Compendium

Did you know…

Short facts drawn from the compendium, grouped by section. Each one links to the page it comes from, where you can read the fuller story and its sources.

241 facts

Pottery

Section home

…that much of the export of Cypriot pottery probably travelled as secondary cargo alongside copper, a theory known as the "piggy-back" model?
…that the sorting of Cypriot wares goes back to 1871, when Thomas Sandwith, British vice-consul at Larnaca, read a paper on tomb pottery in London?
…that the Greek names given to Cypriot pottery shapes, such as amphora, krater and askos, do not record what Cypriots called their own pots?
…that Base Ring juglets were said in 1962 to imitate an upturned opium-poppy pod, yet numerous residue analyses have failed to find opium in them?
…that Base Ring ware, fired to look like metal, could reach a hardness of up to 7 on the Mohs scale?
…that Egyptian craftspeople copied the shape of Cypriot Base Ring jugs in alabaster, serpentine, faience and glass?
…that on the figure-jugs of Marion in Bichrome Red ware, a small clay woman on the shoulder holds a jug that acts as the spout?
…that a pot that looks Black-on-Red in a photograph may once have been Bichrome Red, its fragile white paint worn away?
…that Bichrome Ware, long called "Palestinian", was shown by clay analysis in the 1970s to have been made mostly in eastern Cyprus?
…that potters at Megiddo made goblets decorated in the Bichrome technique, a shape not found in the Cypriot repertoire?
…that ten sherds of Black-on-Red ware from early levels at Megiddo, dated around 900 BCE, were shown by chemical analysis to have been made in Cyprus?
…that genuine Cypriot Black-on-Red juglets and Cretan copies were buried together in the same tomb at Knossos?
…that the combs used on Neolithic Combed ware had from one to fifteen or more teeth, in one case "as thin as a modern metal pin"?
…that a sherd combed with a different scheme on each face is almost certainly from a Neolithic Combed ware bowl?
…that the Combed ware at Khirokitia was left by squatters who settled among the ruins a thousand years or more after the pre-pottery village?
…that Drab Polished ware makes up 68% of the pottery at the Kissonerga-Ammoudhia cemetery but just 0.1% at Marki-Alonia?
…that Drab Polished potters attached the neck of a vessel to the outside of its body instead of inserting it inside?
…that a potters' quarter at Berbati in the Argolid held misfired wasters of the Mycenaean pictorial kraters once thought to be painted in Cyprus?
…that Cypriot potters were copying Mycenaean jars in the fourteenth century BCE, more than a century before any proposed Aegean migration?
…that handmade and wheel-shaped versions of Plain White pots were made side by side in Cyprus for about 400 years?
…that the first Plain White vessel type was probably a handleless storage jar modelled on Levantine jars, and exported as far as Tell el-Dab'a in Egypt?
…that Proto-White Painted potters may have been trying, "rather unsuccessfully", to imitate the orange look of local Mycenaean IIIC pottery?
…that Cyprus was still painting pictures on Proto-White Painted pots in the 11th century BCE, when the Aegean had sunk into a "picture-less" period?
…that a Red-on-White vessel from Chalcolithic Kissonerga takes the form of a roundhouse, its walls and door painted like the bowls?
…that in one study, Red-on-White painting at Erimi proved closer to distant Kissonerga-Mosphilia than Mosphilia was to Lemba, just 1 km away?
…that the coarse ware found with Red Polished Philia pottery includes the earliest known Cypriot pots designed for boiling liquids over a fire?
…that intact fossil shells inside Red Polished Philia pots confirm they were fired at low temperatures, no higher than about 750–800°C?
…that the most elaborate Red Polished vessels from Vounous show scenes of ploughing, bread making and even pottery production?
…that use-wear on Red Polished pots from tombs shows many were used in daily life before being buried with the dead?
…that pottery now called White Painted Wheelmade III was once labelled "Mycenaean IIIC" by some excavators and "Decorated Late Cypriot III" by others?
…that wheelmade copies of Base Ring bowls among the White Painted Wheelmade pottery of Palaepaphos have been called "unclassifiable horrors"?
…that the absence of White Painted ware in south-west Cyprus once led researchers to suppose, wrongly, that the region had been abandoned?
…that paint transferred onto the rims of White Painted bowls shows they were often stacked inside one another in the firing?
…that residue analysis shows the so-called "milk bowls" of White Slip ware served meat-and-vegetable meals and pine-resin-flavoured wine?
…that potters may have shaped their near-perfectly hemispherical White Slip bowls by using a gourd as a mould?
…that the patterns on White Slip pottery have been compared to decorated linen garments shown in 15th-century BCE Egyptian tombs?
…that the oldest identified Cypriot transport amphorae are a series of 34 from one of the royal tombs at Salamis, dated around 700 BC?
…that cord impressions round the belly of Cypriot transport amphorae record cords used to stop the walls collapsing while drying?
…that a Cypriot basket-handled amphora from Salamis, of about 600 BC, is painted with the syllabic word e-la-i-wo, "olive oil"?
…that a small White Painted askos in the Cyprus Museum shows an animal, possibly a donkey, carrying panniers either side of its basket handle?
…that Late Bronze Age Red Lustrous Wheel-made ware includes an arm-shaped vessel, a long tube ending in a human hand holding a small cup?
…that recent clay studies point to the Göksu Valley in southern Anatolia as the most likely home of Red Lustrous Wheel-made spindle bottles?
…that Vounous Tomb 22, home of the famous scenic bowl, also held fourteen plain hemispherical bowls with string-hole projections?
…that the tubular-spouted bowl is the only Philia shape with clear local roots, crossing the Chalcolithic to Bronze Age divide intact?
…that some two-necked complex vessels of Bronze Age Cyprus have spouts at opposite ends, "making pouring virtually impossible"?
…that a 46 cm composite bowl from Vounous Tomb 48 has four bowls sharing a handle shaped as a plank figure of a woman holding an infant?
…that the White Shaved dipper juglet is not a dipper at all, and three times as many have been found in Palestine as in Cyprus?
…that at Palaepaphos-Skales the Plain White I dipper "always occurs" with drinking sets of the Late Cypriot IIIB and Cypro-Geometric I periods?
…that Cypro-Geometric plates carry their main decoration underneath, which suggests they were displayed, perhaps hung on walls, between uses?
…that a 51.1 cm White Painted dish was broken in antiquity and tied back together through drilled holes before it went into the tomb?
…that Early Chalcolithic flasks had pointed bases and could not stand on their own, so they may have been hung from ropes or nets?
…that a Phoenician-looking flask from Alaas turned out, from its Mamonia fabric, to have been made in south-western Cyprus?
…that one of the Cypriot pithoi on the Uluburun shipwreck held pomegranates, and another smaller Cypriot pots and tin ingots?
…that in the Early Iron Age, large jars were used for the burial of infants at Kition-Bamboula?
…that Athenian potters of the 6th century BCE made black-figure oinochoai copying a Cypriot metal prototype, several found at Marion and Amathus?
…that imported Cypriot Black-on-Red juglets in the Aegean are found almost exclusively in graves, suggesting their contents anointed the dead?
…that the strainer jug, popular in 12th-century BCE Cyprus, is often called a "beer jug" in the Levant, its holes said to hold back barley?
…that one Black-on-Red strainer jug has a modelled human face on its neck, turning it into a "vessel-shaped figure"?
…that when a tulip bowl has a handle, it takes the form of the hilt of a knife or dagger, like the knife models found at Vounous?
…that some Vounous vessels carry miniature tulip bowls on their rims, complete with tiny horned heads and sun discs?
…that 26 of 138 Mycenaean-style sherds from Qantir-Piramesse in Egypt turned out to have been made in Cyprus?
…that White Painted Wheelmade III, once read as the pottery of Aegean colonists, was already in use in Cyprus before the town destructions it was said to mark?
…that Early Bronze Age Red Polished incised decoration was cut before firing and filled with lime afterwards, so that it stood out white against the red?
…that the painted chevron arrow beside birds on Cypro-Archaic vases sits below the beak or behind the bird, but always points upward?
…that nobody knows what the Cypriot arrow motif meant, and no text shows that the painters intended a weapon at all?
…that Einar Gjerstad described the Western style of Cypro-Archaic pottery as a veritable circle dance on the pots?
…that the near-perfect painted circles on many Cypriot Iron Age pots were drawn with a compass-like tool rather than free-hand?
…that on one Bichrome V bowl each figure in a procession holds a bird by the neck in one hand and smells a lotus flower held in the other?
…that the painted lotus was among the last motifs to survive on Cypriot pottery, lingering on the earliest White Painted VI pieces of the Cypro-Classical period?
…that on a White Painted I amphora from Palaepaphos-Skales, a bull stands on one side of the neck where a Maltese cross stands on the other?
…that no published study offers a meaning for the Cypriot Maltese cross, a standard ornament on bowl and dish bases around the start of the Iron Age?
…that a Cypriot free-field jug from Arnadhi, with a large bird facing a small man, may be the earliest known picture of the crane and Pygmy myth?
…that the free-field bird jug, now among the Cypriot vases museums most like to show, was a minority product in its own time?
…that the earliest Middle Bronze Age Cross Line jugs from Kalopsidha resemble net bags wrapped around small jugs, perhaps on purpose?
…that neutron activation analysis matched eleven of fourteen White Painted sherds from Akko, Cross Line pieces among them, closely to sherds from Kalopsidha?
…that wavy lines, the hallmark of Late Cypriot IIIB Granary Style pottery, may have originated in the eastern Mediterranean, possibly in Cyprus itself?
…that the Middle Bronze Age bowls of the White Painted Wavy Line Style, from the Karpass, did not travel outside Ayios Iakovos?
…that in the Cypro-Geometric tombs at Palaepaphos-Skales the painted zigzag settled into one position, the outer face of the handle?
…that one study calls the Middle Bronze Age Kalopsidha zigzag really a sharp-angled version of the wavy line, used on bowls in the same position?
…that Rhodian Spaghetti ware, named for its wavy lines ending in spiral hooks, has its roots in Cypriot White Painted IV juglets?
…that the label White Painted IV is used for two different Cypriot wares, one Middle Bronze Age and one Cypro-Archaic, about a thousand years apart?
…that the winged lozenge, which Gjerstad called characteristically Cypriot, appears on 7th-century BCE Cretan pottery with its wings developed into bees?
…that Gjerstad's first example of the free-field layout was a single chequered triangle on a bare jug, the direct ancestor of the free-field bird?
…that on one Late Bronze Age Cypriot seal, copper ingots take the place of the goats that usually flank the sacred tree?
…that Late Bronze Age Cyprus used the goat-and-tree composition more than any other region, mostly on cylinder seals?
…that the swastika accompanies birds so often on Cypro-Archaic pottery that some scholars think it was itself a schematic sign for a bird?
…that Vassos Karageorghis stated that he knew nothing about the symbolism of the swastika, a frequent ornament on Cypriot Iron Age pottery?

Statues

Section home

…that some 2,000 terracotta statues and statuettes were found arranged in a semicircle around an altar at the rural sanctuary of Ayia Irini?
…that a shipwreck off the Turkish coast, dated to the late 7th or early 6th century BCE, was carrying Cypriot limestone statuettes as part of its cargo?
…that many Archaic limestone votaries from Cypriot sanctuaries have flat or unfinished backs, suggesting they were meant to stand against walls?
…that Late Bronze Age Base Ring female figurines have small pointed feet and cannot stand unsupported, so they were probably laid down or held in the hand?
…that about half of the bird-faced Base Ring 'Earring' figurines hold an infant, a theme absent from their supposed Near Eastern prototypes?
…that Late Bronze Age Base Ring bull vessels were filled through a hole on the back and poured through an opening in the bull's snout?
…that a virtually complete Base Ring bull vessel was found deep inside a well at Hala Sultan Tekke, where its excavators read it as a deliberate offering?
…that the Yalia figurine, a Chalcolithic cruciform figurine, was chosen to appear on Cyprus's modern euro coins?
…that many Chalcolithic cruciform figurines are shown wearing a smaller cruciform as a pendant, a detail that tells against reading them as goddesses?
…that of around 2,000 terracotta statuettes from one votive deposit at Kourion, all but 110 were horse riders or chariot groups?
…that excavations at Palaepaphos-Skales unearthed a Cypriot horse-and-rider figurine in which the rider sits on a three-headed horse?
…that in the standard catalogue of Cypriot terracotta figurines, horses with riders are in Volume IV while horses without riders are in Volume VI?
…that Ayia Irini works assigned to Gjerstad's 'Proto-Cypriote' and 'Neo-Cypriote' styles have been shown to be contemporary, one made at Soloi, the other imported?
…that Persian troops besieging Palaepaphos in 498 BC built sanctuary statues into a siege ramp, and some fragments still carry traces of their original red, blue and black paint?
…that a laboratory study of Cypro-Archaic painted limestone heads found no copper pigments, despite the wide availability of copper minerals in Cyprus?
…that the Cypriot Herakles-Melqart wears a lion's skin while overpowering a second, live lion, accomplishing both of Herakles's feats at once?
…that no Archaic or Classical dedication to Herakles has been found on Cyprus, although Herakles-Melqart statues turn up there in large numbers?
…that Cypriot quarrymen have described the best limestone, the stone carved into Herakles-Melqart statues, as 'soft as cheese' when first extracted?
…that the Neolithic figurines of Khirokitia turn up in floors, fills and rubbish dumps, and some were even reused in wall construction?
…that only four clay figures survive from the Cypriot Neolithic, when figurines were mostly made from the same river cobbles as axes and querns?
…that in Tomb 306A at Lapithos a skull was found resting directly on a plank figure, as if on a pillow?
…that at least 44% of Bronze Age plank figures show a single clean break across the lower torso, interpreted as a deliberate ritual 'killing'?
…that bird-shaped vases outnumber four-legged ones among Red Polished animal vessels, because, Karageorghis suggested, a bird's body is easier to reproduce in clay?
…that the Vounous ploughing model, a five-legged table 41 cm long with two pairs of yoked oxen, ploughmen and sowers, is key evidence that cattle pulled the plough?
…that the dancers in Cypriot ring-dance groups were joined to each other only at the hands, which is why a group can come apart into single dancers or a detached piper?
…that the last ring-dance groups, carved in limestone around the 4th century BC, show only veiled women?
…that Karageorghis compared buying a clay snowman figurine for a sanctuary to paying for a candle in a church today?
…that some snowman figurines carry mat impressions under their bases, left by the reed mats they dried on before firing?
…that besides its pots, the Lapithos tomb chamber holding a stone plank figure held only tiny fragments of a human skeleton and an almost complete skeleton of a dog?
…that one of the few excavated stone plank figures, from Lapithos Tomb 322, was later 'lost in the store house'?
…that the crouching children known as temple boys often hold small animals such as roosters, ducks, rabbits or tortoises?
…that the name temple boys comes from a 19th-century idea, no longer accepted, that these statuettes showed boys in the service of a god?

Jewelry

Section home

…that the earliest gold found on Cyprus to date is considered to be the electrum spiral earrings from Early Bronze Age Sotira-Kaminoudhia?

Weapons and Armour

Section home

…that in the destructions around 1200 BCE, Cypriot sites yield sling bullets where Levantine sites of the time typically yield arrowheads?
…that the 185 m structure its excavator called the Main Road at Neolithic Khirokitia is in fact an enclosure wall?
…that the mound read as a Persian siege ramp at Palaepaphos contained more than 1,000 fragments of statues and over 200 syllabic inscriptions?
…that the Corinthian helmet from the Persian siege mound at Palaepaphos was apparently a generation old when lost, and may have been worn by a Greek fighting for Persia?
…that over 450 rounded stones from the siege mound at Palaepaphos were once read as catapult ammunition, until the excavator concluded they were thrown by hand?
…that an iron spearhead in a Salamis chariot tomb reconstructs, with the impression of its shaft, to a weapon 2.18 m long?
…that the long hook-tang blades of Bronze Age Cyprus, once called daggers, dirks or swords, were mounted as spearheads?
…that twelve Cypriot hook-tang weapons labelled as found at Gezer were judged spurious after the site's excavator said they were not from his diggings?

Tools and Technologies

Section home

…that Neolithic Cypriot bone tools were made mainly from fallow-deer metapodials, a preference that held even as deer became scarcer?
…that the Ingot God of Enkomi began as a striding smiting god and was later reworked, by a less skilled hand, to stand still on an oxhide ingot?
…that the four projecting handles of Late Bronze Age oxhide ingots were for carrying, and their resemblance to a stretched hide is incidental?
…that the Late Bronze Age smelting workshop at Politiko-Phorades made an estimated 300 to 350 kg of copper in its lifetime, enough for about ten oxhide ingots?
…that some of the first iron to reach Cyprus may have arrived as an inlay in gold jewellery, like the iron band in a ring from Kition Tomb 9?
…that four early tin-bronze rings from a Philia tomb at Sotira may have been chosen for a colour that imitates gold, and lay beside real electrum?
…that a clay spindle model from a Vounous tomb was displayed upside down for decades, until a small perforation at its tapering end gave it away?
…that a 29 cm Bronze Age metal spindle, its clay whorl corroded in place and fibre still wound on the shaft, shows Cypriots spinning with the whorl mounted low?
…that nearly 150 stone anchors ended up as paving, thresholds, foundations and well linings in the temple precinct at Late Bronze Age Kition?
…that the Uluburun ship carried some ten tons of Cypriot copper, yet the evidence for the ship's own home points away from Cyprus?
…that early seafarers heading for Cyprus may have made a blind crossing, since the island would perhaps not have been visible from the ancient mainland coast?
…that Hellenistic tombs at Amathus held botched glass vessels, such as footed pieces that cannot stand, read as local products placed in graves?
…that one tomb at Salamis held a single glass alabastron beside 22 local stone perfume bottles, most of them the same shape as the glass?
…that White Slip, the hottest-fired Late Bronze Age ware of Cyprus, was never thrown on the wheel, reversing the usual sequence of wheel and kiln?
…that in firing experiments on replica Chalcolithic pots, a bonfire of about 3 kg of sheep dung reached about 700°C and no vessel was lost?
…that the black rims of black-topped Red Polished bowls were made in the fire, perhaps by turning a red-hot bowl upside down into dung or damp chaff?
…that a Middle Bronze Age burial at Lapithos, very probably a woman's, came with a necklace of over 400 faience beads?

Cultures

Section home

…that the Uluburun shipwreck, with ten tons of Cypriot copper ingots among goods from across the region, gives a snapshot of Cyprus's trade with its neighbouring cultures?
…that after the revolt against Persian rule failed in 498 BCE, Amathus hung the rebel Onesilos's head over its gate until bees nested in the skull?
…that Evagoras I accepted every clause of a peace with Achaemenid Persia except obeying the Great King 'as a slave his master', and held out for 'as one king to another'?
…that the defenders of Palaepaphos tunnelled under the Persian siege ramp in 498 BCE, then set fire to the timber props so that part of the ramp collapsed?
…that a king of Alashiya apologised to the pharaoh of Egypt for sending only 500 talents of copper, as 'the hand of Nergal' had left not a single copper-worker?
…that a Cypriot alabaster figure first drew Petrie to Naukratis, the Greek trading town in Egypt where 262 Cypriot stone and terracotta figures are catalogued?
…that a faience sceptre-head with the cartouche of the Egyptian pharaoh Horemheb was found at Hala Sultan Tekke in a building some 150 years later than his reign?
…that the last Hittite king, Šuppiluliuma II, recorded a naval victory in which his fleet burned the ships of Alashiya at sea?
…that Alashiya served as a place of exile for political undesirables from Ugarit and the Hittite sphere, according to Akkadian texts from Ugarit?
…that Cyprus may have received writing from the Minoans in exchange for copper, as its Cypro-Minoan script was derived from Linear A?
…that after the Minoan palaces fell, only about 19% of the copper used at sites like Knossos came from Cyprus, as the mines at Lavrion took over?
…that Mycenaean pictorial kraters with chariot scenes are common in elite Cypriot tombs, a context in which they are rare on the Greek mainland?
…that for all the Mycenaean pottery found in Cyprus, it often makes up less than 1% of the pottery from settlement contexts?
…that around 709 BCE seven Cypriot kings sent gifts to the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II in Babylon and 'kissed his feet'?
…that a prism of the Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon gives the only known contemporary list of Cyprus's kingdoms, naming ten kings?
…that the outdoor pebbled hearths of the Philistines at Tell es-Safi/Gath have a close parallel at Maa-Palaeokastro in Cyprus?
…that the earliest Philistine pottery was made locally in the Levant, yet has been called a selection of the Cypriot White Painted Wheelmade III repertoire?
…that the earliest eastern presence in Iberia may have been more Cypriot than Phoenician, with bronze bowls and early iron knives there thought to be of Cypriot origin?
…that the Phoenician alphabet dominated inscriptions at Kition for centuries but is almost entirely absent from Paphos, which used the Cypriot syllabary?
…that a letter warning the last king of Ugarit about enemy ships, long attributed to Carchemish, is now assigned to Alashiya because its clay matches the Troodos?
…that Ugarit is the only place outside Cyprus with confirmed tablets in the island's undeciphered Cypro-Minoan script?

Architecture

Section home

…that Cypriots kept building circular houses for millennia after rectilinear forms had generally replaced them on the mainland?

Mortuary Practices

Section home

…that Late Bronze Age Cypriot tombs hold relatively few copper and bronze objects before Late Cypriot IIC, although the island was a major copper producer?
…that a Neolithic grave at Shillourokambos held a man of about thirty with an eight-month-old cat lying 30 cm away?
…that about one in five burials at Neolithic Khirokitia had a large stone or quern laid on the body, perhaps to keep the dead from returning?
…that some adults buried at Chalcolithic Souskiou-Laona had surfer's ear, bony growths that point to regular cold-water work by both sexes?
…that two Early Bronze Age pots from Vounous show frontal figures with antlers or horns, in a pose suggestive of dancing?
…that the Vounous bowl, a clay enclosure 37 cm across with 19 human figures and four penned cattle, has been read both as a sacred rite and as a village scene?
…that the village that buried its dead at Vounous has never been found, so everything known about the community comes from its graves?
…that one Bronze Age chamber tomb at Vounous was cut, sealed and backfilled before anyone was ever buried in it?
…that Enkomi Tomb 66 had a lamp hung from bronze nails in its wall, a sign that the tomb may have been visited regularly?
…that a Late Bronze Age tomb of the highest rank at Kalavasos held only young women and children, along with 432 g of gold?

Daily Life

Section home

…that the first clear evidence for board games on Cyprus dates to the Late Bronze Age, with boards found in houses and in outdoor spots used for eating and drinking?
…that the first sheep brought to Cyprus in the Neolithic had no woolly fleeces, and wool only became important with the woolly sheep of the Bronze Age?
…that Herodotus described the Cypriots in Xerxes' fleet as dressed much like Greeks, except that their kings wore turbans?
…that the so-called Cypriot shorts worn by Archaic statues vanished in Greece after the mid-sixth century BC but lasted on Cyprus to the end of the Archaic period?
…that the first families at Marki-Alonia seem to have shared ovens and storerooms, but within a hundred years each household was self-contained?
…that adults buried in Early Bronze Age Cyprus were mostly in their twenties and early thirties, and very few people are likely to have lived beyond 40?
…that a cat buried beside a human at Shillourokambos around 7500 BCE is the earliest evidence anywhere for a close bond between people and cats?
…that the carob was probably introduced to Cyprus from Yemen in the second century CE, and the carob-syrup economy is medieval and modern?
…that a Late Bronze Age storage hall at Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios held about 50 jars up to 2 m tall, with an estimated capacity of 33,500 litres?
…that one cylinder seal with a row of griffin heads was rolled onto storage jars at both Alassa and Episkopi, the only such shared impression known?
…that across some 2,300 years of Cypriot furniture no more than ten actual pieces survive, against as many as 313 representations?
…that the silver-covered throne from Salamis Tomb 79 had to be rebuilt from the stains its vanished wooden frame left in the soil?
…that the men of the farming village of Aredhiou-Vouppes may have worked in the copper mines in summer and returned to farm from autumn to spring?
…that more than half of the objects catalogued as drills or awls at the mining village of Apliki-Karamallos turned out to be styli?
…that the physician Onasilos and his brothers treated the wounded of besieged Idalion free of charge and were rewarded with tax-free royal land?
…that Dioscorides describes ladanum, a Cypriot medicinal resin, being combed from the beards of goats that had browsed the rock-rose?
…that a study of seventeen Base Ring jugs and juglets found no opium in any of them, but aromatic oils, some with mint, lavender, sage or rosemary?
…that copper hook-tang weapons placed in Middle Bronze Age tombs at Lapithos grew as long as 66 cm, and have been read as prestige symbols?
…that Middle Bronze Age villages such as Alambra had no houses much larger than the rest, even as tombs at Vounous and Lapithos grew steadily richer?
…that none of the more than fifty Bronze Age clay rattles known from Cyprus has come from a child's grave, making it unlikely they were toys?
…that the name of Kinyras, legendary king of Cyprus, is tied to the kinnāru, a lyre that Late Bronze Age Ugarit somehow regarded as divine?
…that the Late Bronze Age town at Palaepaphos has been credited with 144 ha and with 65 ha, though not one of its house walls has been found?
…that a standard formula for ancient population, tested on the Cypriot village of Petrophani, predicted 313 people where the census peak was 171?
…that the ninety or so small inscribed clay balls of Late Bronze Age Cyprus may have been drawn as lots to call named people to tasks?
…that a silver-gilt bowl inscribed for Akestor, king of Paphos, was partly erased and re-inscribed for a Timokretes, presumably its new owner?
…that in 1855 the Idalion bronze tablet, written in Greek, was published in translation as a Semitic proclamation of the Egyptian king Amasis?

Antiquities Trade

Section home

…that the Swedish Cyprus Expedition shipped about two thirds of its 18,000 finds to Stockholm under a division agreed with the colonial government?
…that the Cyprus Museum once ran a saleroom for duplicate pottery, where one Sunday sale to 300 American tourists netted £75 in an hour and a half?
…that from 1884 to 1905 Cyprus was the one territory under nominal Ottoman rule where licensed excavators could still export most of their finds?
…that Alessandro Palma di Cesnola's 1878 trial for digging without a permit is one of the earliest prosecutions in modern cultural-heritage law?
…that the stolen Kanakaria mosaics could be identified because a 1977 monograph had published photographs of every figure?
…that the 13th-century Lysi frescoes, cut into 38 pieces, were shown in a chapel built for them in Houston before returning to Cyprus in 2012?
…that antiquities bought through Cyprus's licensed trade left with a lead tag wired to a handle, and such tags survive on objects still in the trade?
…that about four per cent of the antiquities sold at Christie's and Sotheby's between 1988 and 2008 were identifiably Cypriot?

Environment

Section home

…that a core from the Larnaca Salt Lake, in one of the driest parts of Cyprus today, has been read as evidence of drought at the end of the Late Bronze Age?
…that bones of the great bustard, a heavy ground-dwelling bird, are so abundant at Akrotiri-Aetokremnos that it was probably hunted extensively by the island's first inhabitants?
…that images of waterfowl in Cypro-Archaic Cyprus are found mainly in tombs, perhaps because their migrations linked them with the journey of the soul?
…that one scholar reckoned Cyprus's forests were cut down up to sixteen times in 3,500 years for copper smelting, and that they could regrow within 80 to 100 years?
…that the sea level around Cyprus stood 40 to 50 m lower when the first farmers arrived, rising by around 32 cm in a lifetime?
…that excavators of a house at Kourion destroyed by a fourth-century AD earthquake found a mule or horse still tethered in its stable?
…that no earthquake is securely attested on Cyprus between the end of the Bronze Age and the Roman period, although some must have struck?

Chronology

Section home

…that the Cypro-Geometric II period has so little settlement evidence that some scholars question whether it is a distinct phase at all?
…that Cyprus's Pleistocene dwarf elephant had about 2% of the body mass of its mainland ancestor and stood only about 1 m high?
…that a 2015 study concluded the first visitors to Cyprus burned the bones of long-dead dwarf hippos as fuel, centuries after the bone bed formed?
…that the cattle brought to Neolithic Cyprus vanished from the record in the later Aceramic period and did not reappear until the Early Bronze Age?
…that the settlers of Neolithic Cyprus introduced Mesopotamian fallow deer specifically for hunting, and deer later made up over 75% of bones at some sites?
…that fewer than twenty metal objects are known from the whole of Chalcolithic Cyprus, an island whose copper would later define its Bronze Age?
…that a ceremonial area at Chalcolithic Kissonerga-Mosphilia held a model of a circular building with figurines, some shown on birthing stools?
…that dating Early Bronze Age Cyprus long leaned on a few imports, such as a Middle Minoan IA jar from Lapithos, because Cypriot goods were so rare abroad?
…that the homely, everyday nature of many new objects of the Philia phase has led some scholars to suggest that whole families moved to Cyprus?
…that no dedicated cult places or sanctuaries are known from Middle Bronze Age Cyprus, or from the Early Bronze Age before it?
…that Cypriot copper oxhide ingots of the Late Bronze Age have been found as far west as Marseille and as far north as Germany?
…that Proto-White Slip pottery, which first appeared in the west of Cyprus, may turn up in Egyptian contexts earlier than in the east of the island?
…that a bronze spit from a tomb at Palaepaphos-Skales, incised with the name Opheltau, is the earliest though controversial evidence for Greek on Cyprus?
…that Cyprus's experiments with iron in the 12th century BCE may have begun as a by-product of smelting its copper sulphide ores?
…that the kings of Cyprus first appear in written history on a clay prism of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon?
…that Assyrian overlordship of Cypro-Archaic Cyprus left surprisingly few objects on the island that can be called Assyrian or even Assyrianising?
…that King Pumayyaton of Kition bought the kingdom of Tamassos from its indebted king Pasikypros for fifty talents?
…that the Phoenician archive of Idalion, over 700 ink-written ostraca and plaques, is the only administrative archive known from anywhere in the Phoenician world?
…that in their own inscriptions the people of Cypro-Classical Cyprus called themselves Idalians, Kitians or Paphians, and never Greeks or Phoenicians?
…that Diodorus tells how the last queen of Paphos, Axiothea, set the royal palace ablaze and killed herself when Ptolemy I's agents surrounded it?
…that no pottery kilns of Hellenistic Cyprus have yet been excavated, although a great deal of its pottery was certainly made on the island?
…that the physician Galen visited a copper mine near Soloi in 166 CE and saw copper-sulphate water collected in amphorae to be sold as medicine?
…that agents of Marcus Brutus lent money to the council of Salamis at 48 per cent interest, a rate Cicero refused to enforce?