Читать книгу A Companion to the Achaemenid Persian Empire, 2 Volume Set - Группа авторов - Страница 145

Anna Cannavò

The archeological evidence concerning Cyprus in the Persian period is scanty and scattered. Even if the number of excavations has increased impressively during recent decades, the knowledge of the two‐centuries‐long permanence of Cyprus within the Achaemenid Empire (c. 525–332 BCE) is still far from being satisfactory. Especially limited is the evidence concerning the relationships between the Achaemenids and the Cypriot kingdoms, and the way they integrated the administrative and tributary organization of the empire; the Cypriot civilization of the Persian period, better known, rarely shows direct and evident connections with the Achaemenid world (Zournatzi 2008, 2011).

Since the beginning of the Archaic period (750 BCE), and more probably even before (Iacovou 2002, 2013a), Cyprus was divided into a number of small kingdoms, struggling against each other for access to primary resources and markets (Figure 19.1). The entrance of the island into the Persian Empire, around or slightly before 525 BCE (Watkin 1987), did not radically change this state of affairs: through their voluntary submission (Herodotus [Hdt.] 3.19.3; Xenophon [Xenoph.] Cyropaedia 7.4.1–2 and 8.6.8), the Cypriot kings held the right to strike their own coins (see Chapter 57 Royal Coinage) and to pursue their own political and territorial goals, as long as they did not interfere with Persian interests. The history of the Persian period in Cyprus, as long as we can reconstruct it from the Greek and Cypriot sources, is essentially the history of inter‐island conflicts based on internal dynamics (see Chapter 44 Cyprus and the Mediterranean). If sometimes (as in the case of the Cypriot participation in the Ionian Revolt, or the reign of Evagoras of Salamis) they seem to acquire a wider resonance, we are rarely able to appreciate the Persian attitude toward them. One case is exemplary of our difficulties: the bronze tablet with a long Cypro‐syllabic inscription found in Idalion in the mid‐nineteenth century, and referring to a siege of the city by Medes and Kitians, is still under debate because of the Persian participation in a territorial attack which would otherwise seem a purely Cypriot internal affair (the last assessment by Georgiadou 2010). Gjerstad's interpretation (1948: pp. 479–481) of the Persian/Kitian coalition as a sign of the ethnic polarization arisen in Cyprus after the Ionian revolt (the Kitians, that is Phoenicians, being allied of the Persians against the Cypro‐Greek kingdoms of the island) has been correctly dismissed by Maier (1985), but since then no better explanation has been found.

Figure 19.1 Map of ancient Cyprus.

© A. Flammin, Y. Montmessin, A. Rabot/UMR 5189, HiSoMA, MOM.

We can distinguish two main levels of interconnections between Persia and Cyprus during the two‐centuries‐long Persian control of the island. As the first level, the presence of Persian administrative or military officers, both through the installation of permanent control points, at least during some critical phases, and more often through non‐permanent and occasional contacts, is particularly difficult to assert because of the ambiguous and poor evidence. A second level, justifying of the Persian or Persianizing taste of some Cypriot products of this period, is that of the circulation of Persian models or objects (especially some of them, such as metalware, jewelry, and seals: Zournatzi 2008) whose ideological value was particularly interesting for the self‐definition and legitimization of the Cypriot elites.