Ancient Coins Of Cyprus

Coinweek - ON A CLEAR DAY, it's just possible to see the Turkish shore 40 miles (64 km) away from Cape St. Andreas[1] at the northeastern tip of Cyprus. The third-largest island in the Mediterranean after Sicily and Sardinia, Cyprus was settled in the ninth millennium BCE-possibly even earlier-by intrepid Neolithic mariners who somehow managed to cross that same gulf. Much of the copper that made the bronze by which the "Bronze Age" got its name was mined on Cyprus.



In Greek, the name of the island and the word for the metal are the same.

As a "crossroads of civilizations", ancient Cyprus was home to a diversity of cultures: Greeks, Phoenicians and an indigenous people know as Eteo-Cypriots, whose language, surviving in a few fragmentary inscriptions, is still largely undeciphered. Egyptian, Assyrian and Persian empires asserted control over the island but allowed local elites to manage their own affairs. By the time coinage came into general use in the fifth century BCE, Cyprus consisted of about 10 "city-kingdoms," coexisting uneasily.

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