PAPHOS pā’ fŏs (Πάφος, G4265). Two settlements in SW Cyprus, distinguished historically as Old and New Paphos. Old Paphos (modern Konklia) lay some ten m. SE of New Paphos, capital of the island of Cyprus in Rom. times. The former was a Phoen. settlement, long identified with the cult of Aphrodite, to whom a temple was dedicated there. New Paphos grew up as the port of Old Paphos, after the Romans had annexed Cyprus in 58 b.c., and became the center of Rom. rule on the island. Largely destroyed by an earthquake in 15 b.c., it was rebuilt with funds received from the emperor and renamed “Augusta” in his honor. The city then became adorned with magnificent public buildings and temples. Its shrine to Venus, or Aphrodite, became particularly famous, as Ephesus was noted for its worship of Diana. Aphrodite as the Gr. goddess of love, beauty, and fertility was akin to the fertility cults of the Phoenician Astarte, the Anatolian Cybele, and the Babylonian Ishtar. The later Rom. equivalent was Venus. In Cyprus, the birth of Aphrodite was associated with her birth on the foam of the sea, floating to the Cypriot shore on a shell near Paphos, a possible allusion to the transmission of the Phoen. cult. The greatest festival in Cyprus was the Aphrodisia held three days each spring, with a procession between New and Old Paphos. De Cesnola identified what he considered was the temple to Aphrodite in New Paphos in the last cent., an enclosure some 690 ft. from E to W and 539 ft. from N to S. Paphos suffered from a second earthquake in a.d. 76 or 77 and was virtually destroyed by a third one in the 4th cent., lying for a long time afterward in ruins. It is now known as Baffa.

Barnabas and Saul landed on Cyprus in a.d. 45 or 46 at Salamis, then the chief commercial center and port of the island. After ministry throughout the island (Acts 13:6), they then proceeded to Paphos, prob. involving a complete tour of all the Jewish synagogues. The route they took is conjectural, but eventually they reached Paphos where they met the governor Sergius Paulus. His conversion was a great victory for the Christian missionary enterprise (13:6-12), for he was the Rom. proconsul (a.d. 46 to 48); an inscr. from Paphos mentioning his name in the middle of the 1st cent. has been found. There the encounter with the sorcerer Elymas in the court of Sergius Paulus took place, a scene painted by the artist Raphael in a well-known work.

Bibliography L. P. De Cesnola, Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs and Temples (1877); G. Hill, A History of Cyprus (1940), Vol. 1.