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Chapter 13 - Tire*

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Chapter 13 - Tire*

February 27th.
vTire
WE have now been two days wandering over the ruins of Tire, and I under stand the topography of the whole neighborhood perfectly; indeed, Dr. Robinson had made me better acquainted with this place and its surroundings than any other which we have yet visited.
vRobinson’s Scription Amended
His description, though the best we have, will nevertheless bear amendment. For example, the land does not project to the south of the causeway, as he represents, but it does to the north and north-west. The west end of the island is not wholly a ledge of rugged, picturesque rocks; there are a few such, however, at the south-west corner. And again, it does not correspond very closely with fact to represent this as originally a long, narrow island. It was scarcely a mile in length, and not much less in breadth, measuring, from the extreme angle of the island, some four hundred paces to the east of the present wall of the city. To be very accurate, it is thirteen hundred and twenty-five paces one way, and ten hundred and thirty-six the other.
vRobinson’s Description
(*We give, abridged, Dr. Robinson's account of Tire, referred to in the text:-"The peninsula on which Tire, now Stir, was built, was originally a long, narrow island, parallel to the shore, and distant from it less than half a mile.... The isthmus was first created by the famous causeway of Alexander the Great, [who could not take nor reach the city without connecting it in this way with the mainland].... At present, the isthmus cannot be much less than half a mile in width.... It lies between the shore and the more northern part of the island, so that the latter, as seen from the shore, seems to project farther toward the south of the isthmus than toward the north, and forms here a larger bay, although the harbor, or rather road in which vessels lie, is that on the north. The island as such, is not more than a mile in length. The part which projects on the south beyond the isthmus, is perhaps a quarter of a mile broad, and is rocky and uneven. It is now unoccupied except by fishermen, as ' a place to spread nets upon.' The southern wall of the city runs across the island, nearly on a line with the south side of the isthmus The present city stands upon the junction of the island and isthmus.... The western coast of the island is wholly a ledge of rugged, picturesque rocks... The present Stir is nothing more than a market town, hardly deserving the name of a city. Its chief export is the tobacco raised from the neighboring hills. The houses are for the most part mere hovels. The streets are narrow lanes, crooked and filthy. Yet the many scattered palm-trees throw over the city an Oriental charm.".-Vol. ii. pp. 463-467.
Tire, as is well known, suffered two memorable sieges, one from Nebuchadnezzar, the other from Alexander the Great. It became the seat of a Christian church, then passed under Mahometan rule, and continued so till the time of the Crusades. The Christians kept possession of it for a long time, but at last, about the end of the thirteenth century, it was destroyed by the Saracens. It has never recovered from the desolation then brought upon it. Its overthrow was a special subject of prophecy.-ED.)
vThe Causeway
The causeway does not "lie between the shore and the northern part of the island," and it would not have reflected much credit upon the sagacity of Alexander's engineers to have carried it in that direction, because the strait is broader, and the sea deeper there than toward the south end. Alexander would, of course, build his work where there was the least depth and shortest distance. The point of the island which extended farthest toward the mainland lies directly east of the fountain nearly three hundred paces, as appears from the remains of Tire's most ancient wall at that place. These very interesting remains were uncovered by quarriers some three years ago, but as the stones were too heavy for their purpose, they left them, and they are now nearly buried again by the shifting sand. From this point the island fell hack rapidly toward the north-west, and more gradually toward the south-west. I doubt not but that Alexander's work first touched this projecting angle. The largest part of the causeway, however, lies to the south of it, and the wind from that direction has there thrown up the greatest amount of sand.
vOld Seawall
There yet remains one solitary specimen of Tire's great sea-wall, that mighty bulwark which no enemy could overthrow. At the extreme northern end of the island, a stone nearly seventeen feet long and six and a half thick, rests just where Tyrian architects placed it thousands of years ago. As in every
ILLUSTRATION
case that I have examined, the foundation laid for these gigantic blocks is made with stone comparatively small. When the sea is quiet we will visit this interesting portion of the old wall.
vHarbor
I do not believe that there ever was an available harbor south of the island.
Not only is the water too shallow, but the south-west and west winds render it utterly unsafe to anchor there. When, therefore, authors speak of two, I suppose they must refer to the inner harbor and outer roadstead, both of which are on the north of the island. The natives, it is true, have a tradition that there was a harbor on the south; but their story is connected with incredible fables about a wall built by Alexander through the deep sea to Ras el Baiyod, a distance of eight or ten miles!
vGranite Columns
The number of granite columns that lie in the sea, particularly on the north of the island, is surprising. The east wall of the inner harbor is entirely founded upon them, and they are thickly spread over the bottom of the sea on every side. I have often rowed leisurely around the island to look at them when the surface was perfectly calm, and always with astonishment. Tire must have been a city of columns and temples par excellence. The whole north end appears to have been one vast colonnade.
The land along the western shore, and the entire south half of the island, is now given up to cultivation, pasturage, and the general cemetery of the town; and here are found the remains of those splendid edifices for which Tire was celebrated. About three years ago, the quarriers who were digging out stone for the government barracks at Beirut uncovered a large hajarîyeh-floor-a few feet below the surface.
vRuins of a Temple
Descending through rubbish some ten feet farther, they came upon a beautiful marble pavement, among a confused mass of columns of every size and variety of rock. I went down and groped about amid these prostrate columns, and found the bases of some still in their original positions,-parts of what was once a superb temple. One fragment of verd antique was particularly beautiful. In an adjoining quarry they had just turned out a marble statue of a female figure, full sized, modestly robed, and in admirable preservation. May not this be the site and the remains of the famous temple of Belus, or of Jupiter Olympus, both mentioned by Dios; or of Astarte, or Hercules, described by Menander? It is the center and highest part of the island, and must have been very conspicuous from the sea. The mind becomes quite bewildered with the mighty revolutions and desolations which such excavations reveal.
vGreat Antiquity
The floor above these remains is the same in kind as those now made in Tire; but the house to which it belonged has wholly disappeared, and must have been destroyed before the city of the middle ages was built, for it is outside of the walls; and yet the ruins of this temple were then buried so deep below the surface, that the builder probably had not the slightest idea of their existence. This collection of columns and marble floors was again covered up by the quarriers in their search for available stone; and the unconscious tourist now walks heedlessly over wrecks of ancient splendor which astonished and delighted even the well-traveled "Father of History" four centuries before the birth of Christ. The entire southern half of the island is buried deep beneath just such ruins; and I hope the day is not distant when others will explore them besides poor quarriers, rummaging for building-stone at so many piasters per hundred.
vThe Tire of the Crusaders.
Should any one ask incredulously, Where are the stones of ancient Tire!- where, at least, the remains of those lofty towers and triple walls which so excited the wonder and admiration of the Crusaders only some seven centuries ago?-the preceding incidents will furnish a satisfactory reply. They are found in this depth of ruins, spread over the island, and over the causeway of Alexander; they are found in her choked-up harbor and at the bottom of her sea. They are at Acre, and Joppa, and Beirût, and in the rubbish, of all those cities. In fact, the only wonder is, that so much still remains to reveal and confirm the ancient greatness of this Phoenician capital.
Do you suppose that the fountain outside of the gate has any connection with Has el 'Ain?
vWater Supply on the Island
The period of Tire's greatest extent and glory was before the causeway was made, and it is not probable that an aqueduct was carried under the sea; and, besides, this fountain is not on the edge of the island nearest the mainland, as it would have been had such an aqueduct been constructed, but three hundred paces farther west, in the interior of the original island. There is no need of such a hypothesis to explain any apparent mystery about this fountain. The strata along the coast dip toward the sea, and pass under it. Where they terminate abruptly at the shore, innumerable streams of water run out on a level with the surface and below it. There are hundreds of such streams along this coast, and some of them very large. A little north of Ruad-the Arvad of the Bible-a fountain bursts up from the bottom of the sea, of such enormous size and power during the rainy months as to make the whole surface boil like a caldron. Now, apply this to our fountain. The strata of the plain opposite the city dip under the sea at a very small angle, and, of course, pass below the island. A shaft sunk only a few feet deep will reach a stratum that extends to the mainland, and water running beneath that stratum will pass under the island. Cut off such a stream by your shaft, and the water Will rise as high as the conditions of the strata on the neighboring plain will admit. Accordingly the people will tell you that water can be found on any part of the island by digging to the proper depth. It will generally be somewhat brackish, and this is to be expected from the close proximity to the sea. These facts explain, as I believe, how it was that the Tyrians could sustain such protracted sieges, as we know from history they repeatedly did. They appear never to have been straitened for water, because they had a supply on their own little island which the besiegers could not cut off.
vTyrian Purple
Have you ever seen the shell-fish from which the far-famed Tyrian purple was obtained?
That variety of the murex from which this dye was procured is found all along this coast, but it abounds most around the Bay of Acre. So also the Helix Janthina, from which a blue, with a delicate purple or lilac tinge, may be extracted, is equally abundant. After a storm in winter you may gather thousands of them from the sandy beach south of Sidon. They are so extremely fragile that the waves soon grind them to dust. A kind of Buccinum is found here at Tire, which has a dark crimson coloring matter about it, with a bluish livid tinge. According to ancient authors, this was used to vary the shades of the purple. Pliny says the Tyrians ground the shell in mills to get at the dye. This could not have been the only process, because the remnants of these shells found in pits along the south-eastern shore of our island were certainly broken or mashed, and not ground; and the same is true with the shells on the south of the wall at Sidon.
vSung by Homer
This Tyrian purple was celebrated in Greece even in the remote age of Homer, who sings of
Belts,
That, rich with Tyrian dye, refulgent glowed.”
The references to these colors of red, purple, and scarlet in the Bible, are more ancient still; indeed, from Genesis to Revelation they are so numerous, and so mingled and blended together, that it is almost impossible to particularize them. Nor is it necessary; the merest child can turn to a score of them. And these colors are equally prevalent and popular at the present day among all classes of Orientals.
vAge of Tire
These and other matters, which connect the history of Tire with that of the people of God, are invested with peculiar interest; and I have long desired to become intimately and accurately acquainted with them. I encounter a difficulty at the very beginning of her story. Isaiah calls Tire the "daughter of Sidon;" * and Joshua mentions the "strong city Tire" in describing the boundary of Asher;** from which it is certain that she was not a very young daughter even at the conquest of Canaan by the Jews. Yet Josephus, in stating the exact time in which Solomon's temple was built, says there had passed two hundred and forty years from the founding of Tire to the building of the temple; but Joshua lived more than four hundred years before Solomon. Here is a discrepancy of more than two hundred years.
(*Isaiah 23:12) (**Joshua 19:29)
vJosephus and Joshua
There is; and it is possible that Josephus wrote four hundred and forty instead of two hundred and forty. Such errors in copying might easily occur. But Josephus lived after the beginning of the Christian era, and may have had in his mind the city that then existed, and all agree that it was built long after continental Tire.
v”Palai Tyrus
This Palai Tyrus had been totally subverted for seven hundred years when the Jewish historian wrote, and he may have dropped it out of view entirely, and spoken only of that city concerning which the Roman world would feel interested. Insular Tire was very likely not built more than two hundred and forty years before the time of Solomon. At any rate, the testimony of Joshua that there was a Tire in his day is decisive; and if the statement of Josephus could in no way be reconciled with it, we should not hesitate which to believe. I understand him, however, to refer to different cities, and thus there is no contradiction.
Where do you find the site of continental Tire?
vSite of Continental Tire
It extended, I suppose, from the great fountains of Ras el 'Ain northward, included the long, low Tell Habeish as its acropolis, and in its greatest prosperity probably reached the shore opposite the island. The whole of the Tell is full of buried foundations.
vBought by Reschid Pasha
Reschid Pasha, the present grand vizier, has purchased this neighborhood, and within two years has planted fifty thousand mulberry-trees, besides olives and fruit-trees, and seems determined to revive the place again. But the people say the enterprise must fail, because God has declared that Tire shall never be rebuilt. Thus far the success is not very satisfactory. The mulberry-trees flourish well enough, but the place has proved so unhealthy that the peasants refuse to reside there. Last summer the pasha's agent had workmen erecting houses on Tell Habeish, and I was greatly interested to see that wherever the men dug for foundations, they came upon old works, which must have belonged to what Diodorus called Palai Tyrus in his day. Pliny says that it was thirty furlongs from insular Tire to the south, which agrees with this locality, and with no other.
This was that joyous city, "whose antiquity was of ancient days," even when Isaiah sang the burden of Tire, "the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth."* The Lord of Hosts proposed by this utter overthrow to stain the pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honorable of the earth.
(*Isaiah 23:7-9)
vNever Likely to Be a City Again
It is of this city that Ezekiel says, "Thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt be any more." ** And, so far as one can judge, it will never be a city again. Alexander, as Arrian relates, scraped off the very dust of old Tire to build his causeway, and now you can find none of the remains except by digging below the surface. Even this feeble attempt of Reschid Pasha to revive the site of old Tire has proved a losing speculation. It is so sickly that not even a village of any size can be established there, and, should the plain become again densely peopled, the villages will be built at a distance from this fatal spot.
(**Ezekiel 27:36)
vThe Two Tiresa in Prophecy
In the prophecies relating to Tire, there seems to be a blending together of the continental and the insular city, so that it is often difficult to distinguish which of the two is meant.
There is; but this is in entire accordance with the general method of prophetic announcements. Those of our Savior in regard to the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem are mixed up with other matters connected with, or analogous to that great event, and it is impossible now to assign to each its proper part. There is, in reality, a propriety in thus joining together continental and insular Tire. The same people-guilty, of the same vices-they deserved and received the same judgments, though in different degrees and at various times. The one was totally destroyed, never to rise again; the other repeatedly overwhelmed, but again partially reviving, just as the whole drift of the prophecies would lead us to expect. Indeed, it is nearly certain that the two cities were actually connected long before Alexander joined the island to the coast, and thus there would be no impropriety in speaking of them as one great whole. Josephus, in his controversy with Apion, states distinctly, on the authority of Dius, who, he says, wrote the Phoenician history accurately, that Hiram joined the temple of Jupiter Olympus, which stood before on an island by itself, to the city by raising a causeway between them. There never has been more than one island here, and the causeway must have joined that to the mainland.
vAncient Extent
Thus the ancient city and the island were connected even in the time of Solomon; nor would the work be very difficult, owing to the shallowness of the water. This, with other notices of Tire by Menander the Ephesian, render it highly probable that continental Tire extended along the shore from Has el 'Ain to the island; and this, again, agrees with the statement of Pliny, that Tire was nineteen miles in circumference, including old Tire, but without it about four. A line which would now include the island and Has el 'Ain might easily be so drawn as to be nineteen miles long, while the utmost extent of the walls around the island alone would be nearly four miles, as Pliny has it The history of this fallen representative of ancient wealth, commerce, and civilization spreads over so many ages of stirring activity-there is so much to be seen, and so many are the reflections suggested by what is no longer to be seen, that one becomes quite bewildered.
It is, indeed, long since Joshua divided yonder hills and valleys between Asher and Naphtali, and during a large portion of this time Tire was the most splendid city, perhaps, in the world.
vAncient Glory
In the days of David and Solomon she was able not merely to maintain her independence in presence of these mighty conquerors, but by her unrivaled skill in arts and architecture she became an honored ally and necessary partner in the enterprise of building a temple for the Most High to dwell in. From this time she is associated, more or less intimately, with the history of God's chosen people for a thousand years. They had, in general, the same enemies, and, to a certain extent, shared the same fortunes. When the kings of Nineveh, or Babylon, or of Egypt came against the land of Israel, they attacked Tire also. Yet, in spite of all her enemies, she flourished beyond a parable. The Hebrew historians, prophets, and poets constantly allude to her power, wealth, luxury, and vices; and Ezekiel seems to tax the entire geography of the known world to set forth the extent of her commerce and the multitude of her riches.
vSubsequent History
It would take a volume to trace the varied fortunes of Tire through Egyptian, Chaldean, Macedonian, Roman, Saracenic, Frank, and Turkish dynasties, down to the present wretched representative of so much greatness and glory. With but few exceptions, it is now a cluster of miserable huts, inhabited by about three thousand five hundred impoverished Metawelies and Arab Christians, destitute alike of education, of arts, and of enterprise, carrying on with Egypt a small trade in tobacco from the neighboring hills, and of lava mill-stones from the Hauran. This is a sorry schedule for the name of Tire, but it is about all she can exhibit:-
vPresent State
" Dim is her glory, gone her fame,
Her boasted wealth has lied;
On her proud rock, alas: her shame,
The fisher's net is spread.
The Tyrian harp has slumbered long,
And Tyria's mirth is low;
The timbrel, dulcimer, and song
Are hushed, or wake to woe.”

Land and the Book

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