Tyre

Tyre was the leading Phoenician port, built partly on a rocky mainland site and partly on an offshore island, and it grew wealthy on maritime trade and its famous purple dye, extracted from murex shellfish along its coast. Its king Hiram supplied cedar and craftsmen for David's and Solomon's building projects, but the prophets later condemned Tyre's pride and predicted its fall, which came in stages: first to Nebuchadnezzar after a long siege, finally to Alexander the Great, who built a causeway to the island city and took it after seven months. Jesus visited its region, and Paul stopped there on his way back from his third missionary journey. Excavated murex shell middens along the Phoenician coast confirm the large scale dye industry ancient sources describe.