The history of Cyprus begins soon after the beginning. An inscription of Thut-mes III. speaks of the ‘false breed of the Kittim’; and the island is everywhere on the monuments called Asibi. In the cuneiforms the word is ‘Kittie’: we also find ‘Atnán’: hence, possibly, the Hellenic ‘Akamantis.’ It is the ‘Chittim’ of the Hebrews (Joseph. ‘A. J.’ i. 7), and perhaps their ‘Caphtor’; the latter word, however, appears to be the Egyptian ‘Kefa’ or ‘Keft’ (a palm or Phœnicia), converted into the son of Javan and grandson of Japhet. ‘Kittim’ and its congeners survive in the Greek Citium, now Larnaca, from ‘larnax,’ a mummy-case, a coffin. I have already noticed (chap. iv.) the disputed origin of ‘Kypros’ and ‘Cyprus.’
The Autochthones of Cyprus are supposed upon very slight grounds to have been ‘Aryans’ from Asia Minor, Phrygians,[604] Lycians,[605] Lydians, or Cilicians. There must have been an early ‘Semitic’ innervation, as we see by such names as Amathus; this is the Greek form of Hamath, the ‘high town,’ typically explained by the Hebrew ‘Amath,’ grandson of Canaan. The Phœnicians settled chiefly in the south of the island and made it an outpost of Tyre and Sidon. Herodotus tells us that there were also, according to their own account, Ethiopians (vii. 90), by which he means Cushito-Asiatic tribes from the head of the Persian Gulf.
The staple of Cyprus, from the heroic ages to the Roman days, was the copper-trade and the manufacture of arms and armour. To the legendary Tyrio-Cyprian king Cinyras was attributed the invention of the hammer, anvil, tongs, and other metallurgic tools. This favourite of Venus was only the hero eponymus of the Phœnician Cinyradæ, who ruled the isle till subdued by Ptolemy Lagi (b.c. 312). They were opposed to a Semitico-Cilician family of priests and prophets, the Tamyridæ. Homer (‘Il.’ xi. 19) describes the breast-plate of worked and damascened steel (? κύανος) adorned with gold and tin, which King Cinyras sent to Agamemnon. Alexander the Great highly prized, for its lightness and temper, the blade given to him by the King of Citium; and we know that he used it in battle, slaying ‘with his Cyprian Sword’ Rhæsales the Persian. Demetrius Poliorcetes wore a suit of armour from Cyprus, which had been tested by darts shot from an engine distant only twenty paces. In Herodotus (vii. 90) the Cyprian contingent of Xerxes’ army was weaponed after the manner of the Greeks.
Cyprus would derive her art from the Phœnicians, whose bronze dishes were found in the Palace-cellars at Nineveh. Gem-engraving, and working in pietra dura, were highly cultivated, as is proved by General Palma’s works, and by the Lawrence-Cesnola collection, ‘Album of Cyprus Antiquities.’[606] Glass- and crystal-cutting were well known at a time when Herodotus (ii. 69) could describe the former only as ‘fusible stone’—perhaps, however, alluding to paste gems. But Theophrastus, a century and a half after the historian, mentions glass as reported to be made by melting a certain stone. I have already alluded to the peculiar decency and decorum of the glyptic remains in the Isle of Venus, where the festivals were described as being ultra-Canopic in character.[607]
CYPRUS WEAPONS.
The ‘finds’ of Cyprian weapons have little importance; perhaps due care was not devoted to the subject. Dali (Idalium) produced a fine dagger with an open ring for ornament between handle and blade, together with a hatchet and spear-head in copper. Here also was found the bronze tablet of the Duc de Luynes, the discoverer of the Cypriote syllabary,[608] which has caused, and still causes, so much discussion. Alambra yielded a number of copper tools, needles, bowls, mirrors, hatchets, spear-heads, and daggers (Cesnola, Pl. V.). Among them is a sickle-shaped implement (a), of the shape called a ‘razor’ by writers on Etruscanism; it may be anything between a razor, a sickle, and a pruning-hook.[609] A tomb at Amathus supplied copper axes and iron arrow-heads (p. 280), and another an iron dagger (p. 276). There is a charming dagger from the Curium treasure (Pl. XXI. p. 312); and we are told (p. 335) of ‘an iron dagger with part of its ivory handle.’ The straight blade, the flesh-chopper, and the leaf-shaped Egyptian Swords are found on a patera[610] (p. 329), and the broken statue of a warrior from Golgoi carries a falchion or flesh-chopper slung under the quiver to the left side (p. 155). The tombs containing horsemen in terra-cotta invariably yielded one or two spear-heads seven to ten inches long, whilst the figures of foot-soldiers were accompanied by a battle-axe, knife, or dagger. The decapitation of the Gorgon by Perseus adorns a sarcophagus also found at Golgoi (Pl. X.); and the head of Medusa (Pl. XXII.) apparently suggested that of the Hindú Kali, with the tongue lolling out as if gorged with gore. The mediæval finds of arms seem to have been more important than the ancient. There is a tempting notice, but only a notice, of the Venetian weapons taken from the two casements of Famagosta, of old Amta-Khadasta,[611] the Ammochostos of Ptolemy (v. 14, § 3): especially interesting are the rapiers, whose handles bore the Jerusalem Cross and the owners’ crests inlaid with gold.
Fig. 199.—Silver Dagger.
Fig. 196.—(Plate V.) Novacula.