Alashiya: Cyprus in the Bronze Age

This video essay from the channel Dig. examines the Bronze Age polity of Alashiya, identified with Cyprus, and asks how the unified kingdom described in Near Eastern diplomatic texts relates to the fragmented settlement pattern found by archaeologists on the island. It opens with Cypriot periodization, comparing the traditional Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age divisions with A. Bernard Knapp's Prehistoric and Protohistoric Bronze Age scheme.

Moving chronologically from the 19th and 18th centuries BCE, the narrator reviews the earliest possible mentions of Alashiya in the Annals of Amenemhat II and tablets from Mari alongside Middle Cypriot village life and copper extraction in the Troodos. For the 17th to 15th centuries, the video covers the foundation of urban centres at Toumba tou Skourou and Enkomi, the fortress sites, the appearance of Base Ring, White Slip and Monochrome wares, intramural burial, and the Hittite Indictment of Madduwatta.

The 14th-century section centres on the eight Amarna letters from Alashiya. Petrographic and chemical analyses trace their clay to the southern coast near Kalavasos and Alassa, settling the identification with Cyprus, while the texts record copper shipments in oxhide ingots, a plague, and Lukki raids. For the 13th century, the video surveys Hittite treaties and inscriptions alongside letters from Ugarit naming the governor Eshuwara and king Kushmeshusha, before discussing the Ingot God and Horned God figurines, the Cypro-Minoan script, and hierarchical versus heterarchical models. It closes with the 12th-century crisis, the survival of Kition and Palaepaphos, short-lived settlements at Maa-Palaeokastro and Pyla-Kokkinokremos, Philistine pottery links, and the end of the copper-based state.