Tyre, Lebanon
Tyrus is a redirect to this article. For other meanings, see Tyrus (disambiguation).
Tyros (Arabic صور, DMG Ṣūr) is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The coastal city on the Mediterranean was one of the earliest Phoenician metropolises and, according to Greek mythology, the birthplace of Europa, her brothers Kadmos and Phoinix, and Carthage's founder Dido. Because of the numerous ruins of Tyros from ancient times, the city as a whole was added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1984. After numerous wars in recent decades, the dictum of French archaeologist Ernest Renan in 1860 also applies to many modern parts of Tyros: "Tyros is a city of ruins, built from ruins."
With a 2016 estimated population of around 200,000 in the agglomeration, Tyros is considered the fourth largest city in Lebanon after Beirut, Tripoli and Sidon. It is the capital of Tyros district in the governorate of South Lebanon. A large part of the population is made up of refugees, as Tyros is the location of three of the country's official twelve Palestinian refugee camps: Al Bass, Burj al-Shemali, and ar-Rashidiya.
The Tyros Peninsula as seen from space, International Space Station, Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, NASA Johnson Space Center
The modern coat of arms made of Lebanese cedar, antique triumphal arch and Phoenician ship
The western tip of the peninsula
Etymology
Early names of Tyros are Ṣurru from Akkadian, Ṣūr () from Phoenician, and Tzór (צוֹר) from Hebrew. In the Semitic languages, the name means "rock" and etymologically obviously refers to the rock formations on which the original island city was built.
The predominant form in ancient Greek was Týros (Τύρος). This spelling is first found in Herodotus, who visited the city himself, but it may have been coined considerably earlier. Tyrian shekels at times bore the inscription TYPOY IEPAΣ ΚΑΙ ΑΣΥΛOY - "of Tyros, the holy and inviolable".
In Latin, the name changed to Tyre. In Italian the city is called Tiro, in French Tyr and in English Tyre. While in German the name has remained closest to the ancient Greek version, Arabic sticks to the Phoenician original, for the name of Tyros as well as for the word "rock" in general.
The German xenonym for Tyros is tyrian, and the natives are accordingly tyrians and tyrianesses.
TYPOY IEPAΣ - golden double shekel with double horn of plenty
Climate
Tyros has a Mediterranean climate with dry, hot summers and rainy, mild winters and high sunshine hour totals (classified as Csa according to the Effective Climate Classification by Köppen and Geiger). It is characterized by six months of drought between May and October. On average, it has 300 days of sunshine per year and an annual temperature of 20.8 °C. The average maximum temperature is 30.8 °C in August, while the average minimum temperature is 10 °C in January. The average annual precipitation reaches up to 645 mm. The temperature of the sea water drops to as low as 17 °C in February and rises to as high as 32 °C in August. At a depth of 70 m it is constant at 17 to 18 °C.
A 2018 study led by a researcher from Kiel University found that of all the UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Mediterranean, those in Tyros are most at risk from coastal erosion as a result of global climate change.
A 22° ring over the Al Mina antiquity site of Tyros, 2019.
