2. Graeco-Phoenician period, from 800 B.C. to 400 B.C., overlapping with
3. Hellenic period, from 550 B.C. to 200 B.C., representing the time during which imported Greek vases are found in the tombs, native pottery gradually dying out except in the form of plain vessels.
The pottery of the Bronze-Age period again falls into two distinct periods: (1) Copper Age or pre-Mycenaean period (2500–1500 B.C.), during which few bronze implements are found in the tombs, and all the pottery is purely indigenous, the work of the original inhabitants of the island, without any admixture of importations. (2) The Mycenaean period (1500–800 B.C.), during which the local pottery (including both unpainted and painted vases) is reinforced by large quantities of imported Mycenaean pottery, together with elaborately decorated vases of Mycenaean technique, either made locally or specially made for Cyprus and imported.
The sites on which Bronze-Age remains are found (see above, p. [66]) are chiefly confined to the central and southern parts of the island, the most important sites being near the modern towns of Nicosia, Larnaka, and Famagusta. The discovery in these tombs of such objects as milking-bowls and querns is an additional proof of the conclusion naturally to be drawn—that the early inhabitants of Cyprus were a race of pastoral lowlanders.[[820]] The tombs (see p. [35]) are mostly pit-tombs of moderate depth, recalling in type the Egyptian mastaba, and burial is universal.
There is no doubt that the art of pottery was introduced into Cyprus coincidently with the beginning of the Copper Age, which may be placed at about the year 2000 B.C. Although no bronze is found in the earliest tombs, on the other hand stone implements are absent, and the types of the pottery are identical with those of the later Bronze Age. It will be seen that it presents throughout very striking parallels with the pottery of Hissarlik, which will form the subject of the next section. The forms are largely similar and the technique is the same, but the Hissarlik pottery is ruder and of inferior clay. Stone implements are found at Hissarlik, but no copper, from which the inference may be drawn that that metal, being indigenous to Cyprus, supplanted stone there at an earlier date than in the Troad, whither it had to find its way by means of commerce. It was no doubt largely due to the existence of its copper ores that Cyprus so early shows an advance in its civilisation.
The shapes of the earliest Cypriote pottery are purely indigenous and very characteristic, but the technique may very likely have been learned from elsewhere; in regard to which it should be noted that as it is invariably hand-made, an Egyptian origin is altogether precluded, owing to the early use of the wheel for pottery in that country (see pp. [7], [206]). For the most part the forms are characterised by a tendency to fantastic and unsymmetrical modelling, with a preference for complicated forms, such as two or three vases joined together. Others again imitate gourds or vessels of straw and basket-work, such as are used in Cyprus at the present day. They have no foot or “base-ring” to stand upon; and another characteristic is the frequent absence of handles, the place of which is supplied by small ears, by means of which the vase was hung up or carried by cords.[[821]] Sometimes these ears cover the whole outline of the vase. The plastic principle is always popular in the Bronze-Age pottery, and manifests itself in more than one direction. From the first it is exhibited in the tendency, so common in early art, to combine the vase and the statuette,[[822]] a tendency which is even stronger in the pottery of Hissarlik. It also takes the form of designs in relief covering the surface of, or moulded to, the vase.
In one point Cyprus is manifestly in advance of the rest of the ancient world, and that is, in the decoration of the pottery. Here, in fact, we meet with the first attempts at painted vases, combined with the employment of a fine bright red or polished black slip to cover the surface. In the earlier varieties the designs, when they occur, are confined to simple rectilinear geometrical patterns incised through the slip before baking; but these are soon supplemented by the employment, first of a matt-white pigment, secondly of a brown-black paint obtained from the native umber. The only other locality in which painted vases occur at so early a period is the island of Thera (see below, p. [260]).
We pass now to the consideration of the later Bronze-Age pottery—namely, that which is found in tombs together with vases of Mycenaean style. In this we see various modifications of the indigenous art, and witness its eventual transformation by the introduction of new processes and ideas from various sources. The main streams of influence are three in number, coming from the east, south, and west respectively. Of these the first represents the Asiatic civilisations of Babylonia and the Hittites, to whom in the first place are due the engraved cylinders frequently found in these tombs, and at a comparatively late date such objects as the ivory draught-box from Enkomi in the British Museum, which affords points of comparison with the reliefs of Kouyounjik. Egyptian influences date from the invasion of Cyprus by Thothmes III. (eighteenth dynasty), about 1450 B.C., as exemplified by the frequent occurrence of scarabs and porcelain objects. A counter-influence of Cyprus on Egypt is seen in the presence of exported Cypriote pottery in tombs at Kahun, Saqqara, and elsewhere.[[823]] Lastly, there is the far more extensive influence of the Mycenaean civilisation, covering several hundred years, and eventually absorbing the indigenous fabrics until the foundations of a new phase of decorative art were laid on a combination of the two. The Mycenaean vases belong to the later styles exclusively (see below, p. [271]), and show a strong preference for certain forms such as the false-necked amphora and the large richly-decorated krater peculiar to Cyprus; but these we must discuss later in fuller detail. Briefly, they represent the first entry of Greece proper into the Cypriote world.
The ethnological affinities of the early inhabitants of Cyprus cannot be positively ascertained. In M. Heuzey’s opinion they were Asiatics, Syrian rather than Phoenician, and he suggests that the names of Kition (Chittim) and Amathus (Hamath) imply Hittite and Hamathite colonists. Dümmler regarded them as closely akin to the race which inhabited the second city at Hissarlik,[[824]] an idea to which the similarity of the pottery might be thought to lend support. At all events in Greek legend this people was personified by the mythical king Kinyras, the father of Adonis, who came from the neighbouring Asiatic coast. The Hellenic, or rather Achaean, invasion is crystallised into the legends of Teucer’s colonisation of Salamis after the fall of Troy,[[825]] of an Arcadian settlement at Kerynia and elsewhere, and of the founding of Curium by Argives (? Mycenaeans).[[826]]
The first attempt to classify the pottery of Cyprus, and to distinguish between the Bronze-Age wares and what are now known as the Graeco-Phoenician fabrics, was made by the late Mr. T. B. Sandwith in 1876.[[827]] Considering the comparative poverty of material at his command, and the state of archaeological knowledge at the time, his brief but illuminating monograph is a wonderfully accurate and scientific contribution, and, so far as it goes, his classification can still be accepted in the main. But the extensive series of excavations in the island since the British occupation, and the investigation of such fruitful sites as Salamis, Curium, and Kition, have resulted in a great advance of our knowledge of the subject. The elaborate classification made by Messrs. Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter of the representative collections of the Cyprus Museum must for the present be regarded as final, and of necessity forms the basis of the succeeding description.