Қыпрдағы ежелгі Идалион қаласы

Ancient city in Cyprus

Idalion or Idalium (Ιδάλιον, Idalion, Phoenician: 𐤀𐤃𐤉𐤋, , Akkadian: e di ʾi il, Edīl) was an ancient city in Cyprus, in modern Dali, Nicosia District. The city was founded on the copper trade in the 3rd millennium BC. Its name does not appear, however, on the renowned "Kition Stele", i. e., the Sargon Stele of 707 BC, but a little later on the Prism of Esarhaddon (copies of the text dated to 673 672 BC) known as Niniveh A (Nin. A) wherein the name is prefixed by the modifier URU (city) as URU. e di ʾi il (v. 64) and in similar spellings in Ashurbanipal's annal (648/647 BC) while modified by KUR (land/kingdom) (KUR. e di iʾ li, ii. 38'). Recent excavations have uncovered major buildings on the site which are open to visitors. A new museum is at the entrance of the site.

Cypro Syllabic script (11th to 2nd century BC) was deciphered based on the Cypriot Phoenician bilingual text of Idalion which is now in the British Museum's collection. Starting with the Cypriot Phoenician bilingual text of Idalion (a dedication to the god Reshef Mikal – identified as Apollo Amyklos – 4th century BC), George Smith carried out a first attempt at interpretation in 1871, later developed and improved, thanks also to the Idalion Tablet, by the Egyptologist Samuel Birch (1872), the numismatist Johannes Brandis (1873), the philologists Moritz Schmidt, Wilhelm Deeke, Justus Siegismund (1874) and the dialectologist H. L. Ahrens (1876).

The site is one of the few that was left undisturbed for centuries and therefore is ideal for archaeological investigation. In the 19th century Luigi Palma di Cesnola, U. S. consul, was brought ancient pots and limestone statuettes by residents of Dhali. He went there and claimed to have “cleared” some 3,000 tombs after which three ships were loaded with antiquities, one of which sank in the Mediterranean, while the others reached New York to help found the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1868 R. Hamilton Lang, the British Consul, found an open air sanctuary which he called the "Temple of Apollo" containing 142 limestone sculptures, now in the British Museum. From 1927, the Swedish Cyprus Expedition started its work on the island and did a lot of work at Idalium. On the western acropolis they excavated the remains of a fortification wall. The fortification followed the natural formation of the hill and was therefore curved. They identified six different building periods. Periods 1–3 were dated to the Late Cypriote III, when the city kingdom of Idalion seems to have been formed. Periods 4–6 were considered to belong from Cypro Geometric III to Cypro Archaic II. Based on these assumptions, the earliest settlement on the acropolis could have begun around 1200 BC. The houses were made of mud brick walls on a rubble foundation. The floors were rammed earth and the roofs were probably made of reed and mud. The shape of the rooms changed during the different periods, trapezoidal in Late Cypriote III A and rectangular in Late Cypriote III B and C. It seems like the houses were not built as a complex although separate rooms with a cult house in the center, surrounded by storehouses and a house for the priest and chief of the city, was recognized. Inside the cult room, the archaeologists found a small altar and a deposit of carbonized vegetables, terracotta bulls, terracotta jugs that were probably used for libations, and various minor objects that were probably votive gifts. The archaeologist proposed that this was a cult of fertility. During the Cypro Geometric period, the settlement changed. Now the acropolis was occupied by a sanctuary of the temenos type. It is not until Cypro Geometric III that reliable architectural and stratigraphical evidence appears with information about the new sanctuary. The sanctuary was placed inside the fortification wall and consisted of an altar court and a square altar of stone as well as the cult building. In Cypro Archaic I the temenos were enlarged and a massive tower was built. The sanctuary and the fortification were repaired and rebuilt over time. The votive gifts from this sanctuary mainly consisted of weapons and tools of different kinds, as well as personal accessories such as pins, fibulae, earrings, bracelets, and different kinds of pottery. The cult figure was not found but the archaeologists thought that the deity worshipped here was a version of the goddess Athena. The Phoenicians called her Anat. According to bilinguistic inscriptions from Larnaca tis Lapithou these two goddesses were regarded as identical at Cyprus. It does not seem like she had a Cypriote name but might have been the Mistress of Idalion, the city goddess. The sanctuary of Adonis (Apollo) has produced many statues and objects which are now in museums. The Idalion Tablet is a 5th century BC bronze tablet found here and inscribed on both sides. The script of the tablet is in the Cypriot syllabary and the inscription itself is in Greek. The tablet records a contract between "the king and the city" and mentions a reward given to a family of physicians for providing free health services to casualties during the siege of Idalion by the Persians. North of Idalium is the Nymphaeum of Kafizin, with Cypro syllabic inscriptions dated to 225–218 BC.