Idalium (Greek: Ιδάλιον Idalion) was an ancient city in Cyprus, in modern Dali, Nicosia District. The city was founded on the copper trade in the 3rd millennium BCE. Its name in the 8th century BCE was "Ed-di-al" as it appears on the Prism of Essarhaddon and the Stele of Sargon. The original inhabitants were the natives of the island, known to scholars as the "Eteocypriotes." The original city lay on the northern side of the Yialias River in modern "Ayios Sozomenos." During the 13th century BCE the people of Ed-di-al began manufacturing operations on the south side of the river in what is now modern Dhali. From there the city grew to the major urban and copper-trading center found by the Assyrians at the end of the 8th century BCE. Idalion was the first among seven city kingdoms listed on the Stele of Sargon (701 BCE) and first among the 10 Cypriot kingdoms listed on the prism (many-sided tablet) of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (680–669 BC). The ancient city was independent until it was conquered by the Kitians in 450 BCE. The first evidence of non-Cypriote presence (Greek, Phoenician, and others) appears in the Archaic Period (ca. 550 BCE) in inscriptions found in the Adonis Temenos on the East Acropolis. "Rosemary scented Idalium" appears in the poetry of Propertius and others as the place where Venus (the original pre-Greek Queen of Heaven) met Adonis (the original pre-Greek consort of the Queen of Heaven, or 'Lord'). Conquered by the Phoenician city of Citium around the year 450 BCE, it was the center of the worship of the Great Goddess of Cyprus, the "Wanassa" or Queen of Heaven and her consort the "Master of Animals" or Lord. This worship appears to have begun in the 11th century BCE and continued down through the Roman Period.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.