In The Levant 41

In The Levant 41

We walked on out of the town to the most considerable church in the

place, newly built by the Roman Catholics. There is attached to it

a Franciscan convent, a neat establishment with a garden; and the

hospitable monks, when they knew we were Americans, insisted upon

entertaining us; the contributions for their church had largely come

from America, they said, and they seemed to regard us as among the

number of their benefactors. This Christian charity expressed itself

also in some bunches of roses, which the brothers plucked for our

ladies. One cannot but suspect and respect that timid sentiment the monk

retains for the sex whose faces he flies from, which he expresses in the

care of flowers; the blushing rose seems to be the pure and only link

between the monk and womankind; he may cultivate it without sin, and

offer it to the chance visitor without scandal.

 

The day was lovely, but the sun had intense power, and in default of

donkeys we took a private carriage into the country to visit the church

of St. George, at which the _fête_ day of that saint was celebrated by a

fair, and a concourse of peasants. Our carriage was a four-wheeled cart,

a sort of hay-wagon, drawn by two steers, and driven by a Greek boy in

an embroidered jacket. The Franciscans lent us chairs for the cart; the

resplendent kawass marched ahead; Abd-el-Atti hung his legs over the

tail of the cart in an attitude of dejection; and we moved on, but so

slowly that my English friend, Mr. Edward Rae, was able to sketch us,

and the Cyprians could enjoy the spectacle.

 

The country lay bare and blinking under the sun; save here and there a

palm or a bunch of cypresses, this part of the island has not a tree or

a large shrub. The view of the town and the sea with its boats, as we

went inland, was peculiar, not anything real, but a skeleton picture;

the sky and sea were indigo blue. We found a crowd of peasants at the

church of St. George, which has a dirty interior, like all the Greek

churches. The Greeks, as well as the other Orientals, know how to mingle

devotion with the profits of trade, and while there were rows of booths

outside, and traffic went on briskly, the church was thronged with men

and women who bought tapers for offerings, and kissed with fervor the

holy relics which were exposed. The articles for sale at the booths and

stands were chiefly eatables and the coarsest sort of merchandise. The

only specialty of native manufacture was rude but pleasant-sounding

little bells, which are sometimes strung upon the necks of donkeys. But

so fond are these simple people of musical noise, that these bells

are attached to the handles of sickles also. The barley was already

dead-ripe in the fields, and many of the peasants at the fair brought

their sickles with them. They were, both men and women, a good-humored,

primitive sort of people, certainly not a handsome race, but picturesque

in appearance; both sexes affect high colors, and the bright petticoats

of the women matched the gay jackets of their husbands and lovers.

 

We do not know what was the ancient standard of beauty in Cyprus; it

may have been no higher than it is now, and perhaps the swains at this

_fête_ of St. George would turn from any other type of female charms as

uninviting. The Cyprian or Paphian Venus could not have been a beauty

according to our notions.

 

The images of her which General di Cesnola found in her temple all have

a long and sharp nose. These images are Phoenician, and were made six

hundred to a thousand years before the Christian era, at the time that

wonderful people occupied this fertile island. It is an interesting

fact, and an extraordinary instance of the persistence of nature in

perpetuating a type, that all the women of Cyprus to-day--who are,

with scarcely any exception, ugly--have exactly the nose of the ancient

Paphian Venus, that is to say, the nose of the Phoenician women whose

husbands and lovers sailed the Mediterranean as long ago as the siege of

Troy.

 

It was off the southern coast of this island, near Paphos, that Venus

Aphrodite, born of the foam, is fabled to have risen from the sea. The

anniversary of her birth is still perpetuated by an annual fête on the

11th of August,--a rite having its foundation in nature, that has proved

to be stronger than religious instruction or prejudice. Originally,

these fêtes were the scenes of a too literal worship of Venus, and even

now the Cyprian maiden thinks that her chance of matrimony is increased

by her attendance at this annual fair. Upon that day all the young

people go upon the sea in small boats, and, until recently, it used

to be the custom to dip a virgin into the water in remembrance of the

mystic birth of Venus. That ceremony is still partially maintained;

instead of sousing the maiden in the sea, her companions spatter the

representative of the goddess with salt water,--immersion has given way

here also to sprinkling.

 

The lively curiosity of the world has been of late years turned to

Cyprus as the theatre of some of the most important and extensive

archaeological discoveries of this century; discoveries unique, and

illustrative of the manners and religion of a race, once the most

civilized in the Levant, of which only the slightest monuments had

hitherto been discovered; discoveries which supply the lost link between

Egyptian and Grecian art. These splendid results, which by a stroke of

good fortune confer some credit upon the American nation, are wholly

due to the scholarship, patient industry, address, and enthusiasm of one

man. To those who are familiar with the magnificent Cesnola Collection,

which is the chief attraction of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, I

need make no apology for devoting a few paragraphs to the antiquities of

Cyprus and their explorer.

 

Cyprus was the coveted prize of all the conquerors of the Orient

in turn. The fair island, with an area not so large as the State of

Connecticut, owns in its unequal surface the extremes of the temperate

climate; snow lies during the greater part of the year upon its

mountains, which attain an altitude of over seven thousand feet, and

the palm spreads its fan-leaves along the southern coast and in the warm

plains; irregular in shape, it has an extreme length of over one hundred

and forty miles, and an average breadth of about forty miles, and its

deeply indented coast gives an extraordinarily long shore-line and

offers the facilities of harbors for the most active commerce.

 

The maritime Phoenicians early discovered its advantages, and in the

seventeenth century b. c., or a little later, a colony from Sidon

settled at Citium; and in time these Yankees of the Levant occupied

all the southern portion of the island with their busy ports and royal

cities. There is a tradition that Teucer, after the Trojan war, founded

the city of Salamis on the east coast. But however this may be, and

whatever may be the exact date of the advent of the Sidonians upon the

island, it is tolerably certain that they were in possession about the

year 1600 b.c., when the navy of Thotmes III., the greatest conqueror

and statesman in the long line of Pharaohs, visited Cyprus and collected

tribute. The Egyptians were never sailors, and the fleet of Thotmes III.

was no doubt composed of Phoenician ships manned by Phoenician sailors.

He was already in possession of the whole of Syria, the Phoenicians were

his tributaries and allies, their ships alone sailed the Grecian

seas and carried the products of Egypt and of Asia to the Pelasgic

populations. The Phoenician supremacy, established by Sidon in Cyprus,

was maintained by Tyre; and it was not seriously subverted until 708

b. c., when the Assyrian ravager of Syria, Sargon, sent a fleet and

conquered Cyprus. He set up a _stele_ in Citium, commemorating his

exploit, which has been preserved and is now in the museum at Berlin.

Two centuries later the island owned the Persians as masters, and was

comprised in the fifth satrapy of Darius. It became a part of the empire

of the Macedonian Alexander after his conquest of Asia Minor, and was

again an Egyptian province under the Ptolemies, until the Roman eagles

swooped down upon it. Coins are not seldom found that tell the story of

these occupations. Those bearing the head of Ptolemy Physcon, Euergetes

VII., found at Paphos and undoubtedly struck there, witness the

residence on the island of that licentious and literary tyrant, whom a

popular outburst had banished from Alexandria. Another with the head

of Vespasian, and on the obverse an outline of the temple of Venus at

Paphos, attests the Roman hospitality to the gods and religious rites of

all their conquered provinces.

 

Upon the breaking up of the Roman world, Cyprus fell to the Greek

Empire, and for centuries maintained under its ducal governors a sort of

independent life, enjoying as much prosperity as was possible under the

almost uniform imbecility and corruption of the Byzantine rule. We have

already spoken of its transfer to the Lusignans by Richard Cour de Lion;

and again a romantic chapter was added to its history by the reign of

Queen Catharine Cornaro, who gave her kingdom to the Venetian republic.

Since its final conquest by the Turks in 1571, Cyprus has interested the

world only by its sufferings; for Turkish history here, as elsewhere, is

little but a record of exactions, rapine, and massacre.

 

From time to time during the present century efforts have been made

by individuals and by learned societies to explore the antiquities of

Cyprus; but although many interesting discoveries were made, yet the

field was comparatively virgin when General di Cesnola was appointed

American consul in 1866. Here and there a _stele_, or some fragments of

pottery, or the remains of a temple, had been unearthed by chance or by

superficial search, but the few objects discovered served only to pique

curiosity. For one reason or another, the efforts made to establish the

site of ancient cities had been abandoned, the expeditions sent out by

France had been comparatively barren of results, and it seemed as if

the traces of the occupation of the Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the

Assyrians, the Persians, and the Romans were irrecoverably concealed.

 

General L. P. di Cesnola, the explorer of Cyprus, is of a noble

Piedmontese family; he received a military and classical education at

Turin; identified with the party of Italian unity, his sympathies were

naturally excited by the contest in America; he offered his sword to our

government, and served with distinction in the war for the Union. At

its close he was appointed consul at Cyprus, a position of no

pecuniary attraction, but I presume that the new consul had in view the

explorations which have given his name such honorable celebrity in both

hemispheres.

 

The difficulties of his undertaking were many. He had to encounter at

every step the jealousy of the Turkish government, and the fanaticism

and superstition of the occupants of the soil. Archaeological researches

are not easy in the East under the most favorable circumstances, and in

places where the traces of ancient habitations are visible above ground,

and ancient sites are known; but in Cyprus no ruins exist in sight to

aid the explorer, and, with the exception of one or two localities, no

names of ancient places are known to the present generation. But the

consul was convinced that the great powers which had from age to age

held Cyprus must have left some traces of their occupation, and that

intelligent search would discover the ruins of the prosperous cities

described by Strabo and mentioned by the geographer Ptolemy. Without

other guides than the descriptions of these and other ancient writers,