a congenial habitat; while a profusion everywhere of sweet-smelling flowers, which saturated the air with their penetrating odours—­spring violets, many-coloured anemones, the lily, hyacinth, crocus, narcissus, and wild rose—­led the Greeks to bestow upon the island the designation of “the balmy Cyprus.”  Mines also contributed their share to the riches of which the island could boast.  Iron in small quantities, alum, asbestos, agate and other precious stones, are still to be found there, and in ancient times the neighbourhood of Tamassos yielded copper in such quantities that the Romans were accustomed to designate this metal by the name “Cyprium,” and the word passed from them into all the languages of Europe.  It is not easy to determine the race to which the first inhabitants of the island belonged, if we are not to see in them a branch of the Kefatiu, who frequented the Asiatic shores of the Mediterranean from a very remote period.  In the time of Egyptian supremacy they called their country Asi, and this name inclines one to connect the people with the AEgeans.* An examination of the objects found in the most ancient tombs of the island seems to confirm this opinion.  These consist, for the most part, of weapons and implements of stone—­knives, hatchets, hammers, and arrow-heads; and mingled with these rude objects a score of different kinds of pottery, chiefly hand-made and of coarse design—­pitchers with contorted bowls, shallow buckets, especially of the milk-pail variety, provided with spouts and with pairs of rudimentary handles.

* “Asi,” “Asii,” was at first sought for on the Asiatic continent—­at Is on the Euphrates, or in Palestine:  the discovery of the Canopic decree allows us to identify it with Cyprus, and this has now been generally done.  The reading “Asebi” is still maintained by some.

[Illustration:  294.jpg Map of Cyprus]

The pottery is red or black in colour, and the ornamentation of it consists of incised geometrical designs.  Copper and bronze, where we find examples of these metals, do not appear to have been employed in the manufacture of ornaments or arrow-heads, but usually in making daggers.  There is no indication anywhere of foreign influence, and yet Cyprus had already at this time entered into relations with the civilized nations of the continent.* According to Chaldaean tradition, it was conquered about the year 3800 B.C. by Sargon of Agade:  without insisting upon the reality of this conquest, which in any case must have been ephemeral in its nature, there is reason to believe that the island was subjected from an early period to the influence of the various peoples which lived one after another on the slopes of the Lebanon.  Popular legend attributes to King Kinyras and to the Giblites [i.e. the people of Byblos] the establishment of the first Phoenician colonies in the southern region of the island—­one of them being at Paphos, where the worship of Adonis and Astarte continued