been lost to the waves. But you can just swim off there. It's not protected in the sense, you know, I've just come back from a holiday in Turkey and there's a sunken Lycian city and you can go on guided, very expensive boat tours to look at it, but you're not allowed to swim or kayak there. That's just not the case here. So you can swim over the ruins just with a snorkel and a mask, or you can

scuba if you want, and you can see Roman Byzantine columns under the sea. And if you swim down to the seabed, you'll find amphora handles and whatever just sticking out of the sand. So archaeologically, it's an incredible place. And the sense of history, untouched history, is phenomenal there. There's a bit of magic in the air. Not bad for one of the great centres of the ancient Mediterranean world. We've said the name a couple of times now and I feel we need to explain it now. Phoenicians. Catherine, who were the Phoenicians? Now that's a really tough and unfair question.

You're on the ancients, deal with it. We ask the tough questions. You ask the hard questions, crikey. Well, what can I say? I mean, the first thing I would say is I've got to recommend someone else's book. If you really want to understand unpacking the identity and if they ever existed, these Phoenicians, it's Josephine Crawley Quinn's book, In Search of the Phoenicians, which really interrogates that question. But more broadly speaking, the Phoenicians is a term a lot of historians don't like, much as ancient Greeks is even going out of fashion in some circles as well, because the Phoenicians did not identify themselves as a coherent civilization. So they were this race of sort of Semitic seafarers that lived on the Lebanese, the Levantine coast, the easternmost coast of the Mediterranean.

And what they had in common is they were master shipbuilders. They were master architects, craftsmen, perfected the art of navigation, famous for inventing the antecedent of our Western alphabet. So hugely culturally significant and important, but quite an enigmatic culture. And they identified themselves by their cities. So the reason we would say we question whether Phoenicians as a civilization ever really existed is because this is not a term that they would have used about themselves. They would have identified as sons of Tyre, as Tyrians, men of Tyre, or Sidonians, the men of Sidon, men of Byblos, men of Arwad, all these places. And they were often

at war with each other. So it wasn't a nation state, it wasn't a coherent civilization, which is why it's questionable. And often historians don't like the word Phoenician either. It's quite politically loaded in modern Lebanon. So often actually in the National Museum of Beirut, stuff that you and I might call a Phoenician artifact is labeled just as Bronze Age, or other historians might refer to them just as the Canaanites. But broadly speaking, what we generally mean when we say Phoenician is the seafaring maritime culture that existed along the Levantine coast and came about as a sort of mingling of these even more mysterious sea peoples with the Canaanites. And historians also often use the term Canaanite and Phoenician interchangeably, but it's the civilization that existed on the Bronze Age

Levantine coast and were really good at sailing. No surprise there as we delve more into that. When we're trying to picture these people of early time, let's say in the third millennium, but largely in the second millennium BC, we should imagine them as these expert craftsmen, but also these expert sailors as well, having almost the Mediterranean at their doorstep. Indeed. So I think the geography of Lebanon feeds into their culture very much because Lebanon is mountains and coast, more or less. There's some variation, but broadly speaking, it's mountains and then it's a strip of coastline. And it's a small region in that sense. It's a

small country now and that coast is not expansive in terms of land. And the Phoenicians didn't go over the mountains, so they didn't go east, they went west. So almost the presence of the mountains, if they hadn't any exploration instinct, pushed them out to sea. And what really differentiates Phoenicians from other early civilizations is that they are traders, not conquerors. They're not there to capture land. They're not a warlike people in that sense. But that's not to necessarily say that we should hold them up as great examples because we've got references to them trading slaves and such. So they're not just the friendly folk. I'm sure there's a fair amount of kidnapping going on as well and that sort of thing. But yeah,

so this forms a huge part of their identity. But of course, where they are, let's say in Bronze Age, in the second millennium BC, you've got great powers like the Hittites to the north, you've got the Egyptians to the south. Do we know how they were able to survive or how they interacted with these great powers that they're sandwiched between? So different interactions with these different powers, but yes, they are 100% interacting. They're interacting with the kings of Israel and they're clashing with the Hittites on occasion, but most importantly, in that period, they have a relationship with the Egyptians. There's a huge Egyptian influence and we see this in their art,

and we know that it was the Tyrians and the Phoenicians who built the navy for Egypt. And at various points, it looks almost like a partnership, but Egypt is very much always the senior partner in that relationship. Egypt is in charge there. The Phoenicians are providing the wood for their ships. They're building their ships, and in some instances, they're paying tribute. There are points where the Tyrians call the Egyptians for aid, the Egyptians let them down. So Egypt is the senior partner, but they're not an isolated community. They're constantly interacting with the civilizations around them.

But I think part of how they preserve their identity is firstly the skills that they offer, and secondly that they're not really considered a military threat they don't want to expand they're not fighting the egyptians for egypt they're not trying to conquer land so they're a useful trading partner they're a useful supplier but they're not necessarily a target of conquest and as a trading partner that was interesting so one of the main commodities at that time it's not great jewelry or anything like that it's wood is this one of the great things that the people of Tyre and that region have to offer? Well, it's something they have, which Egypt doesn't have. Nowadays, there are still cedar forests on Mount Lebanon. Everyone should go. They're gorgeous, but they're far fewer. In

ancient times, those mountains were thick with cedar wood and cedar trees are amazing. They're huge. The wood is really useful for boats. This is where the Phoenician navy came from the end who built the Egyptian navy so this is a sought-after commodity but they do also trade in other things so if you look in later periods you have references in Homer and the Iliad to useful Phoenician silverware like silver bowls being given as prizes in the funeral games of Patroclus. So yes, they are renowned for their shipbuilding in these cedarwood boats, but also for metalwork and for garments dyed this rich Tyrian purple. So Tyre during the Bronze Age in that late second millennium BC seems to have this close relationship with Egypt, but as you say, almost as the junior partner, but still seems

to retain its independence almost. When do we start seeing Tyre really rise as this prominent naval power? There's this sort of window of opportunity when the power of Egypt starts to wane in the Mediterranean and before the Assyrians begin to really take control in that region. So it's in that period that we start to see Tyre really emerging and asserting its own identity and establishing its presence as sort of a proto-superpower for trade and for maritime expertise. And often the golden age for Tyre is identified as under the reign of this one particular king, King Hiram. And there's a very questionable but impressive sarcophagus just outside modern Tyre, which has been traditionally

held to be the tomb of Hiram, but it's highly unlikely. And now it's not very majestic anymore because they've built a major road right next to it, and there's Hezbollah flags all around it. But hey, it moved with the times. But Hiram reigned between 969 BC to 932 BC, and he was contemporaneous with King Solomon in Israel. The sources say that they had this great pen pal relationship where they'd send each other little puzzles to do and battles of wit, but they had a trading relationship as well. So in exchange for lands and olive trees from the Kingdom of Israel, King Hiram was sending his master craftsmen to build the temple in Israel. So Solomon's temple was built by Tyrian craftsmen who brought with them cedar wood to construct the temple and purple cloths to decorate the inside. So you have this sort of relationship going there.

And then I think we can say Tyre is at the peak of its reputation for sort of brilliance in crafts and architecture and navigation. It's interesting to have a figure like Hiram and it kind of shows, doesn't it, that the literary sources that you have available for Tyre, it's not just Greco-Roman historians, it's not just Egyptian sources, but you can also use, I'm guessing, the Old Testament of the Bible too, to garner more information about the city because of its proximity to ancient Israel. Yes, exactly. And it's a difficult area as a historian because biblical scholarship is a totally different area. So it's hard

for me to interrogate these sources and I don't want to stray into that territory. But yeah, there are amazing stories and examples and references to Tyre throughout the Old Testament. One of the more interesting ones for me was the story of Jezebel. So this is a Tyrian princess, the daughter, I think, King Ithabal of Tyre, who's married to, I think, Ahab of Israel. And she brings the Phoenician religion with her, which is a polytheistic different religion. And according to the story, she constructs or has her husband construct Altas de Baal, a Phoenician deity across the kingdom of Israel, and also apparently launches these attacks on the priests. So very unpopular. And then she's ultimately assassinated

for her role in that. And she's obviously been remembered by history as this archetype of an evil scheming woman associated with false prophets and so on and so forth. But that's a Tyrian princess. And the way she's written about is sort of amazing. When they describe her death, it's visceral and it's graphic. They have her would-be assassins coming to her room and she knows they're coming. She knows these men are coming for her and she doesn't try to escape. She doesn't try to fend this off. Instead, she puts on her makeup, which is obviously a mark against her in those days, but I think it's pretty cool.

But she puts on her makeup and her best jewelry and her fanciest headdress. And so she waits sort of Cleopatra style in her finery to meet her end. And then the guys come in, they have a verbal exchange, and then they have her thrown out the window and trampled by horses. And it's very graphic, but it does emphasize this very sort of tempestuous relationship between kings of Israel and the kings of Tyre, which sometimes is collaborative. The princess marries the king, and sometimes it's collaborative. Let's send architects to the temple. But other times, it's full-out religious warfare. It's never simple, these things, and they never follow a set mould.

So do we know much about Tyrian religion? Well, I mean, yes and no. Yeah, so I mean, it's a really complex area. Tyre's main deity is the god Melkart, who is the patron deity of Tyre, the founding god of the city, and he's a hyper-masculine ancient god figure, very powerful. But he's often conflated with Heracles in later texts, and I think this is to do with the importance of the cult of Melkart. So once the city has become Hellenized and then Romanized, okay, they want the inhabitants to adhere to the Greek and Roman religions, but the cult of Melkart is so strong in Tyre that they can't really obliterate it. So instead, they amalgamate it and they conflate Melkart with Heracles. So in later texts, when we have Herodotus visiting Tyre to go to the

temple of Heracles, he's writing about the temple of Heracles, but this is the temple of Melkart essentially. There's this fluidity of this religion. I learned a lot about Phoenician religion actually through my studies of Carthage, because Carthage is the most famous daughter city of Tyre, and much of the old religion is brought there. But then it develops and it changes and it develops a distinct difference approach when there's all this debate around the tophet of Carthage and child sacrifice and whether this was practiced in the Levant as well. But that's a whole other podcast episode for you, I think, but I'd be interested to hear it. Well, in time, absolutely. I'll write that down. But you did mention Carthage there, so come on. I mean, at this almost golden age, the time of King Hiram in the early first millennium

BC, you've got them in their boats and they're going out from Tyre. Do we know much about their voyages, about where they went to? Yeah, I mean, they went everywhere, really, in the Mediterranean and beyond. They went out past the Rock of Gibraltar and out into the Atlantic and into Tangier. And some people even say they went further, but the evidence is a little sketchy. But yeah, they founded colonies across the Mediterranean in Sardinia, in Sicily, in Mottia off the coast of Sicily. That's an easy one to visit. They're creating colonies in North Africa, on the Spanish coast,

Malaga, Phoenician settlement. Now it's party town, Phoenician roots. And across the Mediterranean, Marseille as well, you've got all these different Phoenician trading points across the Mediterranean. And you'd be surprised, there'll be places you go, you'll be surprised to learn that I'm sure many of the coastal cities listeners might have visited do in fact have a Phoenician backstory. Absolutely. Cadiz, isn't it? Cadiz, one of the oldest cities in the Mediterranean that has Phoenician origins. I mean, do we know much about whether those links really endured as to whether Tyre was always seen as the mother city? Place of pilgrimage might be too strong, but do we know if those connections endured with their colonies almost? Well, traders went back and forth and

you do find sort of inscriptions in different colonies where someone like a tombstone, an epitaph, might identify someone as a son of Tyre or a man of Sidon or something. So the origins remain strong. But the best example to look at is Carthage. So Carthage originally was sending tribute to Tyre each year. Certainly in the early decades, the links were stronger, but then over time, Carthage would overtake Tyre for importance and develop this distinct Punic culture. And as we've seen, Tyre was not an empire, it was not conquerors, it was traders, while Carthage very much became imperially minded to its ultimate detriment probably. So you do see these distinct cultures developing, but they always carry with them traces of the Phoenician original heritage. And yeah, even when Carthaginian culture has developed into this

distinct different identity, they're still worshipping Baal and Tanit as their primary gods. Before we kind of explore that first millennium BC, it almost seems that Tyre is pretty hard pressed at that time from new powers coming from further east. Talk to me a bit more about the trade commodities that they had. So we talked a bit about the woods but the murex shells that we mentioned earlier and this purple color i mean this also seems such an important part of the tyrian story oh yeah i mean so purple is a tyre signature product there's a posh cocktail bar in tyre now and its most popular cocktail is tyrian purple it's purple and it's a

bit gross but hey when in tyre yeah so this is this dye harvested from these sea snails called the murex. They're these spiky little things and you're lucky to find them nowadays. They've been farmed to extinction over the millennia in Tyre. You don't find them much anymore. And in fact, outside Sidon, Sida now, there's a massive hill, which is the murex hill, which is where all the discarded Murex shells are. Now, it's covered in grass and such, but it's like this is the dumping zone for the Murex and it's formed part of the landscape sort of thing. So these were farmed

on a massive scale. And it wasn't just in the Phoenician period, it carried on into the Byzantine period. So the Romans saw the economic potential of this dye industry. And purple is the color of emperors, and it always has been. But it really started with this Phoenician dye. And you see emperors like Justinian and San Vitale wearing this purple mantle. And you've got Theodora, her famous quote, I'd rather dye in a purple shroud than go somewhere where they don't call me empress or something like that so purple has always been conflated with imperial power and it's always been incredibly valuable commodity and the powerhouse of production was the lebanese coast where they had this plentiful supply of the murex and one of the most beautiful tombs that we have in tyre now is the tomb of antipater the murex fisherman so it's a beautiful tomb with fish-scale motifs and a Medusa, like a carved head. And the inscription is, this is the tomb of Antipater the Murex fisherman. And this is from the Byzantine period. So even as late as the decline of Rome, this is still a major industry because this guy, Antipater, he's not the guy out there with the little net.

He's probably got some sort of industrial scale operation. This is a wealthy man's tomb. But the fact that that's there and he still identifies as the Murex fisherman shows the importance of this trade down the centuries. Yeah, he was saying he seems to be this Murex shell tycoon, this entrepreneur almost. Indeed. Really, it emphasises the power and the amount of money that they could gain in that. Almost like the tomb of Eurysaces the baker in Rome, the head of this great bakery network, maybe. Anyway, I digress.

If we go back to Tyre in the first millennium BC, it's had this naval height. It's got these great trade commodities like the Murex shells, like the wood. But as that millennium progresses, you do start to see these great powers from the east, don't they? And they leave their mark on Tyre. Oh, so the Assyrians and the Babylonians. Yeah, so it changes hands many times. But what's really interesting is that although they certainly leave their mark, Tyre does seem to retain its own identity. And I think it's partly that identity is so strong. It's partly the fact that even at this point, Tyre is still an island. So while they negotiate surrenders, they're not warlike conquerors. They're not going to be a thorn in the side necessarily, and they cooperate with the people that conquer them. The best example of this is

probably Cyrus the Great, who very famously conquers but allows, in exchange for submission, civilization cities to retain a certain degree of independence and identity. So he's not about annihilating his enemies or about ethnic cleansing their cultures. So with this in mind, Tyre does retain a strong sense of Tyrian identity. Do you think that many of these great leaders, whether it was like Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus or whoever, they look out and they see Tyre, this island, this heavily fortified island with these massive fleets. Okay, yes, they've got a massive army of their own, but do they think it's not worth it putting all of these resources into it? We could just come to an agreement and then move on. So Nebuchadnezzar famously doesn't do this, and I don't think he profits that much by it. So one of

the important references that the Old Testament testifies to is the siege of Nebuchadnezzar against Tyre, which lasts, I think, 13 years and ends in a kind of stalemate. There's no great resounding victory for Nebuchadnezzar recorded. And it's Nebuchadnezzar versus Tyre. Tyre may be wealthy, but ultimately it's a small place. This is the king of the world. Yeah. So it doesn't have these sweeping armies. And so I think there's an element of just the level of effort involved in truly subduing Tyre is too great. Until, until your favourite guy. I'll let you introduce this one. All right. I was going to talk about Herodotus.

Oh, we should do Herodotus. Well, we're introducing the Greeks anyway, aren't we? So we will get to our pal Alexander. But before that, if we do get to the time of the Persians, post Cyrus the Great, you do get the arrival of, who's sometimes called the father of history, Herodotus. And he has quite a detailed account of Tyre on his travels. Yeah, he gives us this really gorgeous description of the Temple of Melkart, in fact, and I have it and I'm actually going to read it out to you because it's a goodie.

He writes, I made a voyage to Tyre in Phoenicia because I had heard there was a temple there of great sanctity dedicated to Heracles. I visited the temple and found that the offerings which adorned it were numerous and valuable, not the least remarkable being two pillars, one of pure gold and the other of emerald which gleamed in the dark with strange radiance. In the course of conversation with the priests, I asked how long ago the temple had been built. They said that the temple was as ancient as Tyre itself and that Tyre had already stood for 2,300 years. So he gives us this really visual description of this temple which sort of knocks his socks off and is a tourist attraction. He's made this journey

from Halicarnassus to Tyre because he's heard of this gorgeous temple that's just got to be seen, to be believed. And so that really, again, it just adds to this impression we have of Tyre as this, even in ancient times, a place of sort of mythic beauty and advanced, very advanced in terms of the architecture and the styles that they're building. And it's something worth traveling for in a time before mass tourism, where undertaking a journey to see a temple is quite a big deal. So I mean, absolutely. It makes complete sense when you think about the trade routes that they had access to, the resources they bring in, the wealth that is going into this island bastion,

to think that right at the centre, they have this amazing temple to their head god. I mean, is there any potential archaeological evidence for this temple? So this is a really good question. Not as yet, because I think there's a fairly consistent belief. Maybe not. I don't want to put my foot in it. But the archaeologists I've spoken to think that the Temple of Melkart is probably underneath a Shia cemetery, and that's not going to get dug up, which is fair enough. Because the tyre has been built over, and when it wasn't regulated, when archaeology wasn't seen as so important, it's now got modern city built over it. So getting at this stuff is hard. They've recently undertaken these excavations near the site of the

medieval cathedral and they've discovered a new Roman era temple, which is incredible. And there's evidence for an argument, at least at least this is the roman temple of heracles melkart but it wouldn't be the same as the original phoenician one so there would be new temples built in different periods to the same deity and this one we think might be related to the temple of melkart for a few reasons one it's alignment with the sun the sunset at summer solstice so the sun goes down directly behind the altar melkart is sun god. But then also they have this sort of empty subterranean tomb underneath the temple. And a big part of the cult and ritual of Melkart is the Ajarsis of Melkart, which is Proto-Christian, where each year the god symbolically dies and lies dead for three days and then is resurrected.

And it's all to do with the cycle of spring and nature, but he's died, he's entombed, three days later he's resurrected. And the fact that there's this empty subterranean tomb in the very centre of the temple and the fact that the temple, despite dating to the Roman period, is built in the Canaanite style strongly implies that this could be a temple to Melkart or a Roman iteration thereof, which is really interesting. But they can't officially be certain of that because without a clear stone inscription dedication, you can't really proclaim Temple of Melkart. Here, we've got it. But there are pointers, there are indications that this could be that. It's so cool that still so much archaeology

is being uncovered from Tyre and who knows what we discovered in the future. But you mentioned Melkart and we've been talking about the temple of Melkart this building plays an important role when we do get to Alexander the Great don't we and what happens with him at Tyre? Well he arrives with his conquering armies and Tyre's probably looking for like hmm don't like the look of this and Alexander he goes in with a charm offensive first which isn't always his technique and they're trying to charm each other so the tyrians when they see alexander's approaching they send their best envoys with this lovely golden crown and they say oh here's a golden crown it's probably very nice probably fine tyrian metal work and they say welcome alexander and he says why thank you

can i come and make a sacrifice i'm glad you guys are willing to submit to me Can I come and make a sacrifice? I'm glad you guys are willing to submit to me. Can I come and make a sacrifice in the Temple of Melkart? And this makes the Tyrians quite uneasy because the only people who are permitted to make sacrifices in the Temple of Heracles Melkart are the Kings of Tyre. If they permit Alexander to come and make the sacrifice, they're basically acknowledging him as King of Tyre and they're not really ready to do that. They want to cooperate with him. They're happy to offer him some tribute. They're happy to facilitate. They want to work with him. They don't want to be conquered, but they don't want to give up sovereignty. They don't want Alexander to be king of Tyre, right? And this leads to conflict

because then they say to him, oh yeah, no, really sorry. Temple's not available for sacrifice right now, but we've got another temple on the mainland. Do you sacrifice there? And this is just a red rag to a bull. Alexander wants to make his sacrifice in the temple of Melkart on the island of Tyre, and he'll stop at nothing. He's pretty unhealthily obsessed with this, isn't it? So much so that it's a siege of several months. Yeah, he's an obsessive obsessive guy he's tenacious and he's not used to people saying no only child energy there yeah exactly but no so he then makes this very rousing and semi-convincing speech his troops that says i know we're going to go on and conquer the rest of asia but in order to do that we have to get tyre because if we don't

get tyre this could be a rallying point of resistance. They could lend their navies to our enemies. We need to subdue the city. We've subdued all the other Phoenician cities along the coast. We've got Cydo, we've got Arwad. We've got to get Tyre as well. It's going to be long. It's going to be difficult, but I've had a vision of Heracles welcoming me into the city and I know we're going to do it. So let's do it. Let's settle in with this long siege. And it is going to be a long siege because Alexander has this mega land army, but he doesn't have the ships. And how do you besiege an island city? Well, you've asked that question. Take it away. How does he besiege an island city? Yeah. So he probably does some strategizing, sits down with his war council, his favorite guys, and they are probably a bit stumped. How are we going to do this? And what they come up with,

they say, well, we can capture all the cities and the settlements nearby on the land right and it's only about half a mile it's not too far this island so let's just pull down the buildings that we've conquered already and just make some more land let's just connect that island to the mainland let's make a bridge and then we can just march our armies across in the absence of sort of carrier ships and that's precisely what they do they pull down old tyre on the mainland and they use the stones of the buildings of this city this settlement to try and fill in the sea and at first it's not that difficult because they're quite far from the island so no one's throwing missiles at them and the sea is quite shallow near the mainland so So at first, this seems like an okay idea.

But the further they get, the more difficult it becomes because the sea becomes deeper and they come under heavy attack from the Tyrians who do not want this land bridge to join to their city. And of course, it gets harder and harder and the ships come in as well. And then there's artillery and everything like that. But despite all of these difficulties, he ultimately does prevail. He does. He does indeed. And the Tyrians put up a very valiant resistance. They use fire ships to destroy the bridge. Alexander's forced to build walls and siege towers to protect the men working.

But then eventually he's forced to summon, and I don't know why he's not able to do this sooner actually, history doesn't relate. But in the end, he managed to summon ships from Sidon, Tyre's sort of neighbour, love-hate relationship up the coast and from Cyprus and even from Rhodes, I think. And he does get this little armada together to encircle Tyre and he finishes the land bridge and he goes in and crucifies a large number of the resistors. And also at this point, a lot of the women and children have been evacuated to Carthage, but it's still a bloodbath within Tyre when Alexander finally arrives. Only those who took shelter in the Temple of Melkart survive. Still, it's quite a brutal, bloody part of Tyre's history, isn't it? And they say that

importance of the ships and then joining Alexander, they had been the Persian side, but as Alexander gains more success, they change sides and they become Macedonian ships. It is a really interesting part of Tyre's story, Alexander's ultimate taking of it. Do you think that this kind of becomes a moment where Tyre decreases in importance following that, or do we see Tyre revive in the years following? I don't think it's ever the same after this. This is a resounding defeat and there's major changes because as we've talked about earlier in this episode, the sea is such an important part of Tyre's identity. The fact that it's an island civilization, an island city, is so much of what's preserved its independence and its identity. Alexander does break this.

He connects it to the mainland. The city never became an island after that. The mole existed, it's silted up, Alexander laid the groundworks for this island becoming part of the mainland. So this island identity, which was very important, fundamentally changed and would never revert. And also, a lot of the men of Tyre were killed by Alexander. So this is a major game changer, not quite on the scale of the Roman destruction of Carthage, but it's a watershed moment in Tyre's history. And it does decline in importance after this point. You know best than anyone, the wars of succession after Alexander and the sort of chaos in that region. But eventually the city comes under Roman rule, becomes part of the Roman Republic. It's given a good deal of independence then, and it's built up again, huge monuments and new

infrastructure is built. It does regain some importance, but it's never quite the same after Alexander's siege. It never has quite that sense of continued Phoenician identity and independence from that point. Can you see any evidence of the mould today, or is it just all now so built up it's quite difficult? So built up, it's land now. But if you look at a sky view, an aerial shot, you can see how it would have worked. And you do still feel like you're on an island. When you're on the old city, that tip of the peninsula, you do very much still feel like it has the sense of being on an island even though it is now connected by this now very wide land bridge that has silted up and developed over the years. So Tyre post-Alexander in the Hellenistic period and then down into the Roman period, it's not

quite the same as it had been pre-Alexander. But does that Tyrian identity endure? Because you mentioned earlier how there was a Roman version of the Melkart temple. So do we sometimes see parts of Tyrian identity enduring throughout the rest of the ancient period. Yeah, I mean, I think definitely we do. And I think the strongest evidence for that is the continuation of the cult of Melkart, because that is a distinct carryover from ancient Phoenician culture. Additionally, the purple trade, that's one of their iconic products, exports. They're still doing that. They are still master shipbuilders. So after Alexander Conqueror's Tyre, it's still building ships. They still build boats and tyre today. So

this sort of sense of identity does continue on. And also the sense of exploration and trade, this does continue. You can argue even to the modern day. Nowadays, if you think of the Phoenician colonies and the cities they founded abroad, I think this year, in the last decade, there are more Lebanese living outside Lebanon than in Lebanon itself. So I think you can definitely argue that the identity continued on religiously, economically, and so forth. Because does it endure in Roman hands until the 7th century? I feel on the ancients, that's probably as far as we can go. But of course, that continual habitation, it survives, it endures. It's this centre for the rest of the Roman period.

It does. It's a very important centre for early Christianity. Hannibal goes there briefly during the Punic Wars. There's this weird change over a period where we start calling it Byzantine-Ti instead of Roman-Ti. Christianity emerges on the scene. And then the Byzantines lose it to the Sassanid Persians, but that's quite brief. Heraclius takes it back. And then it falls out of Roman hands and begins to develop into an Islamic center with the Arab conquests. But it continues as an important center up until that point. It has a resurgence of importance in the Crusader period as well because it becomes a very important Crusader city and also then a point of when they're trying to retake in the Third Crusade and later it becomes an important foothold in the East.

So it's star waxes and wanes over different periods and in different regimes. And then it really gets trashed with the Mamluks who destroy it. All right, we'll have to save that detail for a Gone Medieval podcast, I think. But it is so interesting, it's ancient history alone, because I don't know about you, but for me, when someone mentions Tyre, history alone because i don't know about you but for me when someone mentions tyre i do think of this slightly mysterious but beautiful rich wealthy almost city states you know off the land that seems to have been so unique for all centers in the mediterranean and was for a time one of the great centers as well that almost disappears well its importance very much fades post alexander the great it must be interesting so interesting to have really explored its archaeology and its story,

because I think for many people, Tyre is a name that we've all heard of, but really don't know much about. It has that mystery surrounding it. Yeah, and I think that comes to the sea. We talk about the sea being key to its identity, and I think part of that mystery comes from that because, as you say, it's just unique. So I think it was just amazing to behold, and it really did inspire ancient writers. It inspired Herodotus, it inspired Quintus Curtius, Josephus. I think the ancient Egyptian sources describe it as a city in the sea, and these sources describe the walls rising directly from the waves. I think it really did take people's breath away.

And that's reflected in the literature. And so much of our impression of antiquity is what's preserved in literature. And Tyre inspired people. So they laid it on the thick. They write these visual descriptions of this place. And that's part of its enduring legacy. And particularly Ezekiel's prophecy where he likens Tyre to a treasure ship. And again, that must come from the fact that it's an island. It's in the midst of the sea. He likens it to a ship full of treasure careening towards wreckage, fabulous but doomed. And that's part of its legacy, for sure. Well, last question, keeping on its legacy, how important is Tyre and its ancient history to the people of Lebanon today? Well, it's very controversial because I think you've probably come across this in many other

examples as well, but ancient history can very much be appropriated for modern political means. You have a lot of ancient Roman stuff being appropriated by neo-Nazi and so on and so forth. It's not quite like that in Lebanon. It's not that extreme, but there's certainly a sense of political appropriation of Phoenicianism and this concept of new Phoenicianism in Lebanon. And it has been used for sort of really negative purposes at times to divide people along religious lines. Lebanon's a sectarian country with a history of religious conflict. And Phoenicianism has actually been appropriated at times to play into that. But that aside, there's a lot of pride in the Phoenician heritage. I've met people of Islamic backgrounds and Christian backgrounds who are very proud of the Phoenician heritage in Lebanon,

and they do identify with this sort of spirit of exploration as well. They don't necessarily identify as Phoenician. I mean, some members of the population truly believe they are the genetic descendants of the Phoenicians. And there is some evidence for that. National Geographic did a big study to isolate the Phoenician genotype, and they did a lot of genetic tests in Tyre and in Carthage and around the Mediterranean basin. And they did isolate this one specific gene which could potentially identify Phoenician heritage. But that's not really what's important in Lebanon. The vast majority of people don't truly believe they're the direct genetic descendants of the Phoenicians. But nevertheless, they know that this is an important part of sort of Lebanese historic heritage and identity. And yeah, people celebrate it.

Brilliant. Well, Catherine, we'll wrap it up there. Last but certainly not least, you have written a new book all about Tyre and several other great centres of the ancient Mediterranean world. Including Carthage. Yeah. So it's a book, it's called Twilight Cities, Lost Capitals of the Mediterranean. And Tyre is the starting point of the trade network, starting point for me on my journey to write this book. And then we go into the history of Carthage, of Syracuse in Sicily, of Ravenna in Northern Italy, and Antioch, Antakya in Southern Turkey. And I go all the way from, well, yeah, the foundation of Tyre to the tragic recent

earthquakes in February this year in Antakya, which completely wiped out the modern city. Antioch is a fascinating story. We'll have to do it in another episode. But Catherine, it just goes for me to say on this lovely Spotify studio room, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Thank you for having me. It's been great. Well, there you go. There was Catherine Pangonis talking through all things Tyre in ancient history. I hope you enjoyed the episode as much as I did recording it. We did it in person and in a fancy Spotify studio in London. It was an awesome day.

Now, last things from me, you know what I'm going to say, but if you have been enjoying the ancients recently and you want to help us out, well, you know what you can do. You can leave us a lovely rating on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts from. It really helps us as we continue to grow the podcast and take it to even greater heights. But that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.