The Hellenistic World and Rome
place. In the first place the Phoenician dynasties were suppressed.’’^34 An even
more confident characterisation is given by S. K. Eddy: ‘‘The Phoenician
cities of Tyre and Sidon, a part of the Ptolemaic Empire, were reorganised as
hellenicpoleisduring the latter part of the third century, and they accepted
this without protest.’’^35 But in fact it is not easy to see this process quite in
those terms, if only because it took place more or less simultaneously in areas
which were then under Ptolemaic control, such as Tyre and Sidon, and in
the Seleucid Empire, at Arados. Thus a Phoenician inscription of ..,
from Umm El-’Amed near Tyre, dated by the th year of Ptolemy III and
the rd year of the people of Tyre.^36 In the next century another Phoenician
inscription from the same site is dated to the th year of the Seleucid era
and the rd of Tyre, i.e., ..^37 We have already seen the Phoenician
inscription from Athens dated by ‘‘the th year of the people of Sidon’’ (text
following n. above). These eras must certainly refer to precise events; but
as to the nature of the events we have no evidence. No specific royal actions
are attested in this connection. Moreover, whatever occurred cannot have
been either the imposition or the acceptance of a fully Greek constitution.
This is clear from the simple fact that both the documents (inscriptions and
coin legends) and the actual institutions of these cities, Tyre above all, re-
tained a mixed, Phoenician-Greek character. For instance there is a second-
century..inscription in Phoenician from Sidon which mentions what is
evidently a man’s official position, but it is unintelligible to us; the phrase is
‘RB ‘BR LSPṬ RB ŠNY.^38 Moreover, several persons each described as ŠPṬ
(shofet: judge) are mentioned on an inscription from Tyre which is undated,
but evidently later than the period of the kings;^39 we may note also a priest
(KHN) of MLK-‘ŠTRT at Umm el-’Amed near Tyre.^40 As is well known,
Bickerman suggested convincingly that we should see such a judge (shofet)in
thedikastēsnamed Diotimus mentioned on an inscription of circa from
Sidon (see text to n. below). These documents, however difficult their
interpretation may be, are surely sufficient to prove that public offices iden-
tified by Phoenician names existed in some cities after the supposed grants
. A.H.M.Jones,Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces^2 (), –.
.S.K.Eddy,The King Is Dead: Studies in the Near Eastern Resistance to Hellenism, –
..(), .
.KAI,no.;cf.M.DunandandR.Duru,Oumm el-’Amed(), , no. (without
text); Gibson (n. ), no. .
. Cooke (n. ), no. ;KAI, no. ; cf. Dunand and Duru (n. ), , no. (no text).
. Cooke (n. ), no. ; cf.BES, no. , for a discussion.
. Cooke (n. ), no. .
. Dunand and Duru (n. ), , no. .