History of Tyre

ate the Mediterranean waters; and they founded their colonies on the coasts and neighbouring islands of the Aegean Sea, in Greece, on the northern coast of Africa, at Carthage and other places, in Sicily and Corsica, in Spain at Tartessus, and even beyond the pillars of Hercules at Gadeira (Cádiz)".

The city of Tyre was particularly known for the production of a rare and extraordinarily expensive sort of purple dye, produced from the murex shellfish, known as Tyrian purple. This color was, in many cultures of ancient times, reserved for the use of royalty, or at least nobility.

It was often attacked by Egypt, besieged by Shalmaneser V, who was assisted by the Phoenicians of the mainland, for five years, and by Nebuchadnezzar (586–573 BC). Ezekiel 26:12–14 states that God caused Nebuchadnezzar to destroy Tyre because its residents gloated over the fall of Jerusalem. The Tyrians held off Nebuchadnezzar's siege for thirteen years, resupplying the walled island city through its two harbours. Later, a king of Cyprus took Tyre using his fleet in the 370s BC, "a remarkable success about which little is known," according to historian Robin Lane Fox.

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