Appendix E. The ‘Lost Site’ of Kinyreia

Pliny the Elder, in his list of fifteen Cypriot cities, states that “there was once also Cinyria, Mareum, and Idalium.” [1] A Kinýreion was also mentioned in the Bassarika attributed to Dionysios the Periegete (second century CE) in a passage listing the Cypriots who supported Dionysos’ conquest of India, which included “those [sc. who held] Kinýreion and lofty Krapáseia.” [2] On the basis of this pairing P. Chuvin seeks to locate Kinýreion/Kinýreia on the Karpass (the long peninsula stretching towards Syria). [3] A similar association is found in the late epicist Nonnos (fl. ca. 400 CE), whose Dionysiaka alludes to the poem just discussed in the same context. [4] Here the foundation of Kinýreia is explicitly attributed to Kinyras and is mentioned just before the site of Ourania—mentioned by Diodoros Siculus as being on the Karpass. [5]

But these delicate attempts to locate Kinýreia/on may be unnecessary. Pliny, our oldest authority, apparently had no inkling where his Cinyria was. Therefore his source did not say. For all we know, ps.-Dionysios, knowing no more than Pliny, merely joined it with Krapáseia for the sake of alliteration. Nonnos, following ps.-Dionysios, probably has no independent value; he may have joined Kinýreia and Ourania purely because of Kinyras’ associations with Aphrodite.

The answer may well lie in a different direction. ‘Cinyria’ could simply have been an obsolete or poetic designation for an existing city: Pliny himself has just cited several Greek authorities for ‘former’ names of Cyprus, some of which are clearly poetic or popular wordplays—for instance Amathusia and Cryptos (‘hidden’). An easy guess, given the tradition recorded by Theopompos, [6] is that Amathous had once been known as Kinýreia, perhaps in popular or poetic usage. This fact was then recorded by some Hellenistic geographer in an ambiguous context so that Pliny, finding no extant Cypriot city of the name, and knowing that the kingdoms had been terminated by Ptolemy, assumed that ‘Cinyria’, like Marion, had been destroyed. [7] A likely source is Eratosthenes, known to be one of Pliny’s authorities for the book in question, and to have written a work on Amathousian lore. [8]

C. Baurain has even hypothesized that Kinýreia was once an official name for Amathous. This depends upon an emendation and rereading of the Esarhaddon prism inscription, [9] whereby the otherwise unidentified site of nu-ri-ja can be effectively restored as Kinýreia. [10] This, he argues, would be best equated with Amathous—a major city at the time, yet not otherwise mentioned in the text’s list of kings and kingdoms. The name will have fallen from use, Baurain suggests, through some process of synoecism or refoundation, when ‘Amathous’ was promoted. The hypothesis is certainly seductive. [11]

One should note here the report of Étienne de Lusignan that Amathous was fortified by Semiramis after her husband Ninos, king of the Assyrians, conquered the island. [12] Much of what we know about Semiramis comes from a fragment of Ktesias (fl. ca. 400), who was attached to the Persian court. According to Diodoros’ summary, Semiramis made use of Cypriot shipwrights. [13] From this it is a fair and ready inference that the island was among Ninos’ wide-ranging conquests. But the fortification of Amathous is not in any ancient source I have found, and does not seem the sort of thing Lusignan would have invented himself. It is, however, something Ktesias could well have mentioned—especially given his diplomatic mission from Artaxerxes to Euagoras I, just before the struggle in which Amathous held aloof from the Salaminian king’s party. [14] Could it refer to an actual Assyrian garrison presence on the island—not of course in the legendary past of Ninos, but during the N-A period to which his exploits are best referred? [15] In any event, how a Ktesian detail could have come down to Lusignan is not clear (see Appendix G).

Finally, one may note that Lusignan, though he confessed ignorance about the location of ‘Cinaria’ in the Chorograffia, connects it with a village called Gendinar in the Description. [16] He was presumably motivated by the names’ similarity. Where Gendinar was located, however, is not clear. No other source mentions it, and it has been considered one of several lost or unidentifiable villages mentioned by Medieval or early modern sources. [17] But it is quite possible that Lusignan has simply given a divergent rendering of a known toponym, or that the intended form was incorrectly typeset. The closest match would seem to be the fortress Kantara—which as it happens is in the Karpass (it was rendered Candara by other early French authors). [18]