Abdastartus (
Phoenician: 𐤏𐤁𐤃𐤏𐤔𐤕𐤓𐤕 ''’bd’štrt'', possibly pronounced akin to ''’Abd-’Ashtart'') was a king of
Tyre, son of
Baal-Eser I (Beleazarus) and grandson of
Hiram I
Hiram I ( Phoenician: 𐤇𐤓𐤌 ''Ḥirōm'' "my brother is exalted"; Hebrew: ''Ḥīrām'', Modern Arabic: حيرام, also called ''Hirom'' or ''Huram'')
was the Phoenician king of Tyre according to the Hebrew Bible. His regnal years have b ...
. The only information available about Abdastartus comes from the following citation of the Phoenician author
Menander of Ephesus Menander of Ephesus ( grc-gre, Μένανδρος; fl. c. early 2nd century BC) was the historian whose lost work on the history of Tyre was used by Josephus, who quotes Menander's list of kings of Tyre in his apologia for the Jews, ''Against Ap ...
, in
Josephus's ''Against Apion'' i.18:
Upon the death of Hirom, Beleazarus his son took the kingdom; he lived forty-three years, and reigned seven years: after him succeeded his son Abdastartus; he lived twenty-nine years, and reigned nine years. Now four sons of his nurse plotted against him and slew him.
Therefore, according to Menander/Josephus, Abdastartus began to reign seven years after the death of his grandfather, Hiram I. The dating of Hiram and the following kings is based on the studies of J. Liver, J. M. Peñuela,
F. M. Cross, and William H. Barnes, all of whom build on the inscriptional evidence of a synchronism between
Baal-Eser II and
Shalmaneser III
Shalmaneser III (''Šulmānu-ašarēdu'', "the god Shulmanu is pre-eminent") was king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from the death of his father Ashurnasirpal II in 859 BC to his own death in 824 BC.
His long reign was a constant series of campai ...
in 841 BC.
[Fuad Safar, “A Further Text of Shalmaneser III from Assur,” ''Sumer'' 7 (1951) 3-21.] Earlier studies that did not take this inscriptional evidence into consideration will have differing dates for the kings of Tyre.
See also
*
List of Kings of Tyre
The King of Tyre was the ruler of Tyre, the ancient Phoenician city in what is now Lebanon. The traditional list of 12 kings, with reigns dated to 990–785 BC, is derived from the lost history of Menander of Ephesus as quoted by Josephus in ''Ag ...
References
{{reflist
950s BC births
920s BC deaths
Ancient Lebanon
Kings of Tyre
Male murder victims
10th-century BC murdered monarchs
10th-century BC Phoenician people