Siege of Tyre (332 BCE)

For roughly seven months in 332 BCE, from about January to July, Alexander the Great laid siege to Tyre, the greatest of the Phoenician cities, which stood on an island off the coast of what is now Lebanon. With no fleet strong enough to attack it, he built a stone causeway out to the island and finally stormed it with ships and siege engines. The fall of Tyre removed the Persians' last major naval base in the eastern Mediterranean, and its harsh aftermath became one of the most notorious episodes of Alexander's career.

After his victory at Issus in 333 BCE, Alexander marched south along the coast to deny the Persian fleet its harbours. Byblos, Arwad and Sidon, fellow Phoenician cities, came under his control, but Tyre held out. The city had moved onto an island about a kilometre offshore, with two harbours and walls said to rise more than 45 metres on the side facing the mainland. Its population may have been about 40,000, though many women and children were sent to safety in Carthage, a Tyrian colony, which also promised help by sea.

Alexander asked to offer sacrifice in the island temple of Melqart, a god the Greeks identified with Heracles. The Tyrians told him to use the temple on the mainland and declared they would admit neither Persians nor Macedonians. When a later embassy was, according to the ancient sources, killed and thrown from the walls, the siege began.

Alexander's engineers began building a mole across the shallow channel, which the ancient writer Diodorus describes as 200 feet wide. Near the island the water deepened and the builders came under fire from the walls and from Tyrian ships. Alexander raised two towers, reportedly about 50 metres high and covered in hides against fire arrows, at the end of the mole. The Tyrians answered by packing an old horse transport with brushwood, pitch and sulphur, setting it alight and running it onto the causeway, burning the towers and much of the siege equipment.

The turning point came at sea. The fleets of those three cities, which had formed much of the Persian navy, now served Alexander, and 120 more warships arrived from Cyprus. With further ships from Ionia he commanded over 200 galleys and could blockade both harbours. Ships fitted with battering rams worked against the walls; when Tyrian divers cut their anchor cables, Alexander replaced them with chains. A surprise Tyrian sortie against the fleet was beaten back.

Rams finally opened a breach in the southern wall. Alexander launched an assault through it while his fleet attacked from every side, and he is said to have fought in person from a siege tower. The defenders were soon overwhelmed.

Ancient figures for what followed differ. The historian Curtius says 6,000 fighting men died inside the city and 2,000 more were crucified on the shore; Arrian speaks of 8,000 killed. About 30,000 people, mostly women and children, were reportedly sold as slaves. Those who sheltered in the temple of Melqart, including King Azemilcus, were spared. The severity is usually explained by reference to the length of the siege and to the Tyrians' killing of Macedonian prisoners on the walls. A different tradition, preserved by the writer Polyaenus, tells the end of the siege another way.

Alexander moved on to besiege Gaza later in 332 BCE and then entered Egypt. Built of stone, his mole was never removed and survives to this day.

Our 400 BCE map shows Phoenicia within the Achaemenid Empire, and our 323 BCE map shows Tyre inside Alexander's empire at his death.