Phoenician Tyre: The Rise, Reach, and Fall of a Maritime Power

This video essay from the channel Dig. surveys the history of the Phoenician island city of Tyre from its Bronze Age origins and purple-dye industry to its capture by Alexander the Great. Alongside Tyre's relations with Sidon, Israel, Babylon, and Carthage, the narrator returns several times to Cyprus during the Cypro-Archaic and Cypro-Classical periods.

In the account of the 9th century BC, the video notes that under King Ittobaal I, Tyre held sovereignty over Sidon, parts of the Byblos area, and parts of Cyprus. Reviewing the classical foundation myth of Carthage, the narrator recounts how Elissa (Dido) and Tyrian aristocrats fled King Pumayyatan (Pygmalion) and stopped on Cyprus on their way to North Africa.

The longest Cypriot segment concerns the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Sargon II made an expedition to Cyprus and erected a stele at the Tyrian colony of Kition commemorating the submission of the kings of the Cypriot city-kingdoms; the narrator argues that Sargon could hardly have mounted this expedition without Tyre's assistance. Toward the end of Sargon's reign, the Tyrian king Luli faced a revolt by Kition, which probably objected to paying double tribute to Tyre and Assyria. Sargon put down the revolt in Cyprus, received Sidon's submission, and besieged Tyre with sixty ships supplied by Cyprus and Phoenician client states. When Sargon's successor Sennacherib arrived, Luli fled to Cyprus.

Under Achaemenid Persia, Cypriot and Phoenician fleets aided Cambyses in Egypt, while Tyre assisted Persia in conquering Cyprus and Ionia. In the late 5th and early 4th centuries BC, Evagoras I, king of Salamis, rebelled against Persia, seized much of Cyprus, and took Tyre before making peace in 376 BC.