Bronze Age

TYRE was an island fortress north of ACRE, for it exists to this day on the same spot and is known as Sur. Acre is probably to be identified with the Aak of the tribute-lists of Thutmoses III (c. 1500 B.C.), and it is certainly the Akka of the Amarna letters. Mentioned only once in the Old Testament, namely Judges 1:31, as Acre is one of the places from which the Israelites did not drive out the Canaanite inhabitants. In the territory of the tribe of Asher, and Josephus assigns it by name to the district of one of Solomon's provincial governors. Throughout the period of Hebrew domination, however, its political connections were always with Syria rather than with the Philistines. The Tyrian god's protection extended to the sacred promontory (Cape Saint Vincent) of the Iberian peninsula.
In Iberia, the invading Celts entered the peninsula from France about 1000 B.C. The ancient Iberian language enshrined in the Iberian inscriptions comprise the Punic language written in local Iberian script. The Iberian Celts to cross the Atlantic to New England is the extraction of the Goidelic speaking branch of Celtic. Megalith buildings of the Celts like their European counterparts do not carry Ogham inscriptions. In New England, pagan Ogham inscriptions betray their Ogham origin. A Dolmen or stone table well known to New England match those well known from Europe and the Middle East. Slab chambers always face toward the east and can be related to the solar cycle. The outer surface of the door lintel carries an Ogham dedication to one of the Celtic gods which include the name of the god, written in Phoenician letters. Late slabroofed chambers (souterrains) in Scotland and Ireland from the Bronze Age to Roman occupation to periods of Norse invasions. Coeval with megalith monuments on North America, the temple ruins carried Ogham with Punic, Iberian, and Mediterranean equinox symbols of the circle divided by a diameter. Other ogham inscriptions by voyagers to the Mississippi River left burial mounds during the Romano-Celtic phase of a horned god.
Ships from Phoenicia carried the Ogham Alphabet (G/K). Unlike most New England Ogham, Greek influence in Southern Spain would have familiarized the Celts which they designated the Canaanite dispensers of purple cloth.
Tyre appears on monuments as early as 1300 BC. The commerce of the ancient world was gathered into the warehouses of Tyre. Tyrian merchants founded their colonies on the coasts and neighbouring islands of the Aegean Sea, in Greece, on the northern coast of Africa, at Carthage and other places, in Sicily and Corsica, in Spain at Tartessus. Tyre was often attacked by Egypt, besieged by Shalmaneser V, who was assisted by the Phoenicians of the mainland, for five years, and by Nebuchadnezzar II (586–573 BC). His conquests of Judah and Jerusalem, his monumental building within his capital of Babylon, his role in the Book of Daniel, and his construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. After the defeat of the Cimmerians and Scythians, all of Nebuchadrezzar's expeditions were directed westwards to increase Babylonian influence in Syria and Judah, an attempted invasion of Egypt in 601 BC among the states of the Levant.
The city of TARSHISH whose sailors occupied a commanding role upon the ocean in the far-off days of Hebrew prophets foretold of the doom of Tyre to fall to the Carthaginians. The Guadalquivir Valley was overrun by Iberian Celts. No longer could the Tartessian allies (Greeks of Catalonia make the passage through the straits of Gibralter, save permission of the Carthaginian sea lords. This change occured in 530 BC when the lattest possible American settlements attributed to Tartessian leadership to Rhode Island. The Iberian Punic dedication tablet found in the temple of Bel at Mystery Hill refers to the god as "of Canaan." The name Kana'ni was used to refer to themselves by Carthaginians and the Lebanese Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon in 146 AD when Carthage fell under Rome.
In 509 BC a treaty was signed between Carthage and Rome indicating a division of influence and commercial activities. Some 300 colonies were established in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Iberia, and to a much lesser extent, on the arid coast of Libya. The Phoenicians controlled Cyprus, Sardinia, Corsica, and the Balearic Islands, as well as minor possessions in Crete and Sicily.

TYRE was an island fortress off the coast of modern Lebanon and from the coast is about 23 miles north of Acre, and 20 miles south of Sidon.
Tyre was captured after a prolonged siege, one of the most famous sieges in Antiquity (Siege of Tyre). Alexander needed the city to control the Eastern Mediterranian and to provide a secure port through which to funnel reinforcements and supplies.
The Tyrians knew Alexander was coming and had stocked up on supplies; it also had its own source of fresh water. While the mole was being built, he took part of his cavalry and went to Sidon where he commandeered one hundred twenty triremes, which were sailed to and surrounded Tyre.
The Romans of Brutus were no match for the Carthaginians during the Punic Wars. In Celtic ships of those found in Lebanon had the Libyan mechanical calculator; an early type of astrolabe with a latitude sundial for taking latitude foreground- similar to Libyan cave inscriptions of about 232 B.C.

In 287 – 225 BC, after decades of meaningless violence and small empty victories that simply ravaged the countryside, the Ptolemies regained some stabilized control of the cities (except for Aradus), and the last of the old Phoenician city-kings disappeared. he center of Phoenician power had shifted westward to the Tyrian colony of Carthage, that had not merely gained its independence, but had become a major power in the Western Mediterranean in its own right.
At the beginning of the 2nd century BC, the Seleucid monarchy had finally reasserted its primacy on the former Phoenician coast, but the last Seleucid kings' local power was increasingly a fiction, as the cities, now thoroughly Hellenistic, regained local independence. When the Tyrians saw the size of this fleet, they refused to fight, leaving it to the Macedonians to try to attack the walls. Alexander mounted catapults and siege towers on the decks of the ships but the Tyrians would sink them with huge boulders and would pour scalding liquids and hot sand on them. It took months to complete the causeway and during its progress toward the island, Alexander constructed several one hundred fifty foot tall towers on which he mounted catapults to fire back at the Tyrians. Finally the battering rams were brought up to the base of the walls and a hole was punctured. After a short struggle, Alexander and his troops took the wall and advanced into the main part of the city. The Macedonians took no prisoners. More than eight thousand Tyrians were killed in the final attack and the remaining thirty thousand inhabitants were sold into slavery. The siege of Tyre had a lasting effect, for the causeway stayed, silted up, and today Tyre is connected to the mainland. While Alexander had Tyre under siege, he moved along the coast accepting submission of the cities along the Mediterranean. Alexander was on his way to Eygpt. Batis, the commander of the fortress of Gaza, refused to surrender. The inhabitants of Gaza and their Nabataean allies did not want to lose the lucrative trade which was controlled by Gaza. The fortress was built on a hill and was heavily fortified. Alexander built ramps up the sides of the hill with debris and utilized the same siege engines that were employed at Tyre. After a fierce resistance of two months, Gaza was taken; the male population was put to the sword and the women and children were sold into slavery. Alexander received a shoulder wound during the siege. In a fit of rage, Alexander is said to have dragged the body of Batis around the walls of the city behind a chariot in emulation of Achilles with the body of Hector.
Carthage was a superpower, contemporaneously with the Roman Republic of the 2nd and 3rd Century BC, and was its rival for dominance of the western Mediterranean. Eventually this rivalry led to a series of three wars known as the Punic Wars, each of which Carthage lost. An ancient kingdom of northern Greece originally occupying territory north of Thessaly and northwest of the Aegean Sea. It was the center of a powerful empire under Philip II and his son Alexander the Great and contributed significantly to the spread of Hellenistic civilization. It became the first Roman province in 146 B.C.
Tyre consisted of two distinct parts, a rocky fortress on the mainland, called "Old Tyre", and the city, built on a small, rocky island about half-a-mile distant from the shore. It was a place of great strength. It was besieged by Shalmaneser III, who was assisted by the Phoenicians of the mainland, for five years, and by Nebuchadnezzar (B.C. 586?573) for thirteen years, apparently without success. It afterwards fell under the power of Alexander the Great, after a siege of seven months in which he built a causeway from the mainland to the island, but continued to maintain much of its commercial importance till the Christian era.
Hannibal ("grace of Baal", Baal being the patron god of Carthage) was the son of Hamilcar Barca. Hannibal was of originally Tyrian Phoenician descent, Tyre the particular city being on the coast of what is known as modern day Lebanon, the original founders of the city of Carthage. After Carthage's defeat in the First Punic War (264 to 241 BC), Hamilcar set out to improve his family's and Carthage's fortunes. With that in mind and supported by Gades, Hamilcar began the subjugation of the tribes of the Iberian Peninsula. Carthage at the time was in such a poor state that its navy was unable to transport his army to Iberia (Hispania); instead, Hamilcar had to march it towards the Pillars of Hercules and ferry it across the Strait of Gibraltar to the Atlas Mountains (present-day Morocco). After the Second Punic War, Hannibal promoted agriculture to help restore Carthage's economy and pay the war indemnity to Rome (800,000 (Roman) lbs of silver (Pliny 33,51), and he was largely successful.
Hannibal departed New Carthage in late spring of 218 B.C. He fought his way through the northern tribes to the Pyrenees, subduing the tribes through clever mountain tactics and stubborn fighting. He left a detachment of 11,000 troops to garrison the newly conquered region. At the Pyrenees, he released another 11,000 Iberian troops who showed reluctance to leave their homeland. Hannibal reportedly entered Gaul with 50,000 foot soldiers and 9,000 horsemen. Hannibal evaded a Roman force marching from the Mediterranean coast by turning inland up the valley of the Rhone. Depending upon the source, it is estimated that 50,000-70,000 Romans were killed or captured at Cannae. As a result, Hannibal and Rome fought no more major battles in Italy for the rest of the war. During that same year in 216 BC, the Greek cities in Sicily were induced to revolt against Roman political control, while the Macedonian king, Philip V pledged his support to Hannibal – thus initiating the First Macedonian War against Rome. Hannibal also secured an alliance with newly appointed King Hieronymous of Syracuse.

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