From the time of Ethbaal on wards the independence of Phoenicia was threatened by the advance of Assyria. In 868 B.C. Assur-nasir-pal III. "washed his weapons in the great sea," and exacted tribute from the kings of Tyre, Sidon, Byblus and other cities, including Arvad (Keilinschr. Bibliothek, i. 109). The inscriptions of his son Shalmaneser III. mention the taking of tribute from the Tyrians and Sidonians in 842 and again in 839; the Byblians are included at the latter date, and among the kings defeated at Karkar in 854 or
was Metten-baal, king of the Arvadites (ibid., pp. Iv,
Thus Shalmaneser established a supremacy which lasted for over a hundred years and was acknowledged by occasional payments of tribute. In 741 Tiglath-pileser III. mentions on his tribute lists "tliriam of Tyre"; and here a piece of native evidence becomes available. An early Phoenician inscription (CIS. i. 5= NSI. No. I 1), engraved upon the fragments of a bronze bowl, mentions a certain governor of Qarth-hadasht (or Karti-Hadasti, "New City," i.e., Citium), "servant of Hiram king of the Sidoni ans to Baal of Lebanon," showing that this Hiram II. was not only king of Tyre, as the Assyrian inscription calls him, but of Sidon too ; and further, that by this time Tyre has established a colony in Cyprus (q.v.). In Tiglath-pileser's Philistine campaign of 734 Byblus and Aradus paid tribute, and a king of Tyre, Metten, was forced to do the same (KB. ii. 23). For the period which follows a certain amount of information is furnished by Menander (in Jos., Ant., ix. 14, 2). Elulaeus IX., in Assyrian Lull, who ruled under the name of Pylas, was king of Tyre, Sidon, and other cities at this time (c. 725-69o), and at the beginning of his reign suffered from an invasion by Shalmaneser V. ; this was probably the expedition against Hoshea of Samaria in 725; "the king of Assyria . . . overran all Phoenicia, but soon made peace with them all and returned back." In the reign of Sargon Phoenicia itself seems to have been left alone, though Cyprus submitted to him in 709 ; but in the reign of Sennacherib Elulaeus joined the league of Philistia and Judah, in alliance with Egypt and Ethiopia, which aimed at throwing off the oppres sive tyranny of Assyria. In the great campaign of 701 Sennacherib came down upon the revolting provinces ; he forced Lull, king of Sidon, to fly for refuge to Cyprus, took his chief cities, and set up Tuba'lu (Ethbaal) as king, imposing a yearly tribute (KB.
ii. 91). The blockade of Tyre by sea, significantly passed over in Sennacherib's inscription, is described by Menander ; the Assyrian king, however, so far accomplished his object as to break up the combination of Tyre and Sidon, which had grown into a powerful state. At Sidon the successor of Ethbaal was Abd-milkath; in alliance with a Cilician chief he rebelled against Esarhaddon about the year 678, with disastrous consequences. Sidon was annihi lated; Abd-milkath fell into the hands of Esarhaddon, who founded a new Sidon on the mainland, peopled it with foreigners, and called it after his own name. The old name, however, sur vived in popular usage ; but the character of the city was changed, and till the time of Cyrus the kingdom of Sidon ceased to exist (KB. ii. 125 seq., 145;
88). Tyre also came in for its share of hardship. Elulaeus was followed by Baal, who in 672 consented to join Tirhaka, the Ethiopian king of Egypt, in a rebellion against Assyria. Esarhaddon, on his way to Egypt for the second time, blockaded Tyre, but he did not capture the city itself. His monument found at Zenjirli represents the great king holding Baal of Tyre and Tirhaka of Egypt by cords fastened in their lips; there is no evidence, however, that he actually took either of them prisoner (Gressmann, Texte u. Bader', ii. Pl.
lxiii.). Early in the reign of Assur-bani-pal Tyre was besieged again (668), but Assur-bani-pal succeeded no better than his predecessors. Nevertheless Baal submitted in the end, along with the princes of Gebal and Arvad, Manasseh of Judah, and the other Canaanite chiefs; in the island of Cyprus the Assyrians carried all before them (KB. ii. 149 seq., 169, 173). On his return from the Arabian campaign Assur-bani-pal severely punished the rebel lious inhabitants of Ushu (Palaetyrus) and Akko (ibid., 229). In Phoenicia, as elsewhere, Assyrian rule created nothing and left nothing behind it but a record of barbarous conquest.
In the last crisis of the dying power of Assyria the Egyptians for a short time laid hands on Phoenicia ; but after their defeat at the battle of Carchemish (605), the Chaldaeans became the masters of western Asia. Jeremiah's allusion (xxv. 22) in 604 to the ap proaching downfall of the kings of Tyre and Sidon and the coast land beyond the sea, i.e., the Phoenician settlements on the Medi terranean, seems to imply that the Phoenician states recovered some measure of independence; if they did it cannot have lasted long. In 588 Apries (Pharaoh Hophra) made an attempt to dis place the Chaldaean supremacy; he defeated Tyre and Sidon, and terrorized the other cities into submission (Herod., ii. 161; Diod. Sic., i. 68). Some of the Phoenician chiefs, among them Ithobal II., the new king of Tyre, while forced to yield to a change of masters, were bold enough to declare their hostility to the Baby lonians. This state of affairs did not escape the vigilance of Nebuchadrezzar. After the fall of Jerusalem he marched upon Phoenicia; Apries withdrew his army, and the siege of Tyre began. For 13 years the great merchant city held out (585-573; Jos., c. Ap., i. 21: cf. Ezek. xxvi. I seq.). Ezekiel says that Nebuchadrezzar and his host had no reward for their heavy service against Tyre, and the presumption is that the city capitu lated on favourable terms; for Ithobal's reign ends with the close of the siege, and the royal family is subsequently found in Baby lon. The king appointed by Nebuchadrezzar was Baal II. (574– 564), after whose death a republic was formed under a single suffete or "judge" (shofet). Josephus (loc. cit.) is again our authority for the changes of government which followed until the monarchy was revived. At length under Hiram III. Phoenicia passed from the Chaldaeans to the Persians (538), and at the same time Amasis II. of Egypt occupied Cyprus (Herod., ii. 182). There seems to have been no struggle; the great siege and the subsequent civil disorders had exhausted Tyre, and Sidon took its place as the leading state. About this time, too, Carthage made an effort for independence under Hanno the Great (538-521), the real founder of its fortunes; the old dependence upon Tyre was changed for a mere relation of piety observed by the annual sending of delegates (0Ecopoi.) to the festival of Melkarth (Arrian, ii. 24; Polyb., xxxi. 20, 12). The disasters which befell Tyre dur ing this and the foregoing period might suggest that its pros perity had been seriously damaged. But Tyre always counted for more in commerce than in politics; and in the year 586, just before the great siege, Ezekiel draws a vivid picture (ch. xxvii.) of the extent and splendour of its commercial relations.