APHRODISION
Cyprus.
On the N coast 38 km
E of Kerynia. The ruins of a small town identified with
Aphrodision lie by the shore at the locality Liastrika,
due N of Akanthou village. The ruins cover the fields
inland as well as a headland which separates two bays.
On the W side of the headland is a perfectly shaped
horseshoe bay, which may have served as a harbor.
Nothing is known of the founding of the town or of
its history but it is mentioned by Strabo (
14.682) and by
Ptolemy (5.14.4). The reading Uppridissa equated with
Aphrodision on the prism of Esarhaddon (673-672 B.C.)
is not to be trusted. The worship of Hera in the 2d c.
B.C. is attested by a recently discovered inscription.
Aphrodision seems to have flourished from Hellenistic
to Early Byzantine times, when it was gradually abandoned after the first Arab raids of A.D. 647. The town
site is now a field of ruins under cultivation and it is
so far unexcavated.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. Oberhummer,
Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 27 (1892), 448-51;
D. G. Hogarth,
Devia Cypria (1889) 94, 98-99; I. K.
Peristianes,
Γενικὴ Ἱστορία τῆς νήσου Κύπρου (1910) 510-14; I. Nicolaou, “Inscriptiones Cypriae Alphabeticae III
(1963),”
Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus
(1964) 199-201.
K. NICOLAOU
