kingdom · Greece and the Aegean
Kingdom of Tamassos
Origins
Tamassos lay in the Pediaios valley at the foot of the copper-rich Troodos mountains and was settled from the Bronze Age. Its copper may be the 'Temese' of Homer's Odyssey. By the 7th century BCE it was an independent kingdom; its king Admetus appears among the Cypriot rulers listed by Esarhaddon of Assyria.
Rule and society
The kingdom's wealth came from copper mining and smelting. Its royal tombs of the 6th century BCE are built of fine ashlar masonry imitating wooden houses, and a sanctuary of Apollo and the Mother of the Gods has yielded much sculpture. Tamassos used Greek and Phoenician alongside each other.
Decline and legacy
In the 4th century BCE King Pasicyprus sold Tamassos to Pumiyaton of the Kingdom of Kition for fifty talents. Alexander the Great later gave it to the king of Salamis. Tamassos survived as a town under Ptolemaic and Roman rule.
Lineage
On the connections map
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- Kingdom of Tamassos was a vassal of Achaemenid Empire545 BCE – 343 BCE
More states of Greece and the Aegean →
Cite this page
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). Kingdom of Tamassos. In The Epoch Institute States Register. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kingdom-of-tamassos
- MLA
- “Kingdom of Tamassos.” The Epoch Institute States Register, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kingdom-of-tamassos. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “Kingdom of Tamassos.” The Epoch Institute States Register. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kingdom-of-tamassos.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Kingdom of Tamassos’, The Epoch Institute States Register. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/kingdom-of-tamassos (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random state ↻