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City of former Phoenicia along the coast of today's Lebanon (area 5).
Tyre was one of the main cities of the Phoenicians, a Semitic people settled along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean that is part of today's Syria. Along with Sidon, another Phoenician city a few miles north, Tyre is often mentionned in the Bible. Indeed, these cities were neighbors of the kingdom of Israel, and it is from the king of Tyre, Hiram (969-936 B. C.), that Solomon obtained the wood -- cedars of Lebanon-- he needed to built the temple in Jerusalem (I Kings, 5, 15-26). Later, after the kingdon was split, Ahab, king of Israel (around 873-852 B. C.), married Jezebel, a daughter of Ethbaal, a king of the Sidonians, and tried to introduce Phoenicians gods in he kingdom of Israel (I Kings, 17, 29-33). In biblical times, Tyre was one of the busiest harbours of the whole Mediterranean, an extremely wealthy city, due to Phoenicians' heavy involvment in maritime trade (some of Ezekiel's prophecies against Tyre give a very vivid description of the city and its wealth : Ezekiel, 26-28).