Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Illustrations and Maps
- Lists of Books Consulted
- Chapter I The Land
- Chapter II The Stone Age
- Chapter III The Bronze Age
- Chapter IV The Religion of Early Cyprus
- Chapter V The Greek Colonization
- Chapter VI Phoenicians, Assyrians and Egyptians
- Chapter VII From Cyrus to Alexander
- Chapter VIII The Successors
- Chapter IX The Ptolemies
- Chapter X The Arts in Pre-Roman Cyprus
- Chapter XI The Roman Province
- Chapter XII Byzantium and Islam
- Addenda
- Index
- Plate section
Chapter V - The Greek Colonization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of Illustrations and Maps
- Lists of Books Consulted
- Chapter I The Land
- Chapter II The Stone Age
- Chapter III The Bronze Age
- Chapter IV The Religion of Early Cyprus
- Chapter V The Greek Colonization
- Chapter VI Phoenicians, Assyrians and Egyptians
- Chapter VII From Cyrus to Alexander
- Chapter VIII The Successors
- Chapter IX The Ptolemies
- Chapter X The Arts in Pre-Roman Cyprus
- Chapter XI The Roman Province
- Chapter XII Byzantium and Islam
- Addenda
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
The name by which the island became known to the Greeks and through them to the western world, Kypros, is of uncertain origin. It is already used in Homer, first in the old episode in the eleventh Iliad, in connexion with the legend of Cinyras, and also in the Odyssey. Aphrodite is already Kypris, the Cyprian goddess. This is not direct evidence for an earlier period than the ninth century, but the name must have been in use earlier. It can have no connexion with the plant kypros (the Hebrew gopher, henna), which does not occur wild on the island. Did the island give its name to or receive its name from the metal copper? Were it possible to see a connexion with the Sumerian word zubar for copper, the answer would be in favour of the second possibility.
When did the Greek colonization of Cyprus begin? The literary tradition, with its tales of Agapenor and Agamemnon and Teucer, would place the movement after the fall of Troy, i.e. at the beginning of the twelfth century (the traditional date of the Trojan War being 1194–1184). This was the period in which the eastward movement of the “Peoples of the Sea”, who had already attacked Egypt in the thirteenth century, towards the end of the reign of Ramses II, culminated in the great raid down the coast of Palestine which was defeated by Ramses III when it had all but reached the borders of Egypt, about 1196.
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- Information
- A History of Cyprus , pp. 82 - 94Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010First published in: 1940