Lebanon · c. 2750 BCE
Tyre
Ṣūr
Island of purple
An island that taught the Mediterranean how to be a city. Europa’s house. Melqart’s city. The murex, the causeway, the brothers who could not go home.
A small god from Tyre
Terracotta · Tyre · 7th c. BCE
National Museum of Beirut
Wikimedia Commons · National Museum of Beirut
Gad Yaton: Melqart’s city. The colonies carried larger ones. This one stayed home.
Murex shells of Tyre
Hexaplex trunculus and Bolinus brandaris · Tyre / Sour, southern Lebanon
Displayed at the Murex Hotel, Tyre — the dye-city itself
Wikimedia Commons · Roman Deckert, 2019 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Gad Yaton: Twelve thousand for a cloak. They named us for the vat.
The island city
Tyre sat on a rock in the water, as Motya would, as Arwad did. A causeway at need. A harbor the mainland could not drink. Hiram of Tyre built with Solomon — cedar, bronze, the pillars Jachin and Boaz. Menander of Ephesus kept the king-list from the city’s own chronicles.
Melqart, Lord of the City, sailed west in every colony. The lord of Tyre is not a later Greek. Hercules is a later name.
Europa’s house
Agenor of Tyre. Europa taken west. Cadmus, Phoenix, Cilix — brothers who could not go home. The Greeks took the woman and the letters and wrote the taking as their own beginning. The house had real names. The letters had already been ours.
The purple is a receipt. The murex is a Sidonian and Tyrian animal. Kings wore a coast craft and called it royalty.
Gad Yaton: Alexander built a road to take the island. The island became a peninsula. The people did not become his.