CYPRUS sī’ prəs (Κύπρος, G3251). Cyprus, a large island measuring roughly 140 by 60 m., lies in the NE corner of the Mediterranean Sea S of Cilicia, with its major promontory thrusting toward Syria. In shape it looks like the flayed skin of an animal. In configuration it is a long plain closed on the N and SW by mountain ranges, once heavily forested, but denuded in historical times by the same exploitation of natural timber resources which bared the Lebanon ranges, and changed the face of the whole Mediterranean basin (Ezek 27:5, 6). The name Cyprus appears four times in the OT (Isa 23:1, 12; Jer 2:10; Ezek 27:6), and is transliterated as Kittim in four other passages (Gen 10:4; Num 24:24; 1 Chron 1:7; Dan 11:30). Kition, the old Phoen. foundation where Larnaka now stands, no doubt contains this name, though the area of geographical reference, both of Kittim and Kition, is difficult to determine exactly. The name Cyprus (Gr. Κύπρος, G3251) is of unknown origin, but gave a term for the metal for which, in the Bronze Age and in the heyday of Phoen. trade, the island was an important source. Copper from Cyprus and tin from Cornwall, carried in the holds of Phoen. ships, made the alloy bronze from which the 2nd millennium b.c. derived its historic name. It was for the sake of copper ore, no doubt, that the Phoenicians founded Kition and other trading centers in the island, and it was the same people who established the worship of the female deity, whom the Greeks called Aphrodite and the Romans named Venus. In both Gr. and Lat., “the Cyprian” was a common appellation for this goddess of fertility and carnal love.

Culture was ancient in the island, and a long period of vigorous life in neolithic times preceded the prosperity of the Bronze Age. Archeological investigation has revealed its high quality. In the middle of the 2nd millennium, when Cyprus entered Mediterranean history, there was active interchange and communication, perhaps through Rhodes with the tribes of Mycenaean Greece. Relations with the communities of Asia Minor to the N and Syria to the E, were simultaneous, but the influence of the Mycenaean culture, according to the record of archeology, penetrated deeper, developing urban life, roading systems, customs of burial, and providing a mode of writing which survived for a thousand years. Finds at Ras Shamra (Ugarit) show that relations with Syria were almost equally close. In short, the picture which the archeologists construct of Cyprus in the Mycenaean Age is one of diversified and active life, of vigorous trade and widespread international relations. Salamis was perhaps the chief center at this time, and both Hitt. and Egyp. texts suggest that the name of the island was Alashia. This may be equated with Elishah of the OT, which traded purple with Tyre (Ezek 27:7) and which, according to the Hitt. texts, exported copper. The same geographical vagueness which haunts the name Kittim, attaches also to the name Alashia. It seems clear that Cyprus was an Egyp. sphere of influence around 1450 b.c., in the days of Egypt’s imperial strength.

The Dorian invasions which closed this millennium and ended the Mycenaean culture, seem to have had little effect on Cyprus. Archeological investigation, which finds Rhodes full of Dorian remains, has discovered little of like origin in Cyprus, where the Gr. stock, rooted for almost a millennium, seems to have remained Achaean. This ethnic continuity is further demonstrated by the survival of Achaean dialect forms in the Cypriot Gr. of the Classical period. Similarly, the continuity of the Bronze Age script is argument against any such catastrophic change as came to so many parts of the middle Mediterranean world at the dawn of the Iron Age.

Iron Age tribes from Syria, however, do seem to have moved into Cyprus, with some modification of Cypriot art. There appears to have been a large influx of Phoenicians around the year 800 b.c. Evidence from a cent. later points to periods of Assyrian rule, and the 6th cent. saw another long span of Egyp. domination. In short, the fragmentary picture reveals the fated pattern of history in a land so geographically located that rival empires and systems necessarily vie for its possession, and so endowed that neighboring peoples inevitably cast covetous eyes on its wealth or facilities. Cyprus in modern times reveals the same ebb and flow of history.

The Gr. city-state seems never to have established its form in Cyprus. The Achaean system of petty autonomous kingship seems to have maintained itself in some recognizable fashion, even through periods of alien intrusion and down to Ptolemaic times. In 525 b.c. Cambyses brought Cyprus under Pers. rule, and an attempt by the islanders to assert their freedom in 498, at the time of the great revolt of the Gr. Ionian cities of western Asia Minor, was successfully frustrated by the Persians. After the Pers. wars, Cimon, the Athenian soldier, boldly liberated the island. It was a major symptom of Pers. decline that he was able to do so. It was on this campaign (449 b.c.) that Cimon died, and peace with Persia followed. Phoenician control, however, seems to have ensued until 411 when the great Cypriot, Evagoras of Salamis, reasserted the independence of the island, an independence which was maintained for twenty years or more. Persia was dominant again in 387 b.c., but in 350 a league of Cypriot kings again asserted the island’s freedom. In 333 Cyprus declared for Alexander. With the death of the great conqueror, the island became part of Antigonus’ heritage. Later Ptolemaic Egypt gained control, and held it firmly for two and a half centuries, one of the longest periods of stability in the long history of so disputed a territory. It was during this period that Jewish immigration began, prob. from Alexandria, the largest center of the Dispersion.

Cyprus became a Rom. possession in 58 b.c. During the earlier period of Rom. rule Cyprus was under the control of the governor of Cilicia, and a fortunate turn of politics in Rome secured in 51 b.c. the appointment of Cicero, the famous orator and statesman, as governor of this province, much against his will. The purity of his administration in that age of callous Rom. exploitation of the provinces forms one of the brightest pages in the brave record of Cicero. Some of his intimate letters to Atticus leave a fearful impression of the cruel victimization of the island of Cyprus, and particularly of Salamis, by the Rom. financiers and their publicani, or tax officials, a scandal in which Brutus, the tyrannicide, was deeply involved. The political organization called the Empire, or more properly the principate, put a salutary end to Republican corruption. The year 27, with Augustus’ reorganization of the Rom. world, saw Cyprus become a separate province, first “imperial,” that is, under the prince’s direct control, and then “senatorial,” governed, as Luke properly stated (Acts 13:7), by a proconsul.

Luke’s account gives a few details of Paul’s mission on the island which had prob. been originally evangelized from the active center of Christian witness in Syrian Antioch. Note the “men of Cyprus” of Acts 11:20. The reason for the choice of Cyprus on Paul’s first journey, was no doubt the fact that his friend and colleague in the project was a Cypriot Jew of wide connections (Acts 13:4-12). The party landed at Salamis, the natural ingress from Syria, and activity began as was customary with Paul by diligent preaching in the Jewish synagogue. A three or four days’ journey followed, taking the visitors through the whole island to Paphos in the SW. New Paphos, as the town might rightly be called, like Old Paphos, was a center of the worship of Aphrodite. The old town, a Phoen. foundation, stood somewhat inland. The new town had grown up following the Rom. annexation, and was the seat of the proconsul’s residence and administration. Here Paul met the proconsul Sergius (Acts 13:6, 7, 12), an encounter which may have helped form his vision of a Christian strategy in the empire. Here, too, he met Elymas, the renegade Jew. Another early Christian from Cyprus was Mnason (Acts 21:16). With these brief references in Luke’s narrative, the history of early Christianity in Cyprus passed from view, and little more is known until the island contained fifteen bishoprics.

The Jews of Cyprus took part in the great revolt of their race in the Eastern Mediterranean while Trajan was preoccupied with his Parthian campaign, from a.d. 115 to 117. Nearly a quarter of a million Gentiles are said to have been massacred in this insane uprising. The result was merciless suppression and the expulsion of all Jews from the island.

Under the Byzantine emperors Cyprus was too perilously exposed to the E not to suffer much on all occasions when the strength of Byzantium failed to hold and control its more distant marches. Saracens, Richard of England, Knights Templars, and Venetians repeated through the succeeding centuries the old forms and movements of history. British rule came in 1878 by a convention which recognized the nominal authority of the Sultan. The rest of the island’s story, not dissimilar in the pattern of its detail, is contemporary history.

Bibliography S. Casson, Ancient Cyprus (1937); G. H. Hill, A History of Cyprus, 4 vols. (1940-1952).