Glossary Society, writing and trade
Emporion
Also called: emporia
A Greek term for a trading post or market town where foreign merchants did business, often inside an existing settlement.
Archaeologists borrow the word for harbour towns that lived by long-distance trade. Enkomi is described as an emporion from the start of the Late Bronze Age, trading copper, pottery and fine goods across the eastern Mediterranean, and Ugarit on the Syrian coast played the same part on the mainland.
The term also comes up in debates about Phoenician Kition. Phoenicians, probably from Tyre, established a presence there around the ninth century BCE. Some scholars call the settlement a colony; others argue that it worked more like an emporion, a trading community organised within an existing town. See the Phoenicians.
Full entry: The Phoenicians
Related terms
- Levant
The lands along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, roughly modern Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan, facing Cyprus to the east.
- City-kingdom
One of the small independent kingdoms, each ruled from a city, into which Iron Age Cyprus was divided until about 310 BCE.