Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from the original in the
Cabinet des Médailles.
The town which he had begun to build on the sea-girt isle was called Tyre, the “Rock,” and the two rough stones which he had set up remained for a long time as a sort of talisman, bringing good luck to its inhabitants. It was asserted of old that the island had not always been fixed, but that it rose and fell, with the waves like a raft. Two peaks looked down upon it—the “Ambrosian Rocks”—between which grew the olive tree of Astartê, sheltered by a curtain of flame from external danger. An eagle perched thereon watched over a viper coiled round the trunk: the whole island would cease to float as soon as a mortal should succeed in sacrificing the bird in honour of the gods. Usôos, the Herakles, destroyer of monsters, taught the people of the coast how to build boats, and how to manage them; he then made for the island and disembarked: the bird offered himself spontaneously to his knife, and as soon as its blood had moistened the earth, Tyre rooted itself fixedly opposite the mainland. Coins of the Roman period represent the chief elements in this legend; sometimes the eagle and olive tree, sometimes the olive tree and the stelo, and sometimes the two stelæ only. From this time forward the gods never ceased to reside on the holy island; Astartê herself was born there, and one of the temples there showed to the admiration of the faithful a fallen star—an aerolite which she had brought back from one of her journeys.
Baal was called the Melkarth. king of the city, and the Greeks after» wards identified him with their Herakles. His worship was of a severe and exacting character: a fire burned perpetually in his sanctuary; his priests, like those of the Egyptians, had their heads shaved; they wore garments of spotless white linen, held pork in abomination, and refused permission to married women to approach the altars.*
* The worship of Melkarth at Gados (Cadiz) and the functions
of his priests are described by Silius Italicus: as Gades
was a Tyrian colony, it has been naturally assumed that the
main features of the religion of Tyre were reproduced there,
and Silius’s account of the Melkarth of Gades thus applies
to his namesake of the mother city.
Festivals, similar to those of Adonis at Byblos, were held in his honour twice a year: in the summer, when the sun burnt up the earth with his glowing heat, he offered himself as an expiatory victim to the solar orb, giving himself to the flames in order to obtain some mitigation of the severity of the sky;* once the winter had brought with it a refreshing coolness, he came back to life again, and his return was celebrated with great joy. His temple stood in a prominent place on the largest of the islands furthest away from the mainland. It served to remind the people of the remoteness of their origin, for the priests relegated its foundation almost to the period of the arrival of the Phoenicians on the shores of the Mediterranean. The town had no supply of fresh water, and there was no submarine spring like that of Arvad to provide a resource in time of necessity; the inhabitants had, therefore, to resort to springs which were fortunately to be found everywhere on the hillsides of the mainland. The waters of the well of Eas el-Aîn had been led down to the shore and dammed up there, so that boats could procure a ready supply from this source in time of peace: in time of war the inhabitants of Tyre had to trust to the cisterns in which they had collected the rains that fell at certain seasons.**
* The festival commemorating his death by fire was
celebrated at Tyre, where his tomb was shown, and in the
greater number of the Tyrian colonies.
** Abisharri (Abimilki), King of Tyre, confesses to the
Pharaoh Amenôthes III. that in case of a siege his town
would neither have water nor wood. Aqueducts and conduits of
water are spoken of by Menander as existing in the time of
Shalmaneser; all modern historians agree in attributing
their construction to a very remote antiquity.
The strait separating the island from the mainland was some six or seven hundred yards in breadth,* less than that of the Nile at several points of its course through Middle Egypt, but it was as effective as a broader channel to stop the movement of an army: a fleet alone would have a chance of taking the city by surprise, or of capturing it after a lengthened siege.