The late period (750–500 B.C.) shows foreign influences from Greece and from Phoenicia or Egypt, competing with and enriching the native geometrical style. Scarab seals, blue–glaze beads, and other personal ornaments, and silver objects, appear. Terra–cotta figures stamped in a mould occur side by side with modelled.
Hellenic Age, with increasing influence of Greek arts and industries.
Early or Hellenic period (500–300 B.C.): the native pottery degenerates, and Greek vases and terra–cottas are imported and imitated; jewellery of gold and silver is fairly common and of good quality; with engraved seals set in signet rings: the bronze mirrors are circular, with a handle–spike.
Middle or Hellenistic period (300–50 B.C.): the native pottery is almost wholly replaced by imitations of forms from other parts of the Greek world, especially from Syria and Asia Minor: large handled wine–jars ( amphorae ) are common: terra–cottas and jewellery also follow Greek styles: coloured stones are set in rings and ear–rings.
Late or Graeco–Roman period (50 B.C.–A.D. 400): pottery is partly replaced by vessels of blown glass: clay lamps, red–glazed jugs, so called 'tear–bottles' of spindle–shapes, ear–rings of beads strung on wire, bronze rings and bracelets, circular mirrors without handles, and bronze coins are characteristics.
Byzantine Age (after A.D. 400): Christian burial in surface graves supersedes the use of rock–hewn tombs: funerary equipment goes out of use, except a few personal ornaments, which are of mean appearance, and may bear Christian symbols. Domestic pottery is coarse, ungraceful, and frequently ribbed on the outside. Clay lamps have long nozzles, and Christian symbols. Glass becomes clumsy and less common; and glazed bowls and cups come into use. Occasional rich finds of silver plate (salvers, cups, spoons, &c.) and personal ornaments, have been made among Byzantine ruins.
On mediaeval and later sites, various glazed fabrics of pottery are found, and occasionally examples of the glazed and painted jugs, plates, and tiles known to collectors as 'Rhodian' or 'Damascus' ware.
Inscriptions occur on settlement–sites, in sanctuaries and associated with tombs: usually cut on slabs or blocks of soft limestone, though marble and other harder stones were used in Hellenistic and Roman times. Besides the ordinary Greek (see [Illustration IV]), and Roman alphabets the Phoenician alphabet (see [Illustrations X] and [XI]) was in use at Kition (Larnaca), in the great sanctuaries at Idalion (Dali), and occasionally elsewhere; and from early times until the fourth century a syllabary peculiar to Cyprus, often very rudely hewn, in irregular lines, on ill–shaped blocks. Such 'Cypriote inscriptions' (see accompanying [Illustration VII]) are of great value and interest, and have been often overlooked among building material drawn from old sites. In all doubtful cases, a 'squeeze' should be made by one of the methods described in the first part of this volume and submitted to the Keeper of Antiquities. The stamped inscriptions on the handles of wine–jars are worth preserving, as evidence for the course of trade.
Coins were issued in Cyprus from the sixth century onward; first in silver; later (in the fourth century B.C.) occasionally in gold, and from the fourth century commonly in copper. A Ptolemaic coinage succeeded in the third century that of the local rulers; the Roman coinage, with inscriptions sometimes in Greek, sometimes in Latin, lasts from Augustus to the beginning of the third century. Coins of the Byzantine Emperors and of the Lusignan Kings are common.