2 chronicles 2:11-14
Then Huram the king of Tyre answered in writing, which he sent to Solomon, Because the LORD hath loved his people, he hath made thee king over them.
Huram said moreover, Blessed be the LORD God of Israel, that made heaven and earth, who hath given to David the king a wise son, endued with prudence and understanding, that might build an house for the LORD, and an house for his kingdom.
And now I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding, of Huram my father's,
The son of a woman of the daughters of Dan, and his father was a man of Tyre, skilful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone, and in timber, in purple, in blue, and in fine linen, and in crimson; also to grave any manner of graving, and to find out every device which shall be put to him, with thy cunning men, and with the cunning men of my lord David thy father.
[Danaids - Pleiades - Neronids?]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia
Fernand Braudel remarked in The Perspective of the World that Phoenicia was an early example of a "world-economy" surrounded by empires. The high point of Phoenician culture and seapower is usually placed ca. 1200–800 BC.
During the early Iron Age, in around 1200 BC an unknown event occurred, historically associated with the appearance of the Sea Peoples from the north. They weakened and destroyed the Egyptians and the Hittites respectively. In the resulting power vacuum, a number of Phoenician cities rose as significant maritime powers.
The collection of city-states constituting Phoenicia came to be characterized by outsiders and the Phoenicians as Sidonia or Tyria. Phoenicians and Canaanites alike were called Zidonians or Tyrians, as one Phoenician city came to prominence after another.
SpencerWells of the Genographic Project has conducted genetic studies that demonstrate that male populations of Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Malta, Spain, and other areas settled by Phoenicians, share a common m89 chromosome Y type. Male populations in areas associated with Minoan or with the Sea People settlement have completely different genetic markers. This implies that Minoans and Sea Peoples probably did not have ancestral relation with the Phoenicians.
In 2004, two geneticists educated at Harvard University and leading scientists of the National Geographic Genographic Project, Dr. Pierre Zalloua and Dr. Spencer Wells, identified "the haplogroup of the Phoenicians" as haplogroup J2, with avenues open for future research. The male populations of Tunisia and Malta were also included in this study. They were shown to share "overwhelming" genetic similarities with the Lebanese. In 2008, scientists from the Genographic Project announced that "as many as 1 in 17 men living today on the coasts of North Africa and southern Europe may have a Phoenician direct male-line ancestor."
[What region associated with Sea Peoples ?!? So 16 of these 17 people weren't from Lebanon originally ? Big Deal!]
http://phoenicia.org/britmines.html
http://en.wikipedia...._of_Carthage%29
According to Justin (18.4–6), a king of Tyre whom Justin does not name, made his very beautiful daughter Elissa and son Pygmalion his joint heirs. But on his death the people took Pygmalion alone as their ruler though Pygmalion was yet still a boy. Elissa married Acerbas her uncle who as priest of Hercules— that is, Melqart— was second in power to King Pygmalion.
Eventually Elissa and her followers arrived on the coast of North Africa where Elissa asked the local inhabitants for a small bit of land for a temporary refuge until she could continue her journeying, only as much land as could be encompassed by an oxhide. They agreed. Elissa cut the oxhide into fine strips so that she had enough to encircle an entire nearby hill, which was therefore afterwards named Byrsa "hide". (This event is commemorated in modern mathematics: The "isoperimetric problem" of enclosing the maximum area within a fixed boundary is often called the "Dido Problem" in modern Calculus of variations.) That would become their new home. Many of the locals joined the settlement and both locals and envoys from the nearby Phoenician city of Utica urged the building of a city.
Virgil names Dido's father as Belus, this Belus sometimes being called Belus II by later commentators to distinguish him from Belus son of Poseidon and Libya in earlier Greek mythology. If the story of Elissa/Dido has a factual basis and is synchronized properly with history then this Belus stands for Mattan I who was father of the historical Pygmalion. Virgil (1.746f) adds that the marriage between Dido/Elissa and Sychaeus, as Virgil calls Dido's husband, occurred while her father was still alive, that Pygmalion slew Sychaeus secretly and that Sychaeus appeared in a dream to Dido in which he told the truth about his death, urged her to flee the country, and revealed to her where his gold was buried. None of these details contradict Justin's epitome. Indeed they clarify it and are likely enough to have been part of the tale Justin was abridging.
The Nora Stone, found on Sardinia, has been interpreted by Frank Moore Cross as naming Pygmalion as the king of the general who was using the stone to record his victory over the local populace. On paleographic grounds, the stone is dated to the ninth century BC. (Cross’s translation, with a longer discussion of the Nora stone, is found in the Pygmalion article.) If Cross’s interpretation is correct, this presents inscriptional evidence substantiating the existence of a 9th-century-BC king of Tyre named (in Greek) Pygmalion.
Another possible reference to Balazeros is found in the Aeneid. It was a common ancient practice of using the hypocoristicon or shortened form of the name that included only the divine element, so that the “Belus” that Virgil names as the father of Dido in the Aeneid may be a reference to her grandfather, Baal-Eser II/Balazeros. [Baleric Islands?]
Even more important than the inscriptional and literary references supporting the historicity of Pygmalion and Dido are chronological considerations that give something of a mathematical demonstration of the veracity of the major feature of the Pygmalion/Dido saga, namely the flight of Dido from Tyre in Pygmalion’s seventh year, and her eventual founding of the city of Carthage.
The Barcids, the family to which Hannibal belonged, claimed descent from a younger brother of Dido according to Silius Italicus in his Punica (1.71–7).
http://en.wikipedia....gmalion_of_Tyre
J. Liver, {“The Chronology of Tyre at the Beginning of the First Milennium B.C.” Israel Exploration Journal 3 (1953) 119-120} advanced a second reason to favor the 825 date, related to the inscription of Shalmaneser III, 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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcid
Hasdrubal the Fair (?-221 BC), Hamilcar's son-in-law, who followed the latter in his campaign against the governing aristocracy at Carthage at the close of the First Punic War, and in his subsequent career of conquest in Hispania. After Hamilcar's death (228 BC), Hasdrubal succeeded him in the command and extended the newly acquired empire by skilful diplomacy. He consolidated it with the foundation of Carthago Nova, establishing it as the capital of the new province. By a treaty with Rome he fixed the Ebro as the boundary between the two powers. He was killed by a Celtic assassin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthage
According to Polybius, Carthage relied heavily, though not exclusively, on foreign mercenaries, especially in overseas warfare. The core of its army was from its own territory in north Africa (ethnic Libyans and Numidians, as well as "Liby-Phoenicians" — i.e. Phoenicians proper). These troops were supported by mercenaries from different ethnic groups and geographic locations across the Mediterranean who fought in their own national units; Celtic, Balearic, and Iberian troops were especially common. Later, after the Barcid conquest of Iberia, Iberians came to form an even greater part of the Carthaginian forces.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punic
In archaeological and linguistic usage Punic refers to a Hellenistic and later-era culture and dialect from Carthage that had developed into a distinct form from the Phoenician of the mother city of Tyre.
The Punics (from Latin pūnicus meaning Phoenician) were a group of western Semitic-speaking peoples from Carthage in North Africa who traced their origins to a group of Phoenician and Cypriot settlers, but also to North African Berbers. Punics were probably a mix of Berbers and Phoenicians in terms of culture and ancestry. Contrary to other Phoenicians, Punics had a landowning aristocracy. [hides-land]
http://en.wikipedia....f_Kings_of_Tyre
Agenor c. 1500 BC Son of Poseidon or of Belus.
[This probably relates the the Latin, French and Sea or Fisher Kings [Arvad, Arwad, Argives]]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melqart
In Greek, by interpretatio graeca Melqart was identified with Heracles and referred to as the Tyrian Herakles. Melqart was venerated in Phoenician and Punic cultures from Syria to Spain. The first occurrence of the name is in a ninth-century BCE stela inscription found in 1939 north of Aleppo in northern Syria, the "Ben-Hadad" inscription, erected by the son of the king of Arma,
http://www.watch.pair.com/dan.html
Dan-Jaan may indicate involvement in Pan-worship. [1017 B.C.]
Then they came to Gilead, and to the land of Tahtimhodshi; and they came to Danjaan, and about to Zidon... II Samuel 24:6
"Hebrew dan ya'an, 'Dan played a pipe', indicates that it was a suburb of Dan." [Tenney, Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, p. 199]
Panias was called by the Jews "Dan" or "Mizvar Dan" (Fort of Dan). [Encyclopedia Judaica, "Banias", p. 162]
"... later the Greeks built a shrine to Pan, the god of nature, and called the place Paneas (the city of Pan)." [Thompson, p. 1734]
"The place had been named Panias, for it served as the favorite seat of Pan, a Greek fertility god." [Pfeiffer, p. 197]
"One of the main sources of the Jordan rises in the grotto of Pan..." [Herberman, Catholic Encyclopedia, "Caesarea Philippi," p. 135]
"...the Jordan river that weaves like a snake along the eastern border of the land of Israel is named after the ancient tribe of Dan. Jordan means 'the going down of the Dan.'" [Church, p. 124]
"Now, the question remains, how do we know the Spartans were the offspring of the tribe of Dan? ... Aside from the fact that the Spartans wore long hair as a symbol of their power (like Samson) there is a legend written about the son of Belus, king of the Spartans -- in which is given the story of one named 'Danaus,' who arrived in Greece with his daughters by ship. According to the legend, his daughters called themselves Danades. They introduced the cult of the mother goddess, which became the established religion of the Arcadians and developed over the years into the worship of Diana...The Spartans so loved their king that they called themselves Danaans -- long before they adopted the name of Spartans. Also in the legend is a record of the arrival of 'colonists from Palestine.' Please note, the man who headed the expedition was named Danaus. He may well have been of the tribe of Dan, and thus would have been the progenitor of the ancient Spartans." [Church, p. 120-21]
"In 4 B.C. this area became tetrarchy of Herod's son Philippus who refounded Paneas as Caesarea Philippi." [Freedman, "Ituraea", p. 583]
In 61 A.D. Caesarea Philippi was renamed Neronias. [Encyclopedia Judaica, "Banias", p. 162]
http://en.wikipedia....esarea_Philippi
http://en.wikipedia....iblical_city%29
http://en.wikipedia....iki/Hula_Valley
http://en.wikipedia....i/Golan_Heights
http://en.wikipedia...._of_the_Galilee
The Finger of the Galilee is a panhandle along the Hula Valley in northern Israel. It contains the towns Metula and Kiryat Shmona and the rivers of Dan and Banias.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banias
In the distant past, a giant spring gushed from a cave set in the limestone bedrock, to tumble down the valley and flow into the Hula marshes. Currently it is the source of the Nahal Hermon stream. Whereas the Jordan River previously rose from the malaria-infested Hula marshes, it now rises from this spring and two others at the base of Mount Hermon. The flow of the spring has decreased greatly in modern times. The water no longer gushes forth from the cave, but only seeps from the bedrock below it.
While Banias does not appear in the Old Testament, Philostorgius, Theodoret, Benjamin of Tudela and Samuel ben Samson all incorrectly identified it with Laish (Tel el-Qadi renamed as Tel Dan). Eusebius of Caesarea accurately places Dan/Laish in the vicinity of Paneas at the fourth mile on the route to Tyre. Eusebius's identification was confirmed by E Robinson in 1838 and subsequently by archaeological excavations at Tel-Dan and Caesarea Philippi.
http://www.bibleplaces.com/banias.htm
Caesarea Philippi was also known as Baal-gad, Banias, Baniyas, Banyas, Barias, Belinas, Caesarea Neronias, Caesarea of Philip, Caesarea Paneas, Caesarea Panias, Caesareia Sebaste, Keisarion, Kisrin, Medinat Dan, Mivzar Dan, Neronias, Pamias, Paneas, Paneias, Paneion, Panias, Panium
http://www.watch.pair.com/dan.html [Beli Mawr - like]
"In Greek myth...[is] the legend of King Belaus, one Danaus, who arrives in Greece with his daughters, by ship. His daughters are said to have introduced the cult of the mother goddess, which became the established cult of the Arcadians. According to Robert Graves the Danaus myth records the arrival in the Peleponnesus of 'colonists from Palestine.' Graves states that King Belus is in fact Baal, or Bel -- or perhaps Belial from the Old Testament." [Baigent, Holy Blood, p. 275]
"At that particular time Arcadia was ruled by Spartans... The Spartans placed a special magical significance on their long hair ...associated with their great strength. There appears to have been a relationship between the Spartans and the Jews. In the Apocryphal we read: 'It has been found in writing concerning the Spartans and the Jews that they are brethren and are of the family of Abraham.' (Maccabees I 12:21)" [Van Buren, p. 45]
Judges 13:1
And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD; and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years.
And there was a certain man of Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah;
Judges 13:25
And the Spirit of the LORD began to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtaol.
http://bible.cc/judges/16-31.htm
[Very possibly Tyrian Hercules, Perseus, a Danaan, a Dorite, man of the Sun]
http://www.magnumarc.../Iierakles.html
IIERAKLES (`Hprua4s) is mentioned in 2 Mac cab. iv. 1 9, as the Tyrian god to whom the Jewish high-priest Jason sent a religious embassy, with the offering of 3oo drachmx of silver. That this Tyrian Hercules (Herod. ii. 44) is the same as the Tyrian Baal, is evident from a bilingual Phceni cian inscription found at Malta (described by Ge senius, AIonunt. Ling. Phan. i. 96), in which the Phcenician words, To our Lord, to Melkarth, the Baal of Tyre.'
The worship of Baal, which prevailed in the time of the Judges, was put down by Samuel (I Sam. vii. 4), and the effects of that suppression appear to have lasted through the next few centuries, as Baal is not enumerated among the idols of Solomon. (1 Kings xi. 5-8 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 13)
http://en.wikipedia....8high_priest%29
Jason became high priest in 175 BCE after the accession of Antiochus Epiphanes to the throne of the Seleucid Empire. In 168 BCE Jason made a failed attempt to regain control of Jerusalem. Fleeing again to Ammon, he then continued to Egypt, then finally to Sparta, where he died and was buried
Herodotus
http://books.google....N4i&output=text
Mardonius began with the prince of Sidon, and from him went to the rest; and they were all of opinion that a battle should be fought; but Artemisia thus delivered her sentiments : " Mardonius, deliver this my opinion to the king, whose exertions in the battle of Euboea were neither the meanest nor the least;
of Tyre. It has been conjectured by many learned men, | that this could have been no other than the Israelitish Samson. That this is very probable, the reader may perhaps be Inclined to think from these among other reasons:
With the story of Samson the Tyrians might easily become acquainted at Joppa, a seaport belonging to the tribe of Dan; but more especially from those Danites who removed to Laish, in the neighbourhood of Tyre, and who, as Ezekiel informs us, had great commerce with the Tyrians. These Danites came from Zorah and Eshtaol, where Samson was born and lived, and would not fail of promulgating and magnifying the exploits of their own hero. I am aware how rash it is to pronounce a sameness of person from a likeness of certain corresponding circumstances in the actions of men, but there are certain particulars so striking, first in the account given of this Tyrian Hercules by Herodotus, and secondly, in the ritual prescribed for his worship, that where we can prove nothing by more solid argument, conjectures so founded may be permitted to have some weight The story of Samson will account for the two pillars Bet up in the temple of Hercules, if we consider them as placed there in commemoration of the greatest of Samson's exploits. The various circumstances which Herodotus makes peculiar to the Tyrian Hercules, however disguised, are all reducible and relative to this last action of Samson. 1. Hercules, being apprehended by the Egyptians, was led in procession as a sacrifice to Jupiter; and the Philistines proclaimed a feast to offer a great sacrifice to Dagon their god, and to rejoice, because Samson was delivered into their hands. 2. Whilst Hercules stood at the altar, he remained quiet for a season; and Bo did Samson when his strength was departed from him. 3. But in a short time Hercules returned to his strength, and slew all the Egyptians.—Concerning the ritual used in the worship of the Tyrian Hercules, Bochart remarks there were many things in it not practised elsewhere. Let the reader judge from what follows whether they do not seem borrowed from the Levitical Law, or grounded on what the Scripture relates of Samson. The total disuse of images, the prohibition of swine in sacrifice, the habit of the priest, the embroidered stole, &c, and naked feet, the strict chastity exacted of him, the fire ever-burning on the altar, are all of them precepts which Moses delivered. Why may we not add that the exclusion of women from the temple, and the shaven head of the priests, were intended to brand the treacherous behaviour of Delilah, and to commemorate the loss of Samson's locks ? Appian, Arrian, and Diodorns Siculus, acknowledge these to have been Phenician rites, and different from any observed among the GreekB ; and it is well known that this singularity was a principal point intended by the ritual of Moses—T.
The Cassiterides: an inquiry into the commercial operations of the ... By George Smith
http://books.google....A-J&output=text
If we look into the Pantheon of Tyre, we find their principal deity called Hercules. But abundant evidence proves that the accounts given of this deity were altogether different from those current of the Grecian Hercules;
The noble exploits in navigation and discovery which were necessary to lay open the western world, are so similar to the fabulous account of the tenth labour of the Grecian Hercules, that we are irresistibly brought to the conclusion, that the daring and successful prowess of the great Tyrian led to the conception of the elaborate legends which, in this portion of his toils, adorn the character of the son of Jupiter.
http://en.wikipedia....ki/Cassiterides
Herodotus (430 BC) had only dimly heard of the Cassiterides, "from which we are said to have our tin," but did not discount the islands as legendary. Later writers — Posidonius, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo and others — call them smallish islands off ("some way off," Strabo says) the northwest coast of the Iberian Peninsula, which contained tin mines or, according to Strabo, tin and lead mines.
http://www.touregypt...s/seapeople.htm
Medinet Habu Inscription
Various scholars have tried to place these people with recognizable regions. We are told by ancient text that they came from Ahhiyawa. However, we are told that the Sea People included:
* The Peleset, who were non other than the Philistines that gave their name to Palestine.
* The Lukka who may have come from the Lycian region of Anatolia.
* The Ekwesh and Denen who seem to be identified with the Homeric Achaean and Danaean Greeks
* The Sherden who may be associated with Sardinia.
* The Teresh (Tursha or Tyrshenoi - possibly the Tyrrhenians), the Greek name for the Etruscans; or from the western Anatolian Taruisa
* Shekelesh (Shekresh, Sikeloi - Sicilians?)
[Notice the Hathor-like headress]
http://www.phoenicia...sea_peoples.htm
Sarepta (modern Sarafand) between Tyre and Sidon was similarly the subject of detailed archaeological study. Glenn Markoe described the results as showing no destruction and having great continuity in the strata. This likewise was quite conclusive.
The most northern Phoenician city was on the island of Arwad, also known as Arvad and Arados. It had been taken from the Phoenicians prior to the coming of the Sea Peoples and was being held by the Hittites. This city was in fact destroyed by the Sea Peoples—and after their incursion it was returned to the Phoenicians. Rather than disproving the current assertion, this remarkable treatment of Arwad adds to the view that the Phoenicians were accorded a special status by the invading peoples.
Based upon the sum of this evidence, we can only conclude that observations of the Phoenician cites being undamaged during this time, and having been accorded a special status by the invaders, have been verified. That there was a relationship or partnership of some nature between the Sea Peoples and the Phoenicians is clearly in evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tjeker
The Tjekker or Tjeker were one of the Sea Peoples and are known mainly from the Story of Wenamun. The name tkr/skl has been transliterated variously as Tjekru, Tjekker, skl, Sikil, Djekker, etc. and they are thought to be the people who developed the port of Dor during the 12th century BCE from a small Bronze Age town to a large city.
The Tjeker are one of the few of the Sea Peoples for whom a ruler's name is recorded - in the 11th-century papyrus account of Wenamun, an Egyptian priest, the ruler of Dor is given as "Beder". After two intermediate occupations, the earlier of which has yielded imported Cypriote ceramics as well as Phoenician wares and is followed by a well-stratified and important Phoenician presence in the early 10th century the site of Dor fell to the Israelites under David.
Danya / Dannuna / Denyen
http://www.historyfi...aSeaPeoples.htm
The Danya are mentioned in passing in the Armana letters from Egypt, in reference to the death of their king. The next time they appeared they were part of the combined force of Libyans and Sea Peoples which attacked Egypt in 1208 BC (as well as later). Once defeated and captured, they were subsequently settled along the coast of Palestine to help guard Egypt's 'way of the Philistines' between Egypt and Syria. They may be related to the Greek Danoi (another name for Homer's Achaeans in Mycenae), as well as to fairly recent settlers in Kizzuwatna, the Denyen. Those who are settled in Palestine are generally believed by scholars to be the Israelite tribe of Dan, which people are supposed to have settled with their ships in between Ekron and Joppa. The alternative is that they were forced inland by the newly arrived Philistines, which would explain their lack of any Israelite land to their name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denyen
The Denyen have been identified with the people of Adana, in Cilicia who existed in late Hittite Empire times. They are also believed to have settled in Cyprus. A Hittite report speaks of a Muksus, who also appears in an eighth-century bilingual inscription from Karatepe in Cilicia, which traces the kings of Adana from the "house of Mopsos" [Moses], given in hieroglyphic Luwian as Moxos and in Phoenician as Mopsos, in the form mps. Greek myth refers to Danaos who with his daughters came from Egypt and settled in Argos. Through Danaë's son, Perseus, the Danaans are said to have built Mycenae.
A minority view [sic] first suggested by Yigael Yadin attempted to connect the Denyen with the Tribe of Dan, described as remaining on their ships in the early Song of Deborah, contrary to the mainstream view of Israelite history. It was speculated that the Denyen had been taken to Egypt, and subsequently settled between the Caphtorite Philistines and the Tjekker, along the Mediterranean coast with the tribe of Dan subsequently deriving from them.
[Tell me who befiited from these incursions?]
[These Sea Peoples, Danaans, Acheans, Phoenicians, Israel, etc ...]
[and who didn't benefit?]
[Ugarit, Troy, the Hittites and in the long run Egyptian Powers began to decline, while the Grecian Penisula entered a Dark Age]