Itanus or Itanos () was a Greek city and port on the northeast coast of ancient Crete, on the promontory which the Romans called Itanum, the neuter form of Itanus, Latin for Greek Itanos.<ref>Pliny the Elder, Natural History," Book IV, Chapter 12, "promontory of Itanum."</ref> The base of the tripartite northeast promontory, today called Cape Sideros, is still called Itanos or Itano in modern Greek. Occupation of the promontory began as early as the Final Neolithic, according to the archaeology. The site of the city itself, however, became inhabited in the Geometric Period of the 8th century BC. This city flourished independently of other Cretan powers, playing a leading role in the trade of the region, even becoming, for a while, a protectorate of Ptolemaic Egypt. It became part of the Roman province of Crete, and later Christian buildings were erected. For unclear reasons it was abandoned in the 7th century AD after a life of about 1400 years. The location was lost. Archaeologists were able to locate it in the 19th century. Recently it has become a subject in ground-breaking technologies of sub-surface surveying. Some of the ruins of the classical and early Christian city are now visible in the elevations around Itanos and Eremoupolis Beaches, in the modern municipal unit of Itanos, of Sitia municipality. The east akropolis of the city was on the headland between the two beaches. The beach shown as Eremoupolis could not have appeared then as it does now, but the details have not yet been investigated scientifically. Itanos Beach on the other side went 100 yards further inland and was the deep channel of the harbor. Apparently, however, the east akropolis was not high enough or isolated enough to be a defensible fort. History Bronze Age and earlier The toponym u-ta-no, and the corresponding adjective, u-ta-ni-jo, appears on Linear B tablets found in Knossos. However Itanos seems to be too far away from Knossos to be u-ta-no, and J. Bennet ruled out the possibility that any Linear B tablets found at Knossos referred directly to classical Itanos. The Itanos promontory, today nearly deserted, has 55 Bronze Age and Final Neolithic sites. A Minoan site at Itanos seemed theoretically possible, and yet the survey uncovered no Minoan material on or around the site at all. Instead all the Minoan farms, dams and lookouts seemed centered around “the villa of Vai,” a major site. The