Description
CYPRUS IN HISTORY
A SUMMARYThe beginning of Cypriot history is identical with the first
traces of the Greek population of Cyprus in the late Bronze Age:
mid-15th to 14th century BC, and especially 12th – 11th centuries BC.
Ever since Cyprus has been an important centre of Greek culture
and life despite other influences and foreign occupations. In Homeric
times the king of Paphos Kinyras is reported to have been involved
in the War of the Greeks against Troy. The end of that war was
followed by a new wave of Greek immigration into Cyprus, where
the transplanted Mycenaean artists created excellent works of
architecture and pottery. A new era of prosperity and flourishing
culture was initiated for the island, which became a centre of copper-
trade and a stepping stone of Mycenaean commercial culture and
political activity and expansion in the Near and Middle East. Recent
research is tending to accept that the Philistine emigration to Pale-
stine was a part of the eastward Mycenaean expansion, and this
explains the close relations between Philistine, Cypriot and My-
cenaean art and culture.
A SUMMARYThe beginning of Cypriot history is identical with the first
traces of the Greek population of Cyprus in the late Bronze Age:
mid-15th to 14th century BC, and especially 12th – 11th centuries BC.
Ever since Cyprus has been an important centre of Greek culture
and life despite other influences and foreign occupations. In Homeric
times the king of Paphos Kinyras is reported to have been involved
in the War of the Greeks against Troy. The end of that war was
followed by a new wave of Greek immigration into Cyprus, where
the transplanted Mycenaean artists created excellent works of
architecture and pottery. A new era of prosperity and flourishing
culture was initiated for the island, which became a centre of copper-
trade and a stepping stone of Mycenaean commercial culture and
political activity and expansion in the Near and Middle East. Recent
research is tending to accept that the Philistine emigration to Pale-
stine was a part of the eastward Mycenaean expansion, and this
explains the close relations between Philistine, Cypriot and My-
cenaean art and culture.
