settlement sites at Leondári Vounò and Kalopsída, and in tombs
in more than thirty places, notably at Agia Paraskevì, Psemmatisméno,
Alámbra, Episkopì and Enkomi. Throughout this
period, which began probably before 3000 B.C. and ended about
1000 B.C., Cyprus evidently maintained a large population, and
an art and culture distinct from those of Egypt, Syria and
Cilicia. The Cypriote temper, however, lacks originality; at
all periods it has accepted foreign innovations slowly, and
discarded them even more reluctantly. The island owes its
importance, therefore, mainly to its copious supply of a few
raw materials, notably copper and timber. Objects of Cypriote
manufacture are found but rarely on sites abroad; in the later
Bronze Age, however, they occur in Egypt and South Palestine,
and as far afield as Thera (Santorin), Athens and Troy (Hissarlik).
The Bronze Age culture of Cyprus falls into three main stages. In the first, the implements are rather of copper than of bronze, tin being absent or in small quantities (2 to 3%); the types are common to Syria and Asia Minor as far as the Hellespont, and resemble also the earliest forms in the Aegean and in central Europe; the pottery is all hand-made, with a red burnished surface, gourd-like and often fantastic forms, and simple geometrical patterns incised; zoomorphic art is very rare, and imported objects are unknown. In the second stage, implements of true bronze (9 to 10% tin) become common; painted pottery of buff clay with dull black geometrical patterns appears alongside the red-ware; and foreign imports occur, such as Egyptian blue-glazed beads (XIIth-XIIIth Dynasty, 2500–2000 B.C.),[1] and cylindrical Asiatic seals (one of Sargon I., 2000 B.C.).[2]
In the third stage, Aegean colonists introduced the Mycenaean (late Minoan) culture and industries; with new types of weapons, wheel-made pottery, and a naturalistic art which rapidly becomes conventional; gold and ivory are abundant, and glass and enamels are known. Extended intercourse with Syria, Palestine and Egypt brought other types of pottery, jewelry, &c. (especially scarabs of XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, 1600–1200 B.C.), which were freely copied on the spot. There is, however, nothing in this period which can be ascribed to specifically “Phoenician” influence; the only traces of writing are in a variety of the Aegean script. The magnificent tombs from Enkomi and Episkopì illustrate the wealth and advancement of Cyprus at this time.[3]
It is in this third stage that Cyprus first appears in history, under the name Asi, as a conquest of Tethmosis (Thothmes) III. of Egypt (XVIIIth Dynasty, c. 1500 B.C.),[4] yielding tribute of chariots, horses, copper, blue-stone and other products. It was still in Egyptian hands under Seti I., and under Rameses III. a list of Cypriote towns seems to include among others the names of Salamis, Citium, Soli, Idalium, Cerynia (Kyrenia), and Curium. Another Egyptian dependency, Alašia, has by some been identified with Cyprus or a part of it (but may perhaps be in North Syria). It sent copper, oil, horses and cattle, ivory and timber; under Amenophis (Amenhotep) III. it exported timber and imported silver; it included a town Şiķra, traded with Byblus in North Syria, and was exposed to piratical raids of Lykki (? Lycians).
The decline of Egypt under the XXth Dynasty, and the contemporary fall of the Aegean sea-power, left Cyprus isolated and defenceless, and the Early Iron Age which succeeds is a period of obscurity and relapse. Iron, which occurs rarely, and almost exclusively for ornaments, in a few tombs at Enkomi, suddenly superseded bronze for tools and weapons, and its introduction was accompanied, as in the Aegean, by economic, and probably by political changes, which broke up the high civilization of the Mycenaean colonies, and reduced them to poverty, isolation and comparative barbarism. It is significant that the first iron swords in Cyprus are of a type characteristic of the lands bordering the Adriatic. Gold and even silver become rare;[5] foreign imports almost cease; engraved cylinders and scarabs are replaced by conical and pyramidal seals like those of Asia Minor, and dress-pins by brooches (fibulae) like those of south-eastern Europe. Representative art languishes, except a few childish terra-cottas; decorative art becomes once more purely geometrical, but shows only slight affinity with the contemporary geometrical art of the Aegean.
Lingering thus in Cyprus (as also in some islands of the Aegean) Mycenaean traditions came into contact with new oriental influences from the Syrian coast; and these were felt in Cyprus somewhat earlier than in the West. But there is at present no clear proof of Phoenician or other Semitic activity in Cyprus until the last years of the 8th century.
No reference to Cyprus has been found in Babylonian or Assyrian records before the reign of Sargon II. (end of 8th century B.C.), and the occasional discovery of Mesopotamian cylinders of early date in Cyprus is no proof of direct intercourse.[6] Isaiah (xxiii. 1, 12), writing about this time, describes Kittim (a name derived from Citium, q.v.) as a port of call for merchantmen homeward bound for Tyre, and as a shelter for Tyrian refugees; but the Hebrew geographers of this and the next century classify Kittim, together with other coast-lands and islands, under the heading Javan, “Ionian” (q.v.), and consequently reckoned it as predominantly Greek.
Sargon’s campaigns in north Syria, Cilicia and south-east Asia Minor (721–711) provoked first attacks, then an embassy and submission in 709, from seven kings of Yatnana (the Assyrian name for Cyprus); and an inscription of Sargon himself, found at Citium, proves an Assyrian protectorate, and records tribute of gold, silver and various timbers. These kings probably represent that “sea-power of Cyprus” which precedes that of Phoenicia in the Greek “List of Thalassocracies” preserved by Eusebius. Under Sennacherib’s rule, Yatnana figures (as in Isaiah) as the refuge of a disloyal Sidonian in 702; but in 668 ten kings of Cypriote cities joined Assur-bani-pal’s expedition to Egypt; most of them bear recognizable Greek names, e.g. Pylagoras of Chytroi, Eteandros of Paphos, Onasagoras of Ledroi. They are gazetted with twelve other “kings of the Hatti” (S.E. Asia Minor). Citium, the principal Phoenician state, does not appear by name; but is usually recognized in the list under its Phoenician title Karṭi–ḥadasti, “new town.”
Thus before the middle of the 7th century Cyprus reappears in history divided among at least ten cities, of which some are certainly Greek, and one at least certainly Phoenician: with this, Greek tradition agrees.[7] The Greek colonists traced their descent, at Curium, from Argos; at Lapathus, from Laconia; at Paphos, from Arcadia; at Salamis, from the Attic island of that name; and at Soli, also from Attica. The settlements at Paphos and Salamis, and probably at Curium, were believed to date from the period of the Trojan War, i.e. from the 13th century, and the latter part of the Mycenaean age; the name of Teucer, the legendary founder of Salamis, probably is a reminiscence of the piratical Tikkara who harried the Egyptian coast under Rameses III. (c. 1200 B.C.), and the discovery of late Mycenaean settlements on these sites, and also at Lapathus, suggests that these legends rest upon history. The Greek dialect of Cyprus points in the same direction; it shows marked resemblances with that of Arcadia, and forms with it a “South Achaean” or “South Aeolic” group, related to the “Northern Aeolic” of Thessaly and other parts of north Greece.[8] Further
- ↑ Myres, Journ. Hellenic Studies, xvii. p. 146.
- ↑ Sayce, Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch. v. pp. 441–444. The exact provenance of these cylinders is not known, but there is every reason to believe that they were found in Cyprus.
- ↑ British Museum, Excavations in Cyprus (London, 1900). The official publication stands alone in referring these tombs to the Hellenic period (800–600 B.C.).
- ↑ E. Oberhummer, Die Insel Cypern (Munich, 1903), i. pp. 1-3 (all the Egyptian evidence).
- ↑ A. J. Evans, Journ. Anthrop. Inst. xxx. p. 199 ff.; J. Naue, Die vorrömischen Schwerter (Munich, 1903), p. 25.
- ↑ E. Oberhummer, l.c. p. 5 ff. (all the Assyrian and biblical
- ↑ W. H. Engel, Kypros (Berlin, 1841) (all the Greek traditions).
- ↑ Moriz Schmidt, Z. f. vergl. Sprachw. (1860), p. 290 ff., 361 ff.; H. W. Smith, Trans. Amer. Philol. Assoc. xviii. (1887); R. Meister, Zum eleischen, arkadischen u. kyprischen Dialekte (Leipzig, 1890); O. Hoffmann, Die griechischen Dialekte, i. (Göttingen, 1891); C. D. Cobham, Bibliography of Cyprus, pp. 40-45.
