The Early Bronze Age in Tyre

Abstract

A reexcavation of an ancient sounding in the acropolis of Tyre uncovered an important sequence of Early Bronze Age occupation levels and the foundation of a strategic transit harbor at the beginning of the Early Bronze III, if not earlier. The ancient island connected the fertile plains of the interior, the access to resources through the important route of the Litani valley, and an inexhaustible source of water near mainland Tyre, in the so-called Ushu or Palaeotyros of the ancient sources. It does not seem coincidental that its role as a port of transit began in the third millennium BC, when maritime trade between Egypt and Byblos intensified.