Around 1200, longstanding trade between the Mycenaean Greeks and the Cypriots culminated in Greek colonization at several sites on Cyprus, including Paphos. At about the same time, a monumental sanctuary was constructed in the local style, with an open court and a covered colonnade.
This sanctuary was destined to endure more than a thousand years, and to become the best-known cult site of Aphrodite. Here, according to Homer (Od. 8.361-66) and Hesiod (Theog. 199), was the goddess’ home, the spot where she was born from the sea, and where the smoke of fragrant incense rose from her altar. Not surprisingly, given the multicultural nature of the site, the ancient sources do not agree on whether the origins of the sanctuary were Greek, Cypriot, or Phoenician. One of the legends says that its founder was Agapenor, a king of Arkadia returning from the Trojan war. Archaeological and linguistic evidence of close contacts between Arkadian and Cypriot Greeks in this period suggests that this story contains a grain of truth, but a competing version holds that the sanctuary was founded by Kinyras, an indigenous king whose descendants became the historical kings of Paphos and priests of Aphrodite. For his part, Herodotus (1.105) says that the Cypriots borrowed the cult of Aphrodite Ourania (that is, Astarte) from Ashkelon in the Levant.2
In spite of the fame of Paphos, few details of its early cult are known. Inscriptions show that Aphrodite had the Mycenaean title Wanassa (The Lady) until the end of the Classical period, and it is clear that her cult was closely associated with kingship on the Near Eastern model. The older structures in the sanctuary were mostly obliterated by the later Roman temple, and our only sources for the ritual life there are of Roman date. According to Tacitus (Hist. 2.3-4), the Paphians practiced divination from the entrails of sacrificed animals, but the blood was not allowed to touch the altar, which had to remain pure. This is consistent with the early accounts of incense as a key offering. Tacitus also describes the strange image of the goddess: a large conical stone. A dark grey-green stone of matching shape, slightly over a meter high, was recovered in the excavations.3 Other sources emphasize the importance of flowers and fragrant botanicals in the cult. The use of perfumed oil, mentioned as part of Aphrodite’s toilet in her Paphian shrine in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (5.61-63), has Mycenaean precedents. Nearby was the Hierokepia (Sacred Garden), perhaps the source for the rose garlands that filled the sanctuary. An important feature of the early cult, not mentioned in the literary sources, is the relationship between the sanctuary and the industry of bronze metallurgy. Copper slag was found in the sanctuary itself and close by, a pattern that is repeated at other Cypriot cult sites from the Late Bronze Age, where the goddess was worshiped in conjunction with a male deity. This patronage of the island’s main export product by a divine pair throws new light on the mythic (but not cultic) association of Aphrodite with the smith god Hephaistos.4
Among the numerous Cypriot sanctuaries of the goddess, that at Ama-thous, where the population was of indigenous and Phoenician stock, was noted for its unusual, bi-gendered deity. Here the image of the goddess wore female garb, but was bearded and held a scepter. The locals called this deity Aphroditos, a name that was also known in fifth-century Athens. The androgyny of Aphrodite at Amathous again points to the Near East, for Phoenician Astarte is likewise known to have had a male aspect, but it is also compatible with Greek ideas of Aphrodite as the goddess born of Ouranos’ genitals, who governed male sexuality.5
World History
