hannah mckay’s brilliant observation has given me the piece of a puzzle I needed to push my own pet idea from “this city keeps showing up on my searches” to “full-blown conspiracy theory” level. If you enjoy that sort of thing, stay with me for a fine tale of cross-cultural historical myths dredged from wikis, stirred together without regard to consistency, and seasoned with my personal blend of wild speculation.
Tyre
I’ll start off with the “incidentals” but the most intriguing aspect is at the end.
Tyre is an acient Phoenician city dating back to 2,700 BCE or more (though the Phoenicians were Caananites then.) It spent over a thousand years as one of the most powerful cities of the Phoenicians, one of the most powerful groups of its time. There is much history there; they are nearly single-handedly responsible for the Bronze age. It was Tyrian ships that discovered and brought Tin from the Brittish Isles; and they maintained a ruthless stranglehold on that route for hundreds of years. Our interest in it starts later though; during it’s second rise to greatness, sometime in the 800 BCE range.
One thing to note is that some of the reasons for suggesting Jerusalem as the first city actually apply better to Tyre. First city coins, for insance - it was in Tyrian shekels that Judas was paid. Tyrian coins which, by the way, looked like this:
That “could” be a cedar. It isn’t, it’s actually an olive tree base on the founding myth of Tyre; but it looks remarkably like the first city coins. Cedar trees, by the way, are another Tyre tie-in to Jerusalem. The famous temple of Jerusalem, you see, was built by Tyrian laborers (renown for their skill), using cedars shipped from Tyre, and built to a plan identical to a famous Tyrian temple. This was under the rule of it’s God-king Hiram I, good friend to David and his son Solomon, and about the only self-identified God-king that the Bible mentions in a good light.
This brings up two more interesting facts of Tyre: it’s government, where the king was kept in check by a ruling body of merchants (sound familiar fallen Londoners?) And those merchants were so successful they are listed in the Bible as well. You can see that here; it contains what you’d expect. Lots of mentions of goods like Iron, Stones, cloth, ivory, Bronze, etc. It’s not a one-to-one correlation with the Masters, but… worth looking at.
While we are mentioning religion, here’s some interesting bits about Tyre’s. The famous temple isn’t “the temple of the eye” unfortunately; it’s a temple to Melqart (with a dozen alternate spellings), who was something of a trinity. He was one aspect of Baal, another aspect of which was Baal’s consort and also Melqart’s consort, Astarte. Melqart represented the sun and moon, the seas, and the underworld, and Astarte later became intermingled with Aphrodite by the Greeks. If you want an underworld with “moonish light” cast by disturbing giant sea-creature looking things (see the lightfingers ambition) and driven by love, you could hardly do better for a deity than Melqart and his consort/aspect Astarte.
Two more little tidbits before I move on to the most promising stuff. Tyrian sailors were some of the best in the world, and Tyrian lore refers to the Pillars of Melqart (later the Pillars of Hercules) - supposedly the passage through the straights of Gibraltar. It’s a possible tie-in to the pillars of the underzee as well. Tyre was also known for its bronze and its brass, which is important because of the manager of the Royal Bethlehem’s buttons… which takes us to the exciting parts.
Okay, the good bits:
Following the 900 BCE’s, Tyre was in something of a slump. Until about 878 BCE, they were suffering a mess of revolutions and regicides. This came to an end with the ascension of Eth-baal (Ithobaal), the first priest-king of Tyre. He used his position as religious leader to put an end to the king-killing. Under him began a new golden era of Tyre. Now, I haven’t been able to find out if the rest of his bloodline ruled as priest-kings as well, but it seems likely. He had many interesting descendents, such as Jezebel (yes, that Jezebel) but the most interesting of which for our purposes are Pygmalion and Dido.
Dido became queen, and her husband king - which made Pygmalion quite jealous, according to legend. He killed Dido’s husband and took the throne in 831 BCE; Dido scurried off and founded Carthage. Now, this doesn’t have any special ties to Echo Bazaar’s storyline, except for this striking coincidence: There is another famous Pygmalion. This other Pygmalion was also a king, though the Greeks who wrote about him (from secondary sources) had him pegged as a king of Cyprus. However Cyprus, at the time of Tyre’s Pygmalion and Dido, was partially ruled by Tyre - so it is possible that these two Pygmalions are one and the same.
If so, this is fascinating, because what this other Pygmalion is known for is loving a statue so much that Aphrodite (the Greek interpretation of Astarte, remember) brought the statue to life, and they lived together and had children. This is the interesting tie-in with hannah-mckay’s observation that the manager of the Royal Bethlehem’s love may be related to the Clay Men. If Tyre was stolen in the time of Pygmalion, and the two Pygmalions are the one and the same, the Manager could be Pygmalion, in love with his statue (or his statue’s children) still to this day - the descendents of which (in one sense or another) are the clay men.
It’s not a perfect theory - 800ish BCE is still 100 years or so too soon for the invention of proper coinage. There is also the matter of the second city issues: the age of the vake, and the tearing down of the old gods. The first could be explained if the vake didn’t always live in the 'neath; the second by Rome. The Ceasers often raised themselves up as Gods; after tearing down the old order. It would make for a more consistent timeline if this is the case - 800ish years of 1st city, 1,000 ish years for the second city (judged “too long” by certain masters) and 500ish for the cities afterwards.
Frankly, because of these issues, I still feel like I’m missing something though; but also that there is something useful here.
Well, there you have it. Other than the fact that it’s all plainly the ramblings of a lunatic, it holds together as well as the other theories, at least…