Greek Epic and Kypriaka: Why “Cyprus Matters”

Mycenaean Greeks migrated to Cyprus at the end of the Late Bronze Age. Did they bring with them a tradition of oral heroic poetry, cognate to that which eventually culminated in Homer and his colleagues in the eighth and seventh centuries? Cyprus seems as likely an environment for its survival and evolution as the Aeolic-Ionic world. Recent postcolonial scholarship has stressed the rapid “hybridity” of Cypriot material culture in the Iron Age; immigrants included Minoan and probably Anatolian groups, and naturally the Eteocypriot and Levantine contributions must not be underestimated (Sherratt 1992; Knapp 2008). Mycenaean cultural features did however endure and evolve within this receptive matrix: literacy, chariot warfare, sanctuaries with temenoi or altar-court plans and kings with religious duties who bore the ancient title of wanax (e.g., Snodgrass 1988). Furthermore, the scale and staying power of the island’s “Hellenic” element is clear enough from the situation in the early Archaic period, when documents become available in quantity. By then, the Cypriot dialect of Greek, already attested at an early stage near eleventh-century Paphos (the famous Opheltas obelos), was widely spoken. Of the ten kings named in the Esarhaddon prism-inscription of 673/2 BCE, three have transparently Greek names; the same is probably true of others, although the syllabic writing system hinders precise identification. Even the kings of Classical Amathus, apparently the island’s stronghold of Eteocypriot culture, bore Greek names (Gjerstad 1948: 430, 475 n. 5).