Born out of foams in the Mediterranean Sea, the goddess of beauty and love Aphrodite was attracted to the land of Cyprus to put her gentle feet on. Today, thousand years past alike, Cyprus is recognised as home to Aphrodite. This article searched the footsteps and the exalted spirit of the goddess across the island.
Across Cyprus, numerous temples or sacred sites devoted to the goddess Aphrodite would enliven with the rise of spring. As the spring fairy Persophene breathed the spring putting flowers in bloom, every girl used to make a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the goddess for marriage rites ‘to invoke the goddess within’. Exquisitely dressed priestesses of the goddess would welcome the girls in the sacred gardens surrounding the temple. A man would throw an offering at the feet of his preferred pilgrim whereupon the sacred intercourse was performed.
This sort of ritual and offerings actually have deeper roots than Hellenistic culture. The figure of a mother goddess responsible for procreation dates back to matriarchal era when women were considered holy and mysterious due to the inexplicable act of conception.
Standing at the crossroads of Europe, facing the Asia Minor and the Middle East, Cyprus was a kind of ‘melting pot’ of the ancient world comprising many civilisations on its bosom.
Chronologically Mycenaeans, Achaeans, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Crusaders, Venetians, Ottomans and British have all passed by bringing their own customs, religion, and art necessarily changing the current, adapting to or coexisting with it.
An exhibition held in New York in the year 2003 entitled “From Ishtar to Aphrodite” revealed this fact with artefacts discovered around the sanctuaries or graves in Cyprus. These artefacts including grave offerings, vases, bowls, and figurines contributed our conception of the ancient cosmopolitan character of Cyprus as a melting pot. The exhibition proved that various styles of burial traditions coexisted even within short distances.
The figures generally represented a mother goddess of fertility and balance, suggesting an antecedent persona of Aphrodite, brought to the island by Mesopotamian tribes of matriarchal order. Remembering the “Epic of Gilgamesh” will give us the initial clue to start searching the traces of the goddess Aphrodite the Cypriot. A Mesopotamian epic, also the oldest written work of literature, Gilgamesh introduces the goddess of love, Ishtar, aka Inanna.
Origins of the goddess
The cult of the “goddess of love” was actually brought to the island by Phoenecians, who used to name her Inanna, Ishtar or after an Egyptian goddess Astarte. She is called the goddess of the Morning and Evening Star. She presides over the birth of both night and day. Next to her is the sacred star sign of brilliant Venus, symbol of both death and rebirth.
The winged goddess could move freely between the world of the death and that of living. Thus, she is also the goddess of balance. Among her many other titles, Ishtar is the goddess of love and procreation. Sacred marriage rites were performed at New Year. Not to forget that this “new year” is not what we understand today under the imposition of Christianity. The new year in the pagan world started with the wake of nature, that is Spring. The blessings of Ishtar were sought to insure fertility in the month of May when nature was in flourish.
Another interesting fact is that the nature of Ishtar reflects the peaceful Phoenecian society in which she developed. All the other goddesses of the Near East and Greek world wore armour, except Ishtar, or later Aphrodite. Thus, it is time for you to stop and think the famous saying of modern novelist Virginia Woolf: “to fight has always been the man’s habit, not the woman’s”.
Aphrodite as Ishtar’s successor
This goddess image, the Greek confronted on their journeys to the island was rather interesting due to its “different” nature. Living in a world of male dominancy, the Greek were conquered with the peaceful image of the goddess, a holy figure of love and fertility.
Not unwillingly, the Greek adopted the image of the goddess bringing her back to the island in a few centuries later in full Hellenistic disguise. This is clear considering many similarities that exist between the attributes of the goddesses.
Isthar was called the “Queen of Heaven” while Aphrodite was given the name “Urania”, meaning “celestial” or “heavenly”. Isthar is described as having wings and Aphrodite travels always on the back of winged animals such as doves or geese. Moreover, marriage rites were held in the temples of the both goddesses in the wake of spring. One of the most noticeable parallels in their myths is Aphrodite’s lover, the vegetation god Adonis and his counterpart in Babylonian mythology, Ishtar’s lover Tammuz.
The Mythical “birth”
Necessarily, the fact that Aphrodite was brought from Mesopotamia to Greece by way of Cyprus was reinforced in literature as Aphrodite’s mythical “home” is Cyprus.
The birth of Aphrodite, apart from its logical historical roots, is related as a marvellous phenomenon revealing the astonishment of the Greek before the sacred image of the goddess. The scene inspired artists all through the centuries regardless of the branch or art, movements, or countries. The magical moment was rendered in the lines of the English Romantic poet Shelley with these words:
“Look, look why shineThose floating bubbles with such light divine?They break, and from their mist a lily formRises from out the wave, in beauty warm.The wave is by the blue-veined feet scarce press'd,Her silky ringlets float about her breast,Veiling its fairy loveliness, while her eyeIs soft and deep as the heaven is high.The Beautiful is born; sea and earthMay well revere the hour of that mysterious birth.”
The word “Aphrodite” means “the foam-born” in Greek. The myth tells us that Cronus (representing time), the son of Uranus (the skies), castrates him and throws his genitals into the sea, which later turn into the foam giving birth to Aphrodite. This myth explains her attributes as goddess of love, marriage, childbirth; and her Roman title as “Venus” which is mentioned above to symbolize death and life.
Coming back to the myth again, the goddess Aphrodite was carried to the shores of Cyprus on a shell by the breath of Zephyr, the west wind, and Chloris, his wife the breeze of spring. The shores that Aphrodite was carried on her shell by the winds Zephyr and Chloris are claimed to be Petra Tou Romiou bearing a noticeable endemic flora on its bosom or the long golden beach at the Karpaz Peninsula with a fantastic scene. Comparing the likeliness of both of these sites to the painting by the Italian painter Botticelli, “The Birth of Venus”, most famous of representations. But it is still another question, whether the painting reveals the photographic truth or simply an allegoric representation of the myth of Aphrodite’s birth.
Footsteps of the goddess on the isle
It is presumed that there were many a number temples or sacred sites across Cyprus devoted to the goddess. One of these used to stand at the very northern tip of the island dominating the blue waters of the Mediterranean that bore the goddess, while another was built at Palea Pafos.
As previously mentioned, in the old days, with the rise of the spring, every girl used to make a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the goddess for marriage rites and ‘to invoke the goddess within’. Amphorae and ceremonial bowls collected from these sites depict exquisitely dressed priestesses in some scenes from these ceremonies, which are in some sense erotic.
Aphrodite is generally called as Aphrodite Urania, or Celestial Aphrodite to refer her attributes of pure and spiritual love. An ancient site named “Urania” stands on the Karpaz Peninsula today exposing a few remains. Ruins of an ancient marina, tombs, and a fortress are left from the glorious city of Urania, aka Aphendrika, which was one of the six major towns in Cyprus in the 3rd century BC.
Visiting this site will give you the opportunity to imagine yourself in one of the towns built most probably in the name of the goddess. A similar delight is hidden in the face of the fragile beauty in Botticelli’s painting or in the elusive but strong image of the woman portrayed by Dali.
On the other hand, not to forget to remind that it was still Aphrodite to make Paris and Helen fall in love and prepare the scene for the Trojan War. The peaceful spirit of Ishtar, Inanna, Astarte embodied in the image of one goddess, the Cyprus-born, foam-born, Aphrodite Cypridis.
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Aphrodite in art
The birth of Aphrodite was frequently pictured throughout the ages should it be on the face of a vase, or a big painting. She is mostly represented sitting or riding birds or geese.
The most famous work of art concerning the goddess is the painting by Botticelli (1485). In this scene Aphrodite is depicted rising from the water with a rather shy and innocent expression on her face. On the upper left, Zephyr (the west wind) and Chloris (his wife, the breeze of spring) are puffing to move her shell towards the shores; while, on the right, a nymph, one of the three Horae (hours) gives Aphrodite a gorgeous robe adorned with flowers, implying her as goddess of all seasons.
Salvador Dali also painted a picture “Apparition of the Face of Aphrodite” depicting her in the lines of abstract movement.
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“And so soon as he had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long time: and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden. First she drew near holy Kythera, and from there, afterwards, she came to sea-girt Kypros, and came forth an awful and lovely goddess, and grass grew up about her beneath her shapely feet. Her gods and men call Aphrodite, because she grew amid the foam.”
from Hesiod’s “Theogony”.
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