Abdastartus

Who is Abdastartus?

Abdastartus was a king of Tyre, son of Baal-Eser I and grandson of Hiram I. The only information available about Abdastartus comes from the following citation of the Phoenician author Menander of Ephesus, 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 in 841 BC. Earlier studies that did not take this inscriptional evidence into consideration will have differing dates for the kings of Tyre.

A further overview of the chronology of Tyrian kings from Hiram I to Pygmalion, with a discussion of the importance of Dido’s flight from Tyre and eventual founding of Carthage for dating these kings, is found in the Pygmalion of Tyre article.