Add this link to file:C:\AlphaOmega\ChapterFive\TOCChapterFive.htm "Phoenicia and Tyre" its next subject file will be [file:C:\AlphaOmega\ChapterFive\AncientEgyptianDynasties.htm]
   This file:C:\AlphaOmega\ChapterFive\FallOfTheFirstEmpire.htm requires the Next File to be changed.
    This subject was also brought up in one of the decan constellations of Scorpius

    From online publishing 1998 - original copyright 1995 -- The Alpha and the Omega, Volume II -- by Jim A. Cornwell -- Chapter Five page 44-45 - file updated 8/14/98

•     Phoenicia, Phenicia (Gr. Phoinike, "dark red"; discoverers of crimson-purple dye derived from the murex shellfish; "Phoenix" also means a date palm) an ancient maritime country of southwest Asia consisting of city-states along the eastern Mediterranean Sea in present-day Syria and Lebanon.    Its people became the foremost navigators and traders of the Mediterranean by 1250 B.C. and established numerous colonies, including Carthage in northern Africa to Spain and Sicily.     The Phoenicians traveled to the edges of the known world at the time and introduced their alphabet, based on symbols for sounds rather than cuneiform or hieroglyphic representations, to the Greeks and other early peoples.
      Phoenicia's culture was gradually absorbed by Persian and later Hellenistic civilizations.    They were known as bronzeworkers.
      Phoenicians were Semites who came to the Mediterranean as one ripple of the series of Semitic migrations moving through the Fertile Crescent during the second millennium B.C.    Abraham was part of this historical process, but the movement brought major tribal elements, the Amorites, for example, to Palestine, the Kassite dynasty to Babylon, and the Hyskos to Egypt.    According to Herodotus, who visited Tyre, the city was founded in 2755-2740 B.C.    Tyre, Sidon, Acco and Dor are the cities that appear in records.    Sidon was the most powerful and influential of the Phoenician cities.    To the Greek poet Homer, Phoenicians were commonly Sidonians.    He referred to "Phaedimus" as "the king of the Sidonians."
      The OT calls them "The gods of Sidon," Baal and Ashtaroth (Judg. 10:6), were the gods of the Phoenicians generally (also Judg. 18:7: 1 Kings 5:6; 11:5, 33; 16:31; 2 Kings 23:13).    The reference to 1 Kings 16:31, "Jezebel (Ahab's queen) daughter of Ethbaal king of the Sidonians (Zidonians), and went and served Baal, and worshipped him," is at first sight strange.    For Ethbaal was king of Tyre, and a priest of Ashtaroth or Astarte, who having murdered Philetes, king of Tyre, ascended the throne of that kingdom, being the eighth king since Hiram.    This marriage of Ahab and Jezebel aided in introducing all the forms of Tyrian worship into her adopted country.    1 Kings 16:32, "reared up an altar for Baal (i.e. the sun, worshipped under various images) in the house of Baal, which he had built in Samaria."    Ahab's son, Jehoram in 2 Kings 3:2, "..put away the image of Baal that his father had made," which was set up as the Tyrian Hercules, in the temple in Samaria.    Sidonian had become a generic term for "Phoenician."    Vergil, the Roman poet, who called Dido queen of Carthage and daughter of Belus (Ethbaal) king of Tyre, "Sidonia Dido."
      Unger claims that Nippur was the religious Mecca in Babylonia and Nineveh in Assyria during the third quarter of the second millennium B.C.    The temples of Sin in Haran and Belit-ekalli in Qatna are revealed by the Mari Letters as places of extensive religious resort around 1800 B.C.    The temple of Baaltis in Gebal (Byblos) received votive offerings from far-off Egypt all through the second millennium B.C.    The cultic image of Asherah, the Tyrian goddess, enjoyed wide distribution in amuletic form in the period 1500-1200 B.C.
      Phoenicia first appears in recorded history in the Egyptian account of the northern campaigns of Thutmose III, against the Hittites of 1471 B.C.    The Tell-el-Amarna Letters show Phoenicia in disunity during the weak reign of the mystic Amenhotep IV.    Seti I (1373-1292) pushed his conquests as far as Acco and Tyre, Ramses II (1292-1225) as far as Biruta (modern Beirut).    The whole coast revolted in the reign of Merneptah (1225-1215).    Ramses XII (1118-1090 B.C.) sent the priest Wen-Amon to buy cedar, where he was abused in Dor and Tyre.
      A century later Hiram, king of Tyre, in alliance with David which led to Solomon's fleet of "ships of Tarshish" which traveled to southern Arabia and India.
  
  
• Tyre [Heb. Tsor, tsore, or Tsowr, a stone, a rock, or knife, Gr. Tyros, also the Heb. Tsoriy, tso-ree', a Tsorite or inhabitant of Tsor (i.e. Syrian)] is a Phoenician port south of Sidon [Heb. Tsiydown, tsee-done', or Tsiydon, or tsidhon, Gr. Sidon, from Heb. tsuwd, tsood, to catch an animal, in the sense of catching fish, fishery, see Gen. 10:15, 19.] and north of Carmel.    Sidon's had small offshore islands.    The art of glass blowing was discovered in the first century B.C. at Sidon.    Sidon had a bad name in Scripture as a hotbed of Phoenician idolatry and Gentile materialism.
  (Continued on Page 45)
      In Isaiah (23:2, 12) he implies that Tyre was a colony of Sidon, and Homer's mention of "Sidonian wares," without reference to Tyre, seems to confirm the antiquity of the former city.
      Isaiah 23:1 "THE burden of Tyre, Howl, ye ships of Tarshish (These are ships of Tyre returning from Tarshish or Tartessus in Spain); for it is laid waste, so that there is no house (Old Tyre was gone), no entering in: from the land of Chittim it is revealed to them."
      Isaiah 23:2 "Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle (New Tyre - the coast); thou whom the merchants of Zidon (fishing station, of which Tyre was a colony, planted when Zidon was conquered by the Philistines of Ascalon), that pass over the sea, have replenished."
      The Tell El Amarna Letters contain an appeal from the ruler of Tyre, dated 1430 B.C., imploring help from Amenhotep IV against the invading Habiri.    This refuted Josephus's date of 1217 B.C.    Ezekiel's account (Ezek. 27-28 "Ruin of Tyrus Foretold," and "Prince of Tyrus Rebuked"), set though it is in a context of denunciation and prophecy of ruin, gives a vivid picture of the power and wealth of the great trading port.    Ruin eventually came when a long siege of Nebuchadnezzar strained her into poverty, falling briefly under the power of Egypt (Ezekiel 29 "Prophecy Against Egypt").    Eventually Persia under Cyrus II ordered Tyre to supply cedar for the restoration of the temple in Jerusalem (Ezra 3:7).
  
      "What appears to have been a jewel-sequence corresponding with Ezekiel's tree-sequence was arrayed in three rows on the golden breastplate worn by the High Priest, called in Greek the logion or 'little wordgiver' (Exodus 28:15).    It was made by Egyptian craftsmen; and the King of Tyre wore a similar one in honour of Hercules Melkarth (Ezekiel 28:13).    The jewels, which gave oracular responses by lighting up in the dark of the Sanctuary, were probably hollow-cut with a revolving drum behind them on which was a small strip of phosphorus: when the drum was revolved the message was spelled out in ouija style as the strip of phosphorus came to rest behind different letters in turn."
  --- "The White Goddess" Robert Graves page 269.
  
      Ezekiel 28:11 Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,    28:12 Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.    28:13 Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
      Note that the first vision of Ezekiel 28:1-11 applies to a human king of Tyre who was wiser than Daniel and believed he was a god on his throne in his island home in the midst of the seas, and the second vision of Ezekiel 28:12-19 applies to an ancient king of Tyre who fits the description of Satan or Lucifer who was perfect in wisdom and beauty before he was cast out of heaven and who was in the garden of Eden and walked among the angels or stones of fire.
  "The prince of Tyrus" Ezek. 28:12-19 although boasting of being a God he was a human king of Tyre on an island home in the midst of the seas.    Possibly Satan since verse 11-19 describes his perfection of wisdom and beauty, who was in Eden, was wiser than Daniel, was the anointed guardian cherub with access to the holy mountain of God and walked among the stones of fire (a symbol of angels).    He was cast out of the mountain because of pride.
  
      The above subject will be covered in more detail later in Volume II, Chapter Five Sect. A, on page 83, in regard to the Twelve Stones of the Breastplate of Judgment and those of Revelation.
      Dionysus, also called Bacchus-- and Chiron was believed to be the wisest creature on Earth.    It is he who first brought order to the sky by showing mortals how to draw lines between the stars to form constellations.    According to early Greek myths, it was Chiron who first fashioned the constellations and showed mankind how to read the sky.