Lebanon?s Tyre is so ancient, and the relics of its magnificent, often tortured history are so grand that it seems to put the present in an insignificant place.
At one site here, a great colonnade erected by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago reaches toward the sea, its old columns falling onto a mosaic pathway passing a Roman bath house and various other Roman and Byzantine creations; elsewhere, a dust path, unguarded by any authority, descends to a necropolis of scattered old sarcophagi and reaches another colonnade and a hippodrome with triumphal arch overlooking it all.
Much of what?s standing is Roman. But others were here before, starting with the Phoenicians 4,000 years ago. Alexander the Great laid siege to the island city after the inhabitants responded inhospitably to his desire to pray at their temple of Heracles. Just about every conquering force from the beginning of time with any ambitions in this region passed through Tyre and often held the city. The Crusaders ruled Tyre from 1124 to 1291. Latecomers.
But not the latest by any means. Walking through the ruins, marveling at the endurance of what is still standing after thousands of years, one comes across a leaflet, written in Arabic, dropped from the sky sometime in the last month or so.
It is a message from Israel that warns ” … For your own safety and because of our desire to avoid civilian casualties, please stay away from places where Hezbollah is operating. …”
Messages like this were being dropped while Israel was bombarding Lebanon from the air, sea and land. In Lebanon, especially in the south, people complained that it was impossible to move “away from places where Hezbollah is operating” because the Israelis would go after vehicles on the road. Hezbollah, which launched thousands of rockets against Israel, did not send any leaflets warning people to get out of the way.
By the time a cease-fire ended the 34-day exchange last Monday, 1,200 Lebanese were dead, mostly civilians, compared to 160 Israeli dead, mostly soldiers.
Here in Tyre, next to the ancient necropolis, there?s a 20-story building; rather, a building that was 20 storys. Now the top four or five floors of the building, a residence, are collapsed over the rest. Below, cars are crushed. It was a Hezbollah target, blown away in split second by an Israeli jet.
One wonders what Alexander of Macedonia would have thought of such destructive power when he was laying siege to Tyre 2,300 years ago. He actually built 20-story siege towers that helped to finish off the Tyrians, but it took a lot of time. Seven months.
Casualties? The population of Tyre at the time was about 30,000, and Alexander was so enraged when he finally took control of the place all of those Tyrians were either massacred or taken as slaves. The pity of it all is that 600 yearsbefore all this, Tyre had a really good and smart king, who got along very well with Israel?s David and after him, Solomon.
Solomon, fulfilling David?s wish, wanted to build a temple. To do this he needed very good wood and very good artisans. Hiram of Tyre had cedar and cypress and great artisans, all of which he offered to Solomon. The wood of Lebanon and Tyre?s stone cutters and artists were essential in the construction of Solomon?s temple.
Solomon and Hiram, both very rich, apparently exchanged riddles and bet against each other?s ability to solve the riddles.
As the story goes, at first Hiram couldn?t guess the riddles from Solomon and lost a lot of money. But Hiram hired a riddle solver who not only solved Solomon?s riddles but created some riddles that Solomon couldn?t solve.
Thus, the King of Tyre and the King of Israel challenged each other many millennia ago far more sensibly and imaginatively than their descendants do today.
G. Jefferson Price III is a former editor and Middle East correspondent for The Baltimore Sun. He travels now on behalf of Catholic Relief Services.
