Tsidon/Tsiydon (Sidon)

צידן


Genesis 10:15 and 19: the ancient Phoenician city of Tsidon, which still stands today despite Israeli attempts to destroy it in 1982, and again in 1996.

It was the largest fishing port of the ancient world, and the centre of Phoenician trade, fully called Tsiydon Rabah (צידן רבה - the Yehudit invariably adds a Yud), the metropolis of Tsidon (in its Lebanese-Arabic pronunciation), and very much a city-state in the manner of the later Greek cities, most of which began as Phoenician colonies, and adopted their alphabet.

The name was applied to all the northern Kena'anim (Canaanites) of what today is southern Lebanon, whom the Greeks called Phoenicians, including the Tsurim (Tyrians) - the word "Phoenician" itself comes from Phoinix = "purple"; just as Kena'an was known locally as Kinnahu = "purple" in the Hurrian language, from the purple dye gleaned from the murex sea-snail which was so crucial to the Tsidonians' trading success across the known world.

1 Kings 16:31 names Et-Ba'al (אֶתְבַּעַל) as the king of the Tsidonians; coinage found at Tsur (Tyre) honours King Ithobaal I, and other archaeological discoveries describe Tsur in his day as "the metropolis of the Tsidonians", so we can assume that king of Tsidon was a secondary title, in much the way that the British Queen is also queen of Canada and the Falkland Islands.

As to the meaning of the name, Gesenius says "fishing", but this is narrow, though accurate. Tsayid (ציד) in full = "hunter", and is best known from the reference to Nimrod as "a mighty hunter before the Lord" - gibor tsayid liphney Adonay - גבור ציד לפני יהוה" in Genesis 10:9. Presumably it means fishing because you hunt for fish?

However, there is also the possibility that the name comes from Tsi (צי), which means "a ship", plus Dan (דן), giving Tsi-Dan (צידן), and meaning "the ships of the Dana'ans", as well as opening a link to my essay "The Leprachauns of Palestine".

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