LADDER OF TYRE (̔Η κλίμαξ Τύρου). That narrow strip of coastal alluvial plain about five m. wide and a few hundred ft. above the Mediterranean Sea, located between Tyre and the coastal town of Achzib where the Galilee hills come down almost to the sea.

This narrow strip of coast, near the present Israeli-Lebanese border, is marked by a series of intermittent low hills of Pleistocene limestone. No doubt, this narrow ledge made it difficult for any invader (or, caravan) to pass from N to S, or vice versa.

The term, “Ladder of Tyre,” is not found in the canonical OT and NT, but it occurs in the Apocryphal 1 Maccabees 11:59 where Antiochus VI is said to have confirmed Jonathan, the Jew, as high priest, and his brother Simon as captain over the area from the Ladder of Tyre in the N to the borders of Egypt in the S.

Josephus (War II. 88) also refers to the Ladder and locates it at between eleven and twelve m. N of Rom. Ptolemais (the same as Accho) which would place it at about the present day Ras en-Naqura.

Bibliography D. Baly, The Geography of the Bible (1957), 8, 39, 128; Y. Aharoni, The Land of the Bible, tr. A. F. Rainey (1967), 21, 171.