By the Rev. J. Starcky †
Honorary Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research
According to the Greek Historian Herodotus, who visited Tyre around 450 B.C. the city of Tyre was founded 2750 B.C. In fact, it was the arrival in Lebanon of the Canaanites, the Semites whose dialect would become Phoenician. The future excavations of Tyre without doubt will reach deeper levels, proving that before this date other populations lived on the site, as it is the case in Byblos or Ugarit.
In the 14th Century B.C., the archives of Pharaoh Akhenaton contained 10 letters written by the King of Tyre, Abimilki, to seek his help against invaders from the country of Amurru in Syria. They were written in Acadian, the diplomatic language of the era, but various signs prove that the spoken language in Tyre was already Phoenician. In the following century, Egypt retook control of the city, as two Egyptian inscriptions bearing the name of Seti I and Ramses II show. These inscriptions were found in excavations near the Shiite cemetery.
Around 1200 B.C., the invasion of the