Mattan, Matan, or Mittin ruled Tyre from 840 to 832 BC, succeeding his father

Baal-Eser II Baal-Eser II (846–841 BC), also known as Balbazer II and Ba'l-mazzer I was a king of Tyre, the son of Ithobaal I, brother of Jezebel and brother-in-law of Ahab. The primary information related to Baal-Eser II comes from Josephus's citation o ...

. He was the father of Pygmalion, king of Tyre from 831 to 785 BC, and of

Dido Dido ( ; , ), also known as Elissa ( , ), was the legendary founder and first queen of the Phoenician city-state of Carthage (located in modern Tunisia), in 814 BC. In most accounts, she was the queen of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre (t ...

, the legendary queen of

Carthage Carthage was the capital city of Ancient Carthage, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the clas ...

. The primary information related to Mattan I comes from

Josephus Flavius Josephus (; grc-gre, Ἰώσηπος, ; 37 – 100) was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian and military leader, best known for '' The Jewish War'', who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly d ...

’s citation of the Phoenician author Menander of Ephesus in ''Against Apion'' i.18. Here it is said that " Badezorus was succeeded by Matgenus his son: he lived thirty-two years and reigned, nine years: Pygmalion succeeded him". Alternative dates for his reign, from 829 to 821 BC, are given in the work of F. M. Cross and other scholars who take 825 BC as the date of Dido’s flight from her brother Pygmalion, after which she founded the city of

in 814 BC.1
For those who place the seventh year of Pygmalion in 814 BC, i.e. in the same year that Dido left Tyre, the dates of Mattan and Pygmalion will be 11 years later.

Classicist Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

T. T. Duke states that Mattan was also known as (, 'Gift of the Lord'), which was turned hypocoristically into King Belus of Tyre in

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

's ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to ...

''.

References

{{reflist, 30em 864 BC births 832 BC deaths Phoenician characters in the Aeneid Kings of Tyre 9th-century BC Phoenician people

See also

References