Cyprus : its ancient cities, tombs, and temples a narrative of researches and excavations during ten years' residence as American consul in that island / by Louis Palma di Cesnola.

  • Cesnola, Luigi Palma di, 1832-1904.
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Cyprus : its ancient cities, tombs, and temples a narrative of researches and excavations during ten years' residence as American consul in that island / by Louis Palma di Cesnola. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Lycia which will be pointed out, but at present they seem rather traceable to an oriental than to a Greek origin. While the two languages of Cyprus—Greek and Phoenician—remained distinct, it would seem that the religion of the two separate races had become success- fully amalgamated. The goddess of Paphos, whose temple there had been founded, according to tradition, in imitation of a temple of the Tyrian goddess Astarte at Ascalon, and had a perpetual priesthood, tracing their lineage to the Tyrian founder Cinyras, was accepted by the Greeks throughout the island as Aphrodite. She was in the first place the Goddess of Love, and considering that however much language or ‘nationality may vary, this passion at least is very constant in mankind, it cannot be surprising that the two races of Cyprus worshipped one goddess in common. Her symbol was a cone, such as stood in the adytum of the temple at Paphos, and whatever its signification may ultimately have been, the likelihood is that it originated in reference to the functions of the Pelasgic Aphrodite as a goddess of fertility. The two originally distinct elements in the religion of the Paphian goddess are indicated by her two titles of Pandemos and Urania, with her separate genealogy for each. As Pandemos she was a daughter of Zeus and Dione, and represented originally a pure Greek conception of a goddess of Nature, and it is in this genealogy that she is known to Homer. As Urania she was the offspring of Uranos, born in the foam of the sea (Aphrodite), and coming finally to land in Cyprus. As a. goddess of the Heavens '(Uranos) she reminds us that the principal deities of the Asiatic race to which the Phoenicians belonged, were the Sun and Moon—Baal and Mylitta in Babylon. And again, as a goddess born of the sea she reminds us that the goddess Derceto was represented at Ascalon in the