Sargon Stele

The Sargon Stele (German: Kition-Stele) was found in the autumn of 1845 in Cyprus on the site of the former city-kingdom of Kition, in present-day Larnaca to the west of the old harbour of Kition on the [archaeological] site of Bamboula. The language on the stele is Assyrian Akkadian.

The stele was placed there by king Sargon II (722-705 BC) of Assyria upon the conquest of Cyprus by the Neo Assyrian Empire (935-605 BC).

It was offered for sale to the British Museum, which bid 20 pounds.Ludwig Ross offered 50 pounds for the stele, and it was shipped to a museum in Berlin where it remains at present at Berlin State Museums.

Together with the stele was found a gilded silver plakette, that today is located at the Louvre.

A replica of the stele is on display in the Larnaca District Museum.

Karen Radner summed up the contents of the cuneiform inscription in 2010:

The stele is referring to all 10 kingdoms of Cyprus at the time. It was erected in 707 BC. Cypriot kingdoms may have become vassal to the Assyrian king Sargon II.

The 10 cities of Cyprus are listed somewhat later by the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE) as Idalion, Chytroi, Soloi, Paphos, Salamis, Kourion, Tamassos, the "New Town", Ledrai and “Nuria”.

Karen Radner said in 2010 that "In the inscriptions of Sargon we find, for the first time, that islands are used to mark the scope of Assyria's might—perhaps an indication of growing awareness that the world is more than one landmass enclosed by the sea".

Karen Radner writes that Cyprus "was at that time dominated (to use a deliberately vague term) by the Phoenician kingdom of Tyre which, according to the Assyrian testimony, treated the local city-states as its vassals."

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Wikipedia