Pygmalion of Tyre
Encyclopedia
Pygmalion was king of Tyre from 831 to 785 BC and a son of King Mattan I
(840-832 BC).
During Pygmalion's reign, Tyre seems to have shifted the heart of its trading empire from the Middle East
to the Mediterranean, as can be judged from the building of new colonies including Kition on Cyprus
, Sardinia
(see Nora Stone discussion below), and, according to tradition, Carthage
. For the story surrounding the founding of Carthage, see Dido.
's epic poem The Aeneid
, Pygmalion is the cruel-hearted brother of Dido who secretly kills Dido's husband Sychaeus because of his lust for gold.
In Dante's The Divine Comedy
, Purgatorio, Canto XX, verses 103-105, Dante uses Virgil's version of Pygmalion to represent greed.
has interpreted the Phoenician inscription on this stone as follows:
In this rendering, Cross has restored the missing top of the tablet (estimated at two lines) based on the content of the rest of the inscription, as referring to a battle that has been fought and won by general Milkaton, son of Shubna, against the Sardinians at the site of TRSS, surely Tarshish
; Cross conjectures that Tarshish here "is most easily understood as the name of a refinery town in Sardinia, presumably Nora
or an ancient site nearby." He presents evidence that the name PMY ("Pummay") in the last line is a shortened form (hypocoristicon) of the name of Shubna's king, containing only the divine name, a method of shortening “not rare in Phoenician and related Canaanite dialects.”. Since there was only one king of Tyre with this hypocoristicon in the 9th century BC, Cross restores the name to pmy(y)tn or p‘mytn, which is rendered in the Greek tradition as Pygmalion. This interpretation of the Nora Stone provides additional evidence that in the late 9th century BC, Tyre was involved in colonizing the western Mediterranean, lending credence to the establishment of a colony in Carthage
in that time frame.
of Assyria in 841 BC. There followed several studies that attempted to relate this Baa‘li-maanzer to the list of kings given in Menander/Josephus. It was argued, based on philological considerations, that the name as given in the Assyrian text could be matched to a Phoenician Ba‘al-‘azor and the Greek Baal-Eser/Balazeros, a name corresponding to two kings in Menander’s list. The first Balazeros was a son of Hiram I
, contemporary of David and Solomon, so this was too early, but the second name referred to the grandfather of Pygmalion and was therefore in the right date range.
Against Apion
i.18, where Josephus quotes the Phoenician historian Menander
as follows:
Pygmalion’s dates, if this citation is to be trusted, are thus dependent on the date of the founding of Carthage. Here ancient classical sources given two possibilities: 825 BC or 814 BC. The 814 date is derived from the Greek historian Timaeus
(c. 345-260 BC), and is the more commonly accepted year. The 825 date is taken from the writings of Pompeius Trogus
(1st century BC), whose forty-four book Philippic History survives only in abridged form in the works of the Roman historian Justin. In a 1951 article, J. Liver argued that the 825 date has some credibility because, with it, the elapsed time between that date and the start of building of Solomon’s Temple, given as 143 years and 8 months in Menander/Josephus, agrees very closely with the date of approximately 967 BC for the start of Temple construction as derived from 1 Kings 6:1 (fourth year of Solomon
) and the date given by most historians for the end of Solomon’s forty-year reign, i.e. 932 or 931 BC. If, however, the starting place is 814 BC, measuring back 143 or 144 years does not agree with this Biblical date.
, king of Assyria, mentioned above, where it was mentioned that philological studies have equated this Ba’li-manzer with Balazeros (Baal-Eser II
), grandfather of Pygmalion. The best texts of Menander/Josephus give six years for Balazeros, followed by nine years for his son and successor Mattenos (Mattan I
), making 22 years between the start of Balazeros’s reign and the seventh year of Pygmalion. If these 22 years are measured back from 814 BC, they fall short of the 841 date required for Balazeros’s tribute to Shalmaneser. With the 825 date, however, Balazeros’s last year would be approximately 841 BC, the time of the tribute to Shalmaneser.
These two agreements, one with an Assyrian inscription and the other with a Biblical datum, have proved quite convincing to scholars such as J. M. Peñuela, F. M. Cross
., and William H. Barnes. Peñuela points out that the following consideration reconciles the two dates for Carthage derived from classical authors: 825 BC was the year that Dido fled Tyre, and she did not found Carthage until 11 years later, in 814 BC. Josephus, citing Menander, says that “in the seventh year of [Pygmalion’s] reign, his sister fled away from him, and built the city of Carthage in Libya” (Against Apion i:18). There are two events mentioned here: the flight from Tyre and the founding of Carthage. The language used would suggest that it was the first of these events, Dido’s flight, that took place in Pygmalion’s seventh year. Between the two events the following took place: Dido and her ships sailed to Cyprus, where about 80 of the men with her took wives. Eventually the Tyrians arrived on the north coast of Africa, where they received permission to build on an island in the harbor of the place where Carthage was eventually to be built. Peñuela quotes Strabo to show that some time then elapsed before the founding of Carthage: “Carthage was not founded immediately. Indeed, a small island having been captured previously in the Carthaginian harbor, Dido settled there. She fortified the place, which she used as a citadel of war against the Africans, who kept her from the shore.” Justin (18:5 10-17) also mentions the time on this island, which he names as Cothon, and says that Dido and her company built a circle of houses there. Eventually peace was made with the inhabitants on the mainland, and the Tyrians were given permission to build a city. Peñuela maintained that these various events between the departure from Tyre and the eventual rapprochement with the inhabitants on the mainland explain the eleven-year difference between Pompeius Trogus’s date of 825 BC and the 814 date derived from other classical authors for Carthage’s founding.
This understanding of the chronology related to Dido and her company resulted in the following dates for Pygmalion, Dido, and their immediate relations, as derived from F. M. Cross
and Wm. H. Barnes:
Mattan I
Mattan I ruled Tyre from 840 to 832 BC, succeeding Baal-Eser II of Tyre/Sidon.He was the father of Pygmalion , king of Tyre from 831 to 785 BC, and of Dido. As such, he may be the same person as Virgil's The Aeneid character Belus II...
(840-832 BC).
During Pygmalion's reign, Tyre seems to have shifted the heart of its trading empire from the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
to the Mediterranean, as can be judged from the building of new colonies including Kition on Cyprus
Cyprus
Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country, member of the European Union, in the Eastern Mediterranean, east of Greece, south of Turkey, west of Syria and north of Egypt. It is the third largest island in the Mediterranean Sea.The earliest known human activity on the...
, Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
(see Nora Stone discussion below), and, according to tradition, Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
. For the story surrounding the founding of Carthage, see Dido.
Literary references
In VirgilVirgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
's epic poem The Aeneid
Aeneid
The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
, Pygmalion is the cruel-hearted brother of Dido who secretly kills Dido's husband Sychaeus because of his lust for gold.
In Dante's The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
, Purgatorio, Canto XX, verses 103-105, Dante uses Virgil's version of Pygmalion to represent greed.
The Nora Stone
A possible reference to Pygmalion is an interpretation of the Nora Stone, found on Sardinia in 1773 and, though its precise finding place has been forgotten, dated by paleographic methods to the 9th century BC. Frank Moore CrossFrank Moore Cross
Frank Moore Cross, Jr. is Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages Emeritus at Harvard University, notable for his work in the interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, his 1973 magnum opus Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, and his work in Northwest Semitic epigraphy...
has interpreted the Phoenician inscription on this stone as follows:
[a. He fought (?)]
[b. with the Sardinians (?)]
1. at Tarshish
2. and he drove them out.
3. Among the Sardinians
4. he is [now] at peace,
5. (and) his army is at peace:
6. Milkaton son of
7. Shubna (Shebna), general
8. of (king) Pummay.
In this rendering, Cross has restored the missing top of the tablet (estimated at two lines) based on the content of the rest of the inscription, as referring to a battle that has been fought and won by general Milkaton, son of Shubna, against the Sardinians at the site of TRSS, surely Tarshish
Tarshish
Tarshish תַּרְשִׁישׁ occurs in the Hebrew Bible with several uncertain meanings:*One of the sons of Javan .* In the Bible Solomon set up a trade with Tarshish and received ivory, apes, and peacocks from Tarshish which are all native to the jungles in India. India's state bird for example is the...
; Cross conjectures that Tarshish here "is most easily understood as the name of a refinery town in Sardinia, presumably Nora
Nora, Italy
thumb|250px|The Punic Quarter in the archaeological site of Nora.Nora is an ancient Roman and pre-Roman town placed on a peninsula near Pula, near to Cagliari in Sardinia. According with the legend, Nora was founded by a group of Iberians led by Norax, a mythological hero son of Eriteide and the...
or an ancient site nearby." He presents evidence that the name PMY ("Pummay") in the last line is a shortened form (hypocoristicon) of the name of Shubna's king, containing only the divine name, a method of shortening “not rare in Phoenician and related Canaanite dialects.”. Since there was only one king of Tyre with this hypocoristicon in the 9th century BC, Cross restores the name to pmy(y)tn or p‘mytn, which is rendered in the Greek tradition as Pygmalion. This interpretation of the Nora Stone provides additional evidence that in the late 9th century BC, Tyre was involved in colonizing the western Mediterranean, lending credence to the establishment of a colony in Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
in that time frame.
Tribute of Balazeros (Baalimanzer) to Shalmaneser III
In 1951, Fuad Safar published a record of tribute from Baa‘li-maanzer, king of Tyre, to Shalmaneser IIIShalmaneser III
Shalmaneser III was king of Assyria , and son of the previous ruler, Ashurnasirpal II....
of Assyria in 841 BC. There followed several studies that attempted to relate this Baa‘li-maanzer to the list of kings given in Menander/Josephus. It was argued, based on philological considerations, that the name as given in the Assyrian text could be matched to a Phoenician Ba‘al-‘azor and the Greek Baal-Eser/Balazeros, a name corresponding to two kings in Menander’s list. The first Balazeros was a son of Hiram I
Hiram I
Hiram I , according to the Hebrew Bible, was the Phoenician king of Tyre. He reigned from 980 to 947 BC, succeeding his father, Abibaal. Hiram was succeeded as king of Tyre by his son Baal-Eser I...
, contemporary of David and Solomon, so this was too early, but the second name referred to the grandfather of Pygmalion and was therefore in the right date range.
Dating of Pygmalion
Pygmalion’s dates are derived from Josephus’sJosephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
Against Apion
Against Apion
Against Apion was a polemical work written by Flavius Josephus as a defense of Judaism as a classical religion and philosophy, stressing its antiquity against what he perceived as more recent traditions of the Greeks.-Text:Against Apion 1:8 also defines which books he viewed as being in the Jewish...
i.18, where Josephus quotes the Phoenician historian Menander
Menander of Ephesus
Menander of Ephesus was the historian whose lost work on the history of Tyre was used by Josephus, who quotes Menander's list of kings of Tyre in his apologia for the Jews, Against Apion...
as follows:
Pygmalion . . . lived fifty-six years, and reigned forty-seven years. Now, in the seventh year of his reign, his sister fled away from him, and built the city of CarthageCarthageCarthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
in Libya.
Pygmalion’s dates, if this citation is to be trusted, are thus dependent on the date of the founding of Carthage. Here ancient classical sources given two possibilities: 825 BC or 814 BC. The 814 date is derived from the Greek historian Timaeus
Timaeus (historian)
Timaeus , ancient Greek historian, was born at Tauromenium in Sicily. Driven out of Sicily by Agathocles, he migrated to Athens, where he studied rhetoric under a pupil of Isocrates and lived for fifty years...
(c. 345-260 BC), and is the more commonly accepted year. The 825 date is taken from the writings of Pompeius Trogus
Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus
Gnaeus Pompēius Trōgus, known as Pompeius Trogus, Pompey Trogue, or Trogue Pompey, was a 1st century BC Roman historian of the Celtic tribe of the Vocontii in Gallia Narbonensis, flourished during the age of Augustus, nearly contemporary with Livy.His grandfather served in the war against Sertorius...
(1st century BC), whose forty-four book Philippic History survives only in abridged form in the works of the Roman historian Justin. In a 1951 article, J. Liver argued that the 825 date has some credibility because, with it, the elapsed time between that date and the start of building of Solomon’s Temple, given as 143 years and 8 months in Menander/Josephus, agrees very closely with the date of approximately 967 BC for the start of Temple construction as derived from 1 Kings 6:1 (fourth year of Solomon
Solomon
Solomon , according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah in 2 Samuel 12:25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before...
) and the date given by most historians for the end of Solomon’s forty-year reign, i.e. 932 or 931 BC. If, however, the starting place is 814 BC, measuring back 143 or 144 years does not agree with this Biblical date.
Josephus
Liver advanced a second reason to favor the 825 date, related to the inscription of Shalmaneser IIIShalmaneser III
Shalmaneser III was king of Assyria , and son of the previous ruler, Ashurnasirpal II....
, king of Assyria, mentioned above, where it was mentioned that philological studies have equated this Ba’li-manzer with Balazeros (Baal-Eser II
Baal-Eser II
Baal-Eser II , also known as Balbazer II and Ba‘l-mazzer I, was a king of Tyre, the son of Ithobaal I.The primary information related to Baal-Eser II comes from Josephus’s citation of the Phoenician author Menander of Ephesus, in Against Apion i.18. Here it is said that “Ithobalus, the priest of...
), grandfather of Pygmalion. The best texts of Menander/Josephus give six years for Balazeros, followed by nine years for his son and successor Mattenos (Mattan I
Mattan I
Mattan I ruled Tyre from 840 to 832 BC, succeeding Baal-Eser II of Tyre/Sidon.He was the father of Pygmalion , king of Tyre from 831 to 785 BC, and of Dido. As such, he may be the same person as Virgil's The Aeneid character Belus II...
), making 22 years between the start of Balazeros’s reign and the seventh year of Pygmalion. If these 22 years are measured back from 814 BC, they fall short of the 841 date required for Balazeros’s tribute to Shalmaneser. With the 825 date, however, Balazeros’s last year would be approximately 841 BC, the time of the tribute to Shalmaneser.
These two agreements, one with an Assyrian inscription and the other with a Biblical datum, have proved quite convincing to scholars such as J. M. Peñuela, F. M. Cross
Frank Moore Cross
Frank Moore Cross, Jr. is Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages Emeritus at Harvard University, notable for his work in the interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, his 1973 magnum opus Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, and his work in Northwest Semitic epigraphy...
., and William H. Barnes. Peñuela points out that the following consideration reconciles the two dates for Carthage derived from classical authors: 825 BC was the year that Dido fled Tyre, and she did not found Carthage until 11 years later, in 814 BC. Josephus, citing Menander, says that “in the seventh year of [Pygmalion’s] reign, his sister fled away from him, and built the city of Carthage in Libya” (Against Apion i:18). There are two events mentioned here: the flight from Tyre and the founding of Carthage. The language used would suggest that it was the first of these events, Dido’s flight, that took place in Pygmalion’s seventh year. Between the two events the following took place: Dido and her ships sailed to Cyprus, where about 80 of the men with her took wives. Eventually the Tyrians arrived on the north coast of Africa, where they received permission to build on an island in the harbor of the place where Carthage was eventually to be built. Peñuela quotes Strabo to show that some time then elapsed before the founding of Carthage: “Carthage was not founded immediately. Indeed, a small island having been captured previously in the Carthaginian harbor, Dido settled there. She fortified the place, which she used as a citadel of war against the Africans, who kept her from the shore.” Justin (18:5 10-17) also mentions the time on this island, which he names as Cothon, and says that Dido and her company built a circle of houses there. Eventually peace was made with the inhabitants on the mainland, and the Tyrians were given permission to build a city. Peñuela maintained that these various events between the departure from Tyre and the eventual rapprochement with the inhabitants on the mainland explain the eleven-year difference between Pompeius Trogus’s date of 825 BC and the 814 date derived from other classical authors for Carthage’s founding.
This understanding of the chronology related to Dido and her company resulted in the following dates for Pygmalion, Dido, and their immediate relations, as derived from F. M. Cross
Frank Moore Cross
Frank Moore Cross, Jr. is Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Other Oriental Languages Emeritus at Harvard University, notable for his work in the interpretation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, his 1973 magnum opus Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic, and his work in Northwest Semitic epigraphy...
and Wm. H. Barnes:
- Baal-Eser IIBaal-Eser IIBaal-Eser II , also known as Balbazer II and Ba‘l-mazzer I, was a king of Tyre, the son of Ithobaal I.The primary information related to Baal-Eser II comes from Josephus’s citation of the Phoenician author Menander of Ephesus, in Against Apion i.18. Here it is said that “Ithobalus, the priest of...
(Ba‘l-mazzer II) 846-841 BC - Mattan IMattan IMattan I ruled Tyre from 840 to 832 BC, succeeding Baal-Eser II of Tyre/Sidon.He was the father of Pygmalion , king of Tyre from 831 to 785 BC, and of Dido. As such, he may be the same person as Virgil's The Aeneid character Belus II...
840-832 BC - 831 BC: Pygmalion begins to reign
- 825 BC: Dido flees Tyre in 7th year of Pygmalion
- 825 BC and possibly some time thereafter: Dido and companions on Cyprus
- Between 825 BC and 814 BC: Tyrians build settlement on island of Cothon
- 814 BC: Dido founds Carthage on mainland
- 785 BC: Death of Pygmalion