Kition stele

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Kition stele

The Kition stele is made of basalt (gabbro) and is 2.09 meters high and 0.68 meters wide. It is only partially preserved. It was discovered in a heap of rubble in a garden in Kition near Larnaka in Cyprus in autumn 1845 . According to Ludwig Ross, this was west of the salt lake, which at that time represented the rest of the old port, between Larnaka and Marina , the new port city. Ross thought the rubble was medieval, so the stele was probably relocated.

Find history

After its discovery in 1845, the stone was offered to the British Museum in London , which only wanted to pay £ 20. The French scholar Louis de Mas Latrie , who came to Cyprus in October 1845, could not offer the finders enough money either. Finally, the German archaeologist and epigraphist Ludwig Ross (1806-1859) bought the stele for 50 pounds for the Prussian Museum in Berlin . He came to Greece in 1832 on a Danish scholarship and had worked as a sub- conservator in Nauplion and Sparta from the summer of 1833, and from 1834 as a senior conservator in Athens . In 1845 he visited Rhodes , Kos , and for two months also Cyprus. There he described archaeological sites and, in addition to the Kition stele, acquired archaic limestone sculptures and terracottas from the temple area of Idalion , which he considered Phoenician .

The stele is now in the Staatliche Museen Berlin (Inv.-No .: VA 968). The gold-plated silver plaque that was found with the stele was bought by M. de Saulcy and is now in the Louvre . The museum also has a cast of the Kition stele. Only the inscription on the front has been preserved, the back was sawn off, perhaps to use the stone as a spoiler .

content

The stele presumably stood on the acropolis of Kition and describes the victory of Sargon II (721–705 BC) of Assyria in 707/709 BC. Over the seven kingdoms of the island of Ia 'in the area of ​​Iadnana or Atnana. This victory is also described in his annals in Chorsabad :

“[…] And the seven kings of the land of Ia also heard of the deeds which I was constantly doing in the land of Kaldu and in the land of Hatti , and their hearts beat in their throats, and fear overwhelmed them [...] So they brought gold, Silver and objects made of ebony and boxwood , products of their land, came to me in Babylon and kissed my feet. "

Ebony does not grow in Cyprus, so its mention is an indication of the island's extensive trade links.

The cities are:

Contemporary context

What the Assyrian administration of Cyprus looked like is unknown, so far no governors have been identified. Since the Assyrians had no maritime power of their own, perhaps they limited themselves to collecting the tribute and left ruling on the spot to local kings. It is believed that Kition, a founding of Sidon , was the seat of the Assyrian governor.

literature

  • Elizabeth Goring: A Mischievous Pastime. Digging in Cyprus in the Nineteenth Century. With a catalog of the exhibition “Aphrodite's Island. Art and Archeology of Ancient Cyprus “held in the Royal Museum of Scotland. Edinburgh from the 14th April to 4th of September 1988. Edinburgh 1988.
  • Vassos Karageorghis , Kition: Mycenaean and Phoenician discoveries in Cyprus. London, Thames and Hudson 1976.
  • Kyriakos Nicolaou: The historical Topography of Kition. SIMA XLIII, 1976, 218f. Plate 16.1.
  • Karin Radner: The stele of Sargon II of Assyria at Kition. A focus for an emerging Cypriot identity? In: Robert Rollinger , Birgit Gufler, Martin Lang, Irene Madreiter (eds.): Interculturality in the Old World. Middle East, Hellas, Egypt and the various levels of contact (= Philippika Volume s: Travel to Kos, Halicarnassus, Rhodes and the island of Cyprus. ) (1852).
  • Eberhard Schrader : The Sargonsstele of the Berlin Museum. Treatises of the Royal Academy of Sciences Berlin, Phil.-hist. Class 6, 1881, 4th

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eberhard Schrader, The Sargonsstele the Berlin Museum. Treatises of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin 1881, Berlin 1882, Publishing House of the Royal Academy of Sciences, 4
  2. ↑ Eberhard Schrader , The Sargonsstele the Berlin Museum . Treatises of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Berlin 1881, Berlin 1882, Publishing House of the Royal Academy of Sciences, 5