Kingdoms of Ancient Cyprus

This video from History with Cy surveys ten city-kingdoms of ancient Cyprus recorded on the Esarhaddon Prism of c. 672 BCE. The narrator introduces the prism, which lists ten Cypriot kings with Greek and Phoenician names among the tributaries of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, and then walks through each city down to the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

The tour begins at Amathus, noting its palace and cemeteries from 800 BCE and Herodotus' story of how the city refused to join Onesilos of Salamis against Achaemenid Persia in 499 BCE, beheaded him, and later worshipped him as a hero. It moves to Soli, linking its wealth to copper mines and Plutarch's story of King Philokypros renaming it after Solon, and then to Kourion, whose king Stasanor defected to the Persians in 499 BCE and whose last king, Pasikrates, joined Alexander at Tyre in 332 BCE. Marion is followed from its liberation by Cimon in 449 BCE to its destruction by Ptolemy in 312 BCE and refoundation by Ptolemy II as Arsinoe.

Turning inland and east, the video covers Chytroi and Kition, founded by Tyrians as Kart Hadash, whose Phoenician dynasty ended when Ptolemy killed its last king, Pumayyaton. Next are Idalion, with its shared rule, coinage by 500 BCE, and bilingual Cypro-Syllabic tablet, and Paphos (later Palaepaphos and Nea Paphos), cult centre of Aphrodite. After landlocked Ledra at modern Nicosia and copper-rich Tamassos, sold to Pumayyaton and given by Alexander to Pnytagoras of Salamis, the video closes with Salamis under Euelthon, Onesilos, Evagoras I and Nikokreon, and the naval battle of 306 BCE between Ptolemy and Demetrios I.