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Alashiya
Also called: Alasiya
A copper-rich Late Bronze Age kingdom named in Near Eastern texts and widely identified with all or part of Cyprus.
Alashiya appears in cuneiform texts from the nineteenth century BCE onward, almost always in connection with copper. In the fourteenth century its king wrote to the pharaoh as an equal in the Amarna letters, and Hittite and Ugaritic texts record treaties, obligations and a sea battle. In 2003 a study of the clay of the Alashiya tablets matched it to the southern foothills of the Troodos, near Alassa and Kalavasos, which greatly strengthened the case for Cyprus.
Most scholars now accept the identification, though it is still argued, and where the kingdom's capital lay remains an open question. Alashiya was named in texts until the end of the Bronze Age: the Egyptian tale of Wenamun, set around 1075 BCE, has its hero blown ashore there and brought before a queen. See Egypt and copper metallurgy.
Full entry: Egypt
Related terms
- Amarna letters
Diplomatic letters on clay tablets, mostly in Akkadian cuneiform, found at Akhenaten's capital of el-Amarna in Egypt and dating to the mid-fourteenth century BCE.
- Oxhide ingot
A flat copper slab with four projecting handles, weighing about 24–30 kg: the standard form in which Late Bronze Age Cyprus exported copper.
- Uluburun shipwreck
A merchant ship wrecked off southern Turkey at the very end of the fourteenth century BCE, carrying about ten tons of Cypriot copper.
Where it appears
- Hittite Empire and Cyprus
- Ugarit and the Levant
- Copper Metallurgy in Ancient Cyprus
- Neighboring Cultures
- Village Life in Late Bronze Age Cyprus
- Clothing and Dress in Ancient Cyprus
- Faience in Ancient Cyprus
- Gold, Silver, Tin, Arsenic and Iron in Ancient Cyprus
- Seafaring and Ships in Ancient Cyprus
- The Minoans
- Weapons of Bronze Age Cyprus
- White Painted Ware
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