THE PHOENICIAN CEMETERY OF TYRE

Recent archaeological excavations in the Iron Age cemetery of Tyre have led to the recovery of the city's principal burial area during the tenth to seventh centuries B.C.E. Compared with the rest of the known Iron Age cemeteries in the region, the necropolis of Tyre-Al-Bass offers the most dense and homogeneous assemblage of burials to date in terms of form and typology, mortuary practices, and morphology of grave goods. The archaeological evidence allows us not only to reconstruct the associated Iron Age funerary rituals as a complex sequence of ceremonies that assisted the deceased in making the transition from this world to the netherworld but also to glimpse the egalitarian impulses of Tyre's social organization.