e 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 to a very late date. The
natives preserved their own language and customs, had their own chiefs,
and maintained their national independence, while constrained to submit
at the same time to the presence of Phoenician colonists