[3] No traces of human activity was detected in the site before the earliest Iron Age, c. 1100 BC,[2][4][5] and no town is mentioned in the space between Kition and Kourion in the list of Cypriot cities from Medinet Habu.

According to Plutarch's source, Amathousians called the sacred grove where her shrine was situated the Wood of Aphrodite Ariadne.

More purely Hellenic[citation needed] myth would have Amathus settled instead by one of the sons of Heracles,[6] named Amathes (Ἀμάθης),[8] thus accounting for the fact that he was worshiped there.

[2] Their non-Greek language is confirmed on the site by Eteocypriot inscriptions in the Cypriot syllabary which alone in the Aegean world survived the Bronze Age collapse and continued to be used down to the 4th century BC.

[9] Amathus was built on the coastal cliffs with a natural harbour and flourished at an early date, soon requiring several cemeteries.

During the post-Phoenician era of the 8th century BC, a palace was erected and a port was also constructed, which served the trade with the Greeks and the Levantines.

[12] The excavators discovered the final stage of the Temple of Aphrodite, also known as Aphrodisias, which dates approximately to the 1st century BC.

The earliest remains hitherto found on the site are tombs of the early Iron Age period of Graeco-Phoenician influences (1000-600 BC).

[16] Herodotus reports Amathus was a rich and densely populated kingdom with a flourishing agriculture (grain[18] and sheep) and copper mines situated very close to the northeast Kalavasos.

[19][16][20] About 385-380 BC, the philhellene Evagoras of Salamis was similarly opposed by Amathus, allied with Citium and Soli;[22] and even after Alexander the city resisted annexation, and was bound over to give hostages to Seleucus.

[16] From the 4th century BC the pedestals of two sculptures donated by the last Basileus of Amathous, Androkles, representing his two sons, Orestheus and Andragoras, have survived.

It is thought that he left Cyprus after the 649 Arab conquest of the island, setting out for the Holy Land, and eventually becoming a monk on Sinai.

[29] The city had vanished, except for fragments of wall and of a great stone urn on the acropolis,[16] dating from the 6th century BC of which a similar vessel was taken to the Musée du Louvre in 1867.

On the coastal side of the city there is an Early Christian basilica with mosaic floors decorated with semi-precious stones.

Further, near the terraced road leading to the Temple, situated on the top of the cliff, several houses built in a row dating to the Hellenistic period have been discovered.

Two small sanctuaries, with terracotta votive offerings of Graeco-Phoenician age, lie not far off, but the location of the great shrines of Adonis and Aphrodite have not been identified (M. Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, i.