The kingdom of Amathous, situated on the south coast, is known to us from literary sources and the coinages produced by its kings.
The earliest groups of coins of Amathous are dated between 460 and 430 and can be assigned to three distinct kings.
The first group bear no legends, and the attribution to Amathous has to be deduced from the lion type which is found also on later coins.
The second group bears the name of a king, RhoÏkos, who issued shekels with a recumbent lion with open jaws on the obverse, and the forepart of a lion, again with jaws open, on the reverse. The name of the king appears on the obverse of the heavier coins in Cypriot-Syllabic script, while the smaller fractions bear the same types with symbols added, for example on the obverse the facing head of a lion, on the reverse forepart of a lion.
The third group attests the name of a king known to us only by the single Cypriot-Syllabic sign mo, which appears on shekels with a recumbent lion, with an eagle flying above, on the obverse, and a forepart of a lion on the reverse. These same types can be seen on the same king's fractions, but legends appear only on the twelfths of a shekel, which have the sign mo in Cypriot-Syllabic script above the lion on the obverse.
The coinage of Evagoras I The next group of coins certainly attributed to Amathous retains the types described above (recumbent lion and forepart of a lion), but they are struck on a different weight standard. On these didrachms of the so-called reduced 'Rhodian' standard, a Greek letter E appears in the exergue of the obverse. This combination of features has been connected with the years 391-386, when king Evagoras of Salamis extended his power to parts of the island outside his own kingdom. But if Evagoras issued these coins (as the letter E, the first letter of his name, might indicate), why did he adopt the existing types of the kingdom, and why did he 'introduce' the 'Rhodian' weight standard in Amathous, when in his own kingdom, Salamis, he employed the local Cypriote one? A possible answer to the difficulties of interpretation is that Evagoras adopted the 'Rhodian' weight standard at Amathous because it was used there already.
Later coinage
Literary sources refer to a second king RhoÏkos, to whom coins issued on the 'Rhodian' weight standard have been attributed, with, on the obverse, a lion's head and the Cypriot-Syllabic sign ro, and on the reverse the forepart of a lion to right, head facing. Tetrobols, obols and smaller fractions of the same weight standard but without legends have also been assigned to this same king, and hoard evidence suggests that he ruled at the beginning of the fourth century.
A group of three kings who reigned possibly in the later 380s is revealed by their respective coinages. The names of Pyrwos and Zotimos are inscribed on their respective issues in Cypriot-Syllabic script, and both retained the 'Rhodian' weight standard and the established iconography of the kingdom: the recumbent lion facing to the right on the obverse and the forepart of a lion with open jaws on the reverse. The name of the third king, who overstruck coins of his predecessor to create his own, is known in the incomplete form (-)timos.
The last two kings of Amathous whose names are known to us exclusively from the inscriptions on their coins are Lysandros and Epipalos. Their coins bear the same types as their predecessors, but with their own names inscribed in Cypriot-Syllabic script.