Itanos occupied the far northeastern tip of Crete, a position that made it a natural waypoint for traffic between the Aegean and the Levant. The city maintained enough independent commercial weight to issue its own bronze coinage through the early Hellenistic period, though it remained politically marginal — later coming under prolonged dispute between Rhodes and Ptolemaic Egypt over control of the site during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.
Itanos occupied the far northeastern tip of Crete, a position that made it a natural waypoint for traffic between the Aegean and the Levant. The city maintained enough independent commercial weight to issue its own bronze coinage through the early Hellenistic period, though it remained politically marginal — later coming under prolonged dispute between Rhodes and Ptolemaic Egypt over control of the site during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC.