Cyprus History

The island of Aphrodite

Cyprus featured in ancient mythology as the island of Aphrodite. The celebrated Rock of Aphrodite, the Petra tou Romiou, between Paphos and Limassol marks the spot where the goddess of love and fertility;i foam-born (aphros = "foam"), is supposed to have risen out of the sea. The name Petra tou Romiou literally means "Rock ofthe Roman" (the Byzantines, inheritors of the Eastern Roman Empire, referred to them selves as Romaioi, which came simply to mean Greeks).

Archaeological finds at Kouklia, near Paphos, show that this was the site of one of the largest shrines of Aphrodite in antiquity.

Hesiod's account of the birth of Aphrodite

The poet Hesiod gives an account in his "Theogony" (155-200) ofthe birth of Aphrodite off the coast of Cyprus. He tells us that Aphrodite was the daughter of Gaia (the Earth) and Uranos (the Sky), the primal Greek deities who emerged from Chaos (the Void). They had numerous children, the Cyclopes, the Hecatoncheires ("Hundred-Armed") and the Titans. Uranos exiled the Hecatoncheires and the Cyclopes to Tartaros (the Underworld). whereupon Gaia, angered, urged their son Kronos, one of the Titans, to take revenge on his father. Kronos hid in his parents' bedroom, cut off Uranos's testicles with a sickle and threw them into the sea. They were carried by currents to Cyprus, where Aphrodite then rose from the foam. In Hesiod's words:

"And even as he cut off the privy parts with the sickle and hurled them from the mainland into the foaming sea, even so were they borne over the sea for a long time, and from the immortal flesh a white foam arose round it, and therein a maiden grew. And first she came nigh unto holy Kythera, whence next she came to sea-girt Kypros. And she came forth as a fair goddess to be revered by men, and around her the grass grew· under her tender feet. Her do gods and men call Aphrodite." (After the translation by A. W. Mair)

As goddess of beauty, of love, of fertility and of marriage Aphrodite was one of the most revered of the divinities of Olympus. She married the lame god Hephaistos, but did not remain faithful to him.

Oriental origin of Aphrodite

When the Greeks came to Cyprus about 1000 B.C. they encountered the fertility cult of an Oriental mother goddess, reflecting a matriarchal society. The islanders worshipped the Babylonian love goddess Ishtar, who was identified with the Palestinian and Syrian goddess of fertility and war, Astarte. With the Hellenisation of the island this mother goddess was in turn identified with Aphrodite, the goddess of a patri archal society.

According to Pausanias (2nd c. A.O.) the first Greek to set foot on the island was King Agapenor of Tegea in Arcadia, who landed in Cyprus on his way back from Troy and founded the first temple of Aphrodite at Paphos.

Pygmalion

According to one legend Pygmalion was king of the city state of AmaIhuuB. Aphrodite had laid down a law that all women before being IIIArrled must yield themselves to a stranger in the goddess's temple: a myth reflecting an old matriarchal tradition of temple prostitution, of Which there is evidence in Cyprus. Since this law was not observed Aphrodite punished all women by giving them insatiable sexual de lhI!. Horrified by this, Pygmalion withdrew into solitude and devoted himself to sculpture. He created a marble statue of Aphrodite, with which he then fell desperately in love. Aphrodite took pity on him and IUl!nthed life into the statue, creating Galatea, who bore Pygmalion a lOll called Paphos: hence the name of the town of paphos.

"pahos in turn lay with his sister Metharme and had a son named killyras, who according to Homer was the first priest-king ofthe temple ul Aphrodite at paphos.

Apollodoros (2nd c. B.C.) tells the story of Kinyras. His wife claimed to hll fuirer than Aphrodite, who took her revenge by causing Paphos's IIAlIghter Myrrha to form a violent passion for her father. One night, hAving made him drunk, she crept into his bed. When Paphos realised Ihnt hewas the father ofthe child conceived by Myrrha he was about to kill her, but at the last moment Aphrodite transformed her into a myrtle-bush, from which nine months later Adonis was born.

Ihn legends of Paphos, who married his own sister, and Kinyras, whose daughter bore him a son, Adonis, reflect the transition from a Il1ntriarchal to a patriarchal society. In a matriarchy royal authority was pAssed down from woman to woman, and a king could maintain that authority in his family only by marrying his sister or his daughter. The Ilhunge from matrilinear to patrilinear succession also finds expres lion in the story of the birth of Aphrodite, born of the sperm of a male divinity.