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 Sargon Stele of 707 BCE. From this area, archeologists found many of the later Cypriot syllabic scripts. In fact, Idalium held the most significant contribution to the decipherment of Cypriot syllabary – the Tablet of Idalium. It is a large bronze tablet with long inscriptions on both sides. The Tablet of Idalium is dated to about 480–470 BCE. Excluding a few features in morphology and vocabulary, the text is a complete and well-understood document. It details a contract made by the king Stasicyprus and the city of Idalium with the physician Onasilus and his brothers. As payment for the physicians' care for wounded warriors during a Persian siege of the city, the king promises them certain plots of land. This agreement is put under the protection of the goddess Athena. Recent discoveries Recent discoveries include a small vase dating back to the beginning of the 5th century BCE and a broken marble fragment in the Paphian (Paphos) script. The vase is inscribed on two sides, providing two lists of personal names with Greek formations. The broken marble fragment describes a fragment of an oath. This inscription often mentions King Nicocles, the last king of Paphos and includes some important words and expressions. Four inscribed objects were found in the British Museum stores, a silver cup from Kourion, a White Ware jug, and two limestone tablet fragments. Future prospects The number of discoveries of new inscriptions has increased. However, most of the new discoveries have been short, or bear only a few signs. One example is a small clay ball. Unicode The Cypriot syllabary was added to the Unicode Standard in April 2003 with the release of version 4.0. The Unicode block for Cypriot is U+10800–U+1083F. The Unicode block for the related Aegean Numbers is U+10100–U+1013F. See also Pre-Greek substrate Tamassos bilinguals References Bibliography Steele, Philippa M. A Linguistic History of Ancient Cyprus: The non-Greek languages, and their relations with Greek, c. 1600–300 BC. Cambridge University Press (2013). Steele, Philippa M. Syllabic writing in Cyprus and its context. Cambridge University Press (2013). Steele, Philippa M. Writing and Society in Ancient Cyprus. Cambridge University Press (2018). Best, Jan and Fred Woudhuizen (eds.), Ancient Scripts from Crete and Cyprus (Leiden, Brill, 1988). Egetmeyer, Markus, Wörterbuch zu