Cyprus | 10,000 B.C. to Present

I guess it was inevitable that I would someday end up on the island of Cyprus. It is, after all, one of the great crossroads of the world, linking the seaways between Europe, Asia Minor, the Middle East, and Africa. The northwest tip of Cyprus is just forty-five miles from the coast of Turkey. The coast of Syria is sixty-five miles from the northeast corner of the island. Beirut is 110 miles from the southeast tip of Cyprus; Damascus 160; Jerusalem 228. From the southwest coast of Cyprus it’s 280 miles to Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile in Egypt, and 325 to the Big Bopper, Cairo. All of these places have left their mark on Cyprus. 

©2105 Google Earth (click on image for enlargement)

The island has been inhabited for 12,000 years at the very least. The earliest human inhabitants may have shared the island with dwarf elephants and hippopotami. A well-preserved Neolithic village has been dated to 6,800 b.c. By 2500 b.c the indigenous population was engaged in trade with Egypt, Greece, and the Near East. Mycenaean Greeks settled on Cyprus around 1400 b.c. and by 1000 b.c. the island was largely Hellenized. Aphrodite, the Greek Goddess of Love and Sex, was believed to have been born on Cyprus, as was her lover, the dreamboat Adonis. A temple in western Cyprus dedicated to her became one of the great pilgrimage sites of the ancient world. By 800 b.c. the sea-faring Phoenicians, centered around what is now the coastline of Lebanon, set up trading posts along the southern coast of the Island, including one near the present-day town of Larnaca. Then came Assyrians from what is now Iraq, followed by Egyptians from the valley of the Nile. In 545 b.c. the Achaemenids of Iran overran the island. In 333 b.c. the Macedonian adventurer Alexander the Great supplanted them. After Alexander’s death the island become part of Hellenized Ptolemaic Egypt. 

The Ptolemaic Greeks eventually lost control of the island and in 58 b.c. it became part of the Roman Empire, during which time it became the plaything of Roman rulers. First, in an attempt to woo them as allies, Julius Caesar gave the island back to Ptolemy XIII and Arsinoë IV, the brother and sister of the legendary temptress Cleopatra and erstwhile rulers of Ptolemaic Egypt. When both he and they were eliminated from the scene the totally besotted Mark Anthony gave the island to Cleopatra, by then undisputed ruler of Egypt, as a token of his love for her, which was only fitting, since Cyprus was the home of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. (Some say it was a wedding gift; the problem is, Mark Antony was married to someone else at the time and Cleopatra was not the type to play second fiddle. The marriage alleged by some may never have taken place. She did have children with him, however: including the lovely twins Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene. The name Alexander was intended to memorialize Alexander the Great: the name Cleopatra was traditionally given to female contenders for the throne of Egypt. The Cleopatra who so famously felled Julius Caesar and Marc Antony was in fact Cleopatra VII)  

In 46 a.d. the Apostle Paul (Saul) of Tarsus along with Barnabas, a Jew born on Cyprus who had converted to Christianity, visited the island and managed to convert to their new creed the Roman proconsul, Sergius Paulus, making Cyprus the first country in the world to be ruled by a Christian governor. The Greek gods and pagan beliefs were soon superseded by the new teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, the sex goddess Aphrodite giving way to the Virgin Mary. With the division of the Roman Empire in 395 A.D. Cyprus became part of the East Roman, or Byzantine, Empire headquartered in Constantinople. Christianity went unchallenged on the island until 647, when the Muslim invaders reached the island. (Some sources credit the Prophet Muhammad’s father-in-law, Abu Bakr, with leading the invasion and temporarily seizing control of Larnaca, on the southern coast. Abu Bakr, however, died in 634.) The Umayyad Caliph Muawiyah I (r. 661–680) and the Abbasid Caliph Harun-al-Rashid (r. 786–809), he of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights fame, are both said to have made raids on the island. Numerous other Muslim incursions (a total of twenty-four according to Frankish historian Stephen de Lusignan) contested East Roman control of the island for the next three centuries before the Byzantine Emperor Nikephoros Phocas finally reasserted control in 965.

Then came Europeans in the guise of Crusaders. King Richard I (the Lion-Heart) of England captured in the island in 1191, during the Third Crusade, and married his wife Berengaria in Limassol, on the southern coast, on 12 May 1191. He eventually sold the island to the militant order of Crusaders known as the Knights Templar. It was in turn passed on to Guy, leader of the French royal house of Lusignan. The Lusignan Dynasty ruled the island until 1473, when the great trading combine known as the Republic of Venice took nominal control. In 1489 Venice formally appropriated the Island and fortified the city of Nicosia by building the Venetian Walls, which still exist to this day. Then came the Ottomans, who since 1453 had ruled their empire out of Istanbul. On July 1, 1570 they invaded the island and within three weeks the capital, Nicosia, had fallen. For the next 228 years they ruled the island. In 1878 the Ottomans ceded control of Cyprus to Great Britain in return for the latter’s help in fending off the Russians, who were encroaching on the Ottoman Empire from the north. Although occupied by the British, Cyprus remained nominally part of the Ottoman empire until 1914, when the Ottomans sided with Germany in the First World War; thereupon the island was seized outright by the British and finally made a Crown Colony in 1925. 

During the 1950s Greek Cypriots started a movement to make Cyprus a part of Greece. Turkey, which alleged discrimination against Turkish Cypriots by the Greek populace, vehemently opposed a union between Cyprus and Greece. Attempting a compromise, in August of 1960 the United Kingdom, Greece, and Turkey, all signed the so-called London and Zurich Agreement finally granting Cyprus its independence and creating the Republic of Cyprus. It was hoped that as an independent country Cyprus would be able to iron it its ethnic and religious differences on its own. Instead, inter-communal strife between Greek and Turkish elements worsened, resulting in over two decades of domestic violence. In 1974 Turkey invaded the island, ostensibly to restore order. International pressure eventually led to a cease-fire, but by then Turkey controlled the northern part of the island, including the northern part of the capital, Nicosia. In 1983 the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was created, encompassing slightly more than a third of the island. The southern two-thirds or so of the island remained as the Republic of Cyprus. The two Cypruses, including the capital, remained strictly divided. Not April 23, 2003 was the Ledra Palace border crossing opened in Nicosia, reconnecting the two parts of the capital for the first time since 1974. On April 3, 2008, the Ledra Street pedestrian crossing was also opened, allowing for the first time easy access to both sides of city by locals and tourists on foot. Meanwhile, in 2004, the Republic of Cyprus had become part of the European Union, placing it firmly within the Occidental world. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is to this day recognized only by Turkey. 

Map courtesy of Nations Online Project

Cyprus | Nicosia | Büyük Han

From Larnaca I wandered up to Nicosia, the largest city on the island of Cyprus. Downtown Nicosia is only twenty-eight miles from downtown Larnaca, but given all the bus stops the trip takes over an hour. Since 1974 Nicosia has been divided into two parts; the northern part in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the southern part in the Republic of Cyprus. At the risk of over-oversimplifying a very complicated and contentious issue, let it be said that the Republic of Cyprus is Greek and Christian and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is Turkish and Muslim. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was created after the invasion of Cyprus by Turkey in 1974. Since then Nicosia has been a divided city. The border separating the two parts of Nicosia is to this day administered by the United Nations. Although there were numerous sights I wanted to see in both southern and northern Nicosia my first objective was the Büyük Han, or caravanserai, in northern Nicosia. I was curious how it would compare to caravanserais in Istanbul, Bukhara, and Sogdiana. 

From 1974 to 2003 the northern and southern parts of Nicosia remained completed separated, with no access between one side and the other. On April 23, 2003 the so-called Ledra Palace border crossing was established, and later, on April 3, 2008 the Ledra Street pedestrian crossing was opened. This crossing is used mainly by day-trippers from one side of the city to the other. Thus I presented myself at the Ledra Street crossing point when it opened at eight in the morning. There was no line and apparently I was the first person to cross that day. At the first checkpoint an official examines your passport and then waves you on to a second checkpoint 150 feet farther up the street. Here you show your passport again and fill out a short form (the so-called White Paper), which is then stamped. This serves as a one-day visa to Northern Cyprus. Your passport is not stamped.

There had been no coffee shops open on Ledra Street and I had been unable to get a caffeine fix before crossing over. On the north side there were numerous coffee and tea houses on the quiet street leading to the center of town but none of them were open. Cypriots, I have noticed, are not early risers. Signs in both Turkish and English point the way to the Büyük Han. I soon arrive at the western entrance. Happily the door is open and inside several cafes are serving up Turkish coffee (in the southern part of Nicosia and the rest of the Republic of Cyprus this same drink is universally known as “Cyprus coffee”).

The han is 443 years old. It was built by Turkish Governor-General Muzaffer Pasha in 1572, two years after the Ottomans seized Cyprus from the Venetians in 1570. It was originally called Alanyalilar’s Han, but by the seventeenth century it had become known as the Büyük (Big) Khan, since it was the largest han in Nicosia. The two story structure has sixty-eight rooms which open onto an interior courtyard. It would have been used as an inn and business center for prosperous traders from Asia Minor, the Levant, northern Africa, and Europe. The rooms, which now house shops selling assorted tourist-oriented tat, were fairly roomy and each had it own hearth. One can only imagine that these were pretty comfortable and even luxurious lodgings back in the sixteenth century. This was probably the equivalent of a modern day five-star business hotel, catering to successful and affluent merchants from all around the Mediterranean Basin and beyond.  I would like to think that I would have been able to stay here had I arrived in Nicosia in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but more likely I would have ended up at one of the nearby Sufi-run tekkes, which by tradition provided free food and lodging, at least for a night or two, to indigent travelers wandering down the endless corridors of time and space. 

The west side of the han, with one of the entrances (click on photos for enlargements).

The east side of the han, with the other entrance to the han at the far left. To the right of the eastern entrance is a barrel vaulted gallery.

The barrel vaulted gallery

To the left of the eastern entrance is a groin vaulted gallery. Why different styles of galleries were used on either side of the entrance is a detail lost to history. 

A tiny mosque in the middle of the courtyard

The tiny mosque

View of the courtyard and facing rooms

View of the courtyard and facing rooms

View of the courtyard and facing rooms

View of the courtyard and facing rooms

View of the courtyard and facing rooms

View of the courtyard and facing rooms

View of the second floor gallery

Cafe where I had coffee. I am beginning to regret the Intemperate Remarks I have made about coffee in the past.

Mongolia | Lunar New Year | Tsagaan Sar

Today is the first day of the New Year according to the Lunar calendar used in Mongolia. Tsagaan Sar, as it is called in Mongolian, is the biggest celebration of the year in Mongolia—kind of like the Gregorian New Year, Christmas, and Thanksgiving all rolled into one. I have spent a dozen or more Tsagaan Sars in Mongolia, but unfortunately this year I will not be there. You can read about the 2005 Tsagaan Sar here.

By the way, as I write this the temperature in Ulaanbaatar is 12ºF, practically a heatwave in UB. Usually this time of year it is 20 to 40 below 0ºF. By contrast it is 5ºF in Richmond, Virginia, USA, seven degrees colder than UB. Richmond’s notorious Devotees of Bacchus will have to break out their mukluks if they want to go out and celebrate the New Year at their local wine bar-temple.

Anyhow, it is the Year of the Female Wood Sheep. Happy New Year!

Cyprus | Larnaka | Zeno | Stoics

Since childhood have always considered myself more or less of a Stoic, although admittedly I later became enamored by other philosophies, creeds, and beliefs.  The belief system known as Stoicism was founded, as most of you know,  by the Greek Philosopher Zeno (352 B.C.–255 B.C.—other dates have been proposed), who was born in what was then the city of Citium, on the island of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean. Citium is now the city of Larnaka in the Republic of Cyprus. Hoping to get back in touch with my Inner Stoic, I decided to visit Larnaka, the birthplace of Zeno, founder of Stoicism.

Thus it was that at six o’clock in the morning I found myself standing in snow flurries at the Pazartekke Metro stop in Istanbul just inside the Theodosian Land Walls. I took the first train of the morning to the Zeytinburnu stop and there transferred to the airport train. The one-hour flight to Athens left at 9:30. Of course I have heard about the economic downdraft in Greece, but I was not prepared for the Athens airport. There were maybe two dozen passengers in the transit area. Besides myself there were only two other people in the Aegean Airlines Business Lounge. This is the airport in the capital of a major European country, and it is practically deserted. Maybe thirty people finally assembled for the 1:00 P.M. flight to Larnaka. We arrived at Larnaka an hour after take off. A cab driver wanted an outrageous 50 Euros ($57.17) for a ride to my guesthouse, which I knew was only slightly more than a mile away. I offered him a ten, which he refused, and finally gave him a twenty, which I soon found out was still a ripoff.

My guesthouse, a rather humble affair inhabited by European backpackers,  down market Russians, and furtive local gay couples shacking up for the night, is a little less than a mile from downtown. Actually, one night cost a little less than the cab fare. I threw my portmanteau into my room and headed down the Phinikoudes, as the seaside promenade is called. Past a long stretch of restaurants and bars (including McDonalds, KFC, T.G.I.F., Starbucks, Pizza Hut, etc.) I finally reached the statue of Zeno. After a proper period of contemplation on Stoicism I returned to a Gloria Jean’s coffee shop (the Australian equivalent of Starbucks) I had noticed on the way to the statue and ordered a large Flat White. They are having a special two-for-one offer, so I actually got two large Flat Whites. Stoics and two-for-one coffee offers—what’s not to love about Larnaka?

The Phinikoudes (click on photos for enlargements)

Another view of the Phinikoudes

Another view of the Phinikoudes

My man—Zeno of Citium

Egypt | Giza | Khufu Pyramid

From The Spinx I wandered up the road to the Pyramid of Khufu, also known as Pyramid of Cheops. This is the largest of the three big Giza Pyramids. Although the grounds were nearly deserted when I entered at 8:00 a.m.—opening time—a considerable crowd has accumulated while I was admiring the Spinx. Most of them appear to be Egyptians. Many have hired horse buggies to haul them around the pyramids. The road leading up to the Khufu Pyramid does not look that steep, but the horses are having a hard time negotiating it. They are shod, and their steel horseshoes keep slipping on the asphalt surface of the road. As I watch two horses slip and fall to their knees. Obviously they are used to this, since they very quickly jump up and resume pulling. One horse, pulling a buggy with a family of Egyptians—father, mother, and three small children—refuses to go up the hill. It tries to turn and head back down, but the driver, who is walking along side, starts whacking it with a cane and it very reluctantly turns uphill. It slips and falls to its knees. Bounding up very quickly, it then turns and attempts again to go downhill, precipitously whipping around the buggy. The driver hauls on the reins and whacks it with a cane, finally getting it turned around. It takes a few steps uphill, but then turns yet again and attempts to lunge downhill. All the while the buggy is being whipped back and forth. The family looks scared. One of the little girls starts screaming. For the moment it looks like the driver might lose control completely and the horse will take off downhill at a gallop, quite possibly upsetting the buggy. But the driver shortens the reins and administers a series of solid whacks with his cane. The horse had probably been through all this before and knows that in the end it must bow to the inevitable. It puts its head down and slowly, carefully plods its way uphill. One imagines the pyramids were built this way.

The road does not look so steep in this photo, but horses had trouble negotiating it (click on photos for enlargements). 

Moving on from this spectacle, I proceed to the base of the Khufu Pyramid. Like millions of other tourists who have stood here I cannot help but wonder, “What in the name of all that’s holy were they thinking?” I mean, seriously, this is one badass pile of rocks. 

The pyramid was built as a tomb for the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Khufu. It was probably built over a twenty-year period ending in about 2560 B.C. Thus it has stood here roughly 4570-some odd years. It was originally 481 feet high, and for almost 4000 years it was the tallest manmade structure on earth. It is now missing its capstone and stands around 455 feet high. Each side of the pyramid is 756 feet long. An estimated 2,300,000 blocks of stone was used in its construction. If the Khufu pyramid was built in twenty years, as suggested, then the builders would have had to put in place twelve blocks of stone an hour, 24/7/365 for the entire twenty years. Put differently, they would have had to install 800 tons of blocks every day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year for twenty years. 

On the other hand, it could have been Built By Aliens using anti-gravitation devices to float to the blocks into place. Or by the Mysterious Nephilim, the Giants of the Old Testament, spawn of Fallen Angels who could not resist mating with human women. Or maybe it was built by a previous incarnation of Donald Trump. Or by the spawn of Donald Trump’s previous incarnation and Fallen Angels. Or by the spawn of Fallen Angels and Snoop Dog.  Tupac Shakur may have been involved, hence his assassination (by the Nephilim?) on September 7, 1996, in Las Vegas, Nevada, home of the Luxor Hotel, which features its very own pyramid. The pyramids seem to invite speculation.

Frontal view of the Khufu Pyramid

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

The Khufu Pyramid was once completely covered with casing stones of highly polished white limestone. In 1303 A.D. a huge earthquake shook off many of the casing stones. These were carted away and used as building material for mosques and other buildings in Cairo. What remained were used by Muhammad Ali Pasha to build a mosque in the nineteenth century. The pyramid we see today is thus the core of the original pyramid. It must have been a dazzling sight indeed when faced with gleaming white limestone. 

Some of the few original casing stones that remain

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid. 

People are climbing to the current day entrance to the pyramid, known as the Robber’s Tunnel. It was created by Abbasid Caliph al Mamun in the 820s A.D. His workmen used a battering ram to punch a hole through to the existing corridors within the pyramid. Presumably they were looking for treasure. It now costs 200 Egyptian pounds ($26.38) to enter the interior of the pyramid, and several people I talked to said it was not worth it. So I demurred. Maybe next time.

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

Today it is not possible to climb to the top of the pyramid. Once, however, an ascent was a standard part of the Great Pyramid tour. In 1873 forty-two year old English writer and gadabout Amelia Edwards made the climb and described it in her book  A Thousand Miles Up The Nile. We must rely on her for a description of the view from the top:

The ascent [to the pyramid summit] is extremely easy. Rugged and huge as are the blocks, there is scarcely one upon which it is not possible to find a half-way rest for the toe of one's boot, so as to divide the distance. With the help of three Arabs, nothing can well be less fatiguing. As for the men, they are helpful and courteous, and as clever as possible; and coax one on from block to block in all the languages of Europe. “Pazienza, signora! Allez doncement—all serene! We half-way now—dem halben-weg, fräulein. Ne vous pressezpas, mademoiselle. Chi va sano, va lontano. Six step more, and ecco la cimca!” “You should add the other half of the proverb, amici,” said I. “Chi va forte, va alla My Arabs had never heard this before, and were delighted with it. They repeated it again and again, and committed it to memory with great satisfaction. I asked them why they did not cut steps in the blocks, so as to make the ascent easier for ladies. The answer was ready and honest. “No, no, mademoiselle! Arab very stupid to do that. If Arab makes steps, howadji goes up alone. No more want Arab man to help him up, and Arab man earn no more dollars!” 

They offered to sing “Yankee Doodle” when we reached the top; then, finding we were English, shouted “God save the queen!” and told us that the Prince of Wales had given £40 to the pyramid Arabs when he came here with the princess two years before; which, however, we took the liberty to doubt. The space on the top of the great pyramid is said to be thirty feet square. It is not, as I had expected, a level platform. Some blocks of the next tier remain, and two or three of the tier next above that; so making pleasant seats and shady corners. What struck us most on reaching the top was the startling nearness, to all appearance, of the second pyramid. It seemed to rise up beside us like a mountain; yet so close, that I fancied I could almost touch it by putting out my hand. Every detail of the surface, every crack and party-coloured stain in the shining stucco that yet clings about the apex, was distinctly visible. The view from this place is immense. The country is so flat, the atmosphere so clear, the standpoint so isolated, that one really sees more and sees farther than from many a mountain summit of ten or twelve thousand feet. The ground lies, as it were, immediately under one; and the great Necropolis is seen as in a ground-plan. 

The effect must, I imagine, be exactly like the effect of a landscape seen from a balloon. Without ascending the pyramid, it is certainly not possible to form a clear notion of the way in which this great burial-field is laid out. We see from this point how each royal pyramid is surrounded by its quadrangle of lesser tombs, some in the form of small pyramids, others partly rock-cut, partly built of massive slabs, like the roofing-stones of the temples. We see how Khufu and Khafra and Menkara lay, each under his mountain of stone, with his family and his nobles around him. We see the great causeways which moved Herodotus to such wonder, and along which the giant stones were brought. Recognizing how clearly the place is a great cemetery, one marvels at the ingenious theories which turn the pyramids into astronomical observatories, and abstruse standards of measurement. They are the grandest graves in all the world—and they are nothing more.

Another view of the Khufu Pyramid

There are signs everywhere telling people not to climb on the pyramids, but boys will be boys (actually there were quite a few girls too) and they could just not resist the urge to ascend the rocks. Security guards were forever shouting at the miscreants to get down, but the moment their heads were turned the kids clambered back up again. Of course all the climbers were constantly taking selfies on their mobile phones, using the stones of the pyramid as a backdrop.

Tomb—I think—near the Khufu Pyramid

These are the only examples of hieroglyphics I saw in the area of the pyramids. 

School girls from the nearby city of Sakkara on a class excursion to the Pyramids. They asked me to take their photo and I could hardly refuse. The second one from the left, in the red sleeves, was the only one who spoke English,  and she proved to be quite the chatterbox.

For the classic, if admittedly now dated, study of the pyramids of Giza see W. M. Flinders Petrie’s The Pyramids And Temples Of Gizeh. 

Egypt | Giza | Sphinx

No sooner had I entered the grounds of the Pyramid Complex than a horde of would-be guides descended on me like a Biblical plaque of locusts. “But who will chase the other people away?” moaned one when I turned down his services. Indeed, some visitors might be tempted to hire one guide just to shoo away the voracious sellers of camel and horse rides, postcards, model pyramids, head wraps, cowboy hats, and a host of other gimcracks and ephemera. But I pushed on; I just wanted to soak in the atmosphere by myself without someone chattering in my ear. First on the agenda was the Sphinx. The Sphinx of course needs no introduction. Reputedly both the oldest and largest monumental sculpture in the world, it is also one of world’s most instantly recognizable images. 

As with most monuments of ancient Egypt, there is considerable controversy over when the Sphinx was built and by whom. I think we can safely rule out the theory that it is over 10,000 years old and was carved out by aliens using laser beams, or that it was built by the mysterious “giants” who keep popping up here and there in the Old Testament. The most prevalent scholarly theory maintains that it was constructed during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafra (c. 2558–2532 BC), the same pharaoh who built the middle pyramid of the three big Giza pyramids. Most onsite tour guides also ascribe to this idea. The face of the Sphinx might be—again this is disputed—that of Khafra himself.   

The Pyramid of Khafra with the Sphinx in front (click on photos for enlargements).

The Sphinx, looking positively Sphinx-like.

 The Sphinx with the Pyramid of Khufu, the largest of the Giza pyramids, in the background.

 The Sphinx is 241 feet long and 66 feet high—reputedly the largest stone sculpture in the world.

I remember reading, when I was maybe seven years old, that Napoleon’s artillery men shot off the Sphinx’s nose for target practice. I am pretty sure I did not read this in a “Scrooge McDuck” comic book, even though the adventures of the richest duck in the world did inspire some of my later travels (i. e., “The Lost Crown of Genghis Khan”, a McDuck classic; this is surely where I read about Mongolia and Genghis Khan [Chingis Khan] for the first time). However, a Danish traveler by the name of Frederic Louis Norden made a sketch of the Sphinx in 1738 which shows the nose already missing. This was decades before the pint-sized French megalomaniac arrived on the scene. An alternative tale suggests that in 1378 a Sufi by the name of Saim al-Dahr became outraged after seeing local peasants worshipping the Sphinx, a clear violation of the tenets of Islam, and in a fit of pique knocked off the nose himself. How he was able to do this is not clear. It would have taken more than just a sledgehammer. Anyhow, then as now the local authorities did not appreciate people tampering with tourist attractions. Saim al-Dahr was arrested for vandalism and hanged.

The noseless Sphinx

Another view of the Sphinx

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Mongolia | Bactrian Camels

Camels: You can’t help but love them (click on photo for enlargement)