Tyre (Al-Bass archaeological site)
Tyre
- Locality
- Tyre
- Type of place
- BIBLICAL SITE
- Coordinates
- 33.26983° N, 35.21398° E
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History: Tyre (Al-Bass archaeological site)
Tyre was one of the earliest Phoenician cities and is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. In the Bible, Hiram, king of Tyre, supplies cedar and craftsmen for Solomon's temple (1 Kings 5). The Gospels say Jesus went into the region of Tyre and Sidon, where a woman of the region asked him to heal her daughter (Mark 7:24–30), and Acts records that Paul's ship unloaded its cargo at Tyre, where he stayed seven days with the disciples, who knelt with him on the beach to pray before he sailed (Acts 21:3–6).
The Al-Bass site, on the mainland, holds a large necropolis with carved sarcophagi, a monumental arch and a Roman road, and the city's hippodrome lies close by. UNESCO inscribed Tyre on the World Heritage List in 1984. Remains found in the city in the 1990s may belong to the cathedral of Paulinus, inaugurated in 315.
An interesting detail
Tyre was once an island city; the causeway Alexander the Great built to besiege it in 332 BC joined it to the mainland.