Marion (Kingdom)

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Burial chamber in Marion, approx. 1930
Terracotta grave decorations in the Marion Museum, Polis
Iron Age jewelry from Marion (approx. 5th century BC)
Excavations in the 1930s

Marion was an Iron Age kingship in the northwest of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus .

location

The oldest evidence of its existence are coins that also mention a king. The equation with Pu-su-su , which is mentioned on the prism of the Assyrian king Assurhaddon as the kingdom of Iadnata, is not without controversy. The location of the capital of this empire has also not been clarified with absolute certainty. According to Skylax , it was between Soli and Amathous , after the Stadiasmos Maris Magni at the western end of the island near the Akamas peninsula . So the city could have been near Pomos or Ayias Kononas . Most researchers equate it with an ancient settlement near Polis Chrysochous on Chrysochous Bay in the northwest of the island. Since 1983 Princeton University has been carrying out excavations here, as well as in nearby Arsinoë , but so far neither inscriptions that clearly identify the place as Marion, nor coins from Marion have been found.

The area of ​​Khrysokhou (Peristerona, Pelethousa) probably belonged to Amathous until the 6th century .

Excavations at Polis Chrysochous

The settlement at Polis Chrysochous goes back at least to the Chalcolithic period . The first architectural remains date from around 1,000 BC. The archaic city was surrounded by a massive city wall. Among other things, several temples were uncovered, one contained the remains of a colossal archaic terracotta statue that was originally about 3 m high. Greek has been documented since the 4th century.

The burial ground was discovered in 1870. It mainly supplied Attic ceramics and was used from the 6th to the 4th century.

history

Marion was born in 312 BC. Destroyed by Ptolemy I Sotêr (304–282 BC) because King Stasioikos II had sided with his rival Antigonus ( Diodorus 19, 79).

Kings of Marion

  • Doxandros
  • Sasmas, son of Doxandro. Some of his coins bear the Phoenician letters ML , approx. 470-460 , in addition to his name in syllabary .
  • Stasioikos I., coin inscriptions in syllabary
  • Timocharis, coin inscriptions in syllabary
  • Stasioikos II (330–312 BC), last king of Marion, coins with inscriptions in both writing systems, syllabary and Phoenician writing.

The order and reign of the rulers is not certain. Doxandros and Sasmas were supposedly installed by the Persians after 499/408, Kimion brought Stasioikos I and Timocharis to the throne in 451/450. As Franz Georg Maier points out, the assumption of the medophilia of Sasmas is based on his Phoenician name, and on it again its classification in the time after the Ionian revolt .

literature

  • William P. Childs: The Iron Age kingdom of Marion . In: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research . Volume 308, 1997, pp. 37-48.
  • Franz Georg Maier : Factoids in ancient History: The case of Fifth-Century Cyprus . In: Journal of Hellenic Studies . Volume 105, 1985, p. 32-39.
  • Edward Lipiński : The Cypriot vassals of Esarhaddon . In: Mordechai Cogan, Israel Ephʻal (Ed.): Ah, Assyria--: studies in Assyrian history and ancient Near Eastern historiography presented to Hayim Tadmor. Magnes Press, Hebrew University, Jerusalem 1991, ( Scripta Hierosolymitana ) pp. 58-64.
  • N. Serwint: The Terracotta statue from ancient Marion . In Acta Cypriotica . Volume 3, 1992, pp. 382-426.

Web links

Commons : Marion, Cyprus  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Franz Georg Maier : Factoids in ancient History: The case of Fifth-Century Cyprus . In: Journal of Hellenic Studies 105, 1985, 32-39.

Coordinates: 35 ° 2 ′ 7.4 ″  N , 32 ° 25 ′ 37 ″  E