Pygmalion of Tyre
| Pygmalion | |
|---|---|
| King of Tyre | |
| Reign | 831 BC – 785 BC |
| Predecessor | Mattan I 840 – 832 BC |
| Successor | unknown |
| Born | 841 or 843 BC Tyre, presumed |
| Died | 785 BC |
| Dynasty | House of Ithobalus (Ithobaal I) |
| Father | Mattan I |
| Mother | unknown |
Pygmalion (also known as Pu'mayyaton) was king of Tyre from 831 to 785 BC and a son of King Mattan I (840-832 BC).
During Pygmalion's reign, Tyre seems to have shifted the heart of its trading empire from the Middle East to the Mediterranean, as can be judged from the building of new colonies including Kition on Cyprus, Sardinia (see Nora Stone discussion below), and, according to tradition, Carthage. For the story surrounding the founding of Carthage, see Dido.
In Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid, Pygmalion is the cruel-hearted brother of Dido who secretly kills Dido's husband Sychaeus because of his lust for gold.
In Dante's The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, Canto XX, verses 103-105, Dante uses Virgil's version of Pygmalion to represent greed.
A possible reference to Pygmalion is an interpretation of the Nora Stone, found on Sardinia in 1773 and, though its precise finding place has been forgotten, dated by paleographic methods to the 9th century BC.Frank Moore Cross has interpreted the Phoenician inscription on this stone as follows:
[a. He fought (?)]
[b. with the Sardinians (?)]
1. at Tarshish
2. and he drove them out.
3. Among the Sardinians
4. he is [now] at peace,
5. (and) his army is at peace:
6. Milkaton son of
7. Shubna (Shebna), general
8. of (king) Pummay.
In this rendering, Cross has restored the missing top of the tablet (estimated at two lines) based on the content of the rest of the inscription, as referring to a battle that has been fought and won by general Milkaton, son of Shubna, against the Sardinians at the site of TRSS, surely Tarshish; Cross conjectures that Tarshish here "is most easily understood as the name of a refinery town in Sardinia, presumably Nora or an ancient site nearby." He presents evidence that the name PMY ("Pummay") in the last line is a shortened form (hypocoristicon) of the name of Shubna's king, containing only the divine name, a method of shortening “not rare in Phoenician and related Canaanite dialects.”. Since there was only one king of Tyre with this hypocoristicon in the 9th century BC, Cross restores the name to pmy(y)tn or p‘mytn, which is rendered in the Greek tradition as Pygmalion. This interpretation of the Nora Stone provides additional evidence that in the late 9th century BC, Tyre was involved in colonizing the western Mediterranean, lending credence to the establishment of a colony in Carthage in that time frame.
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