11. Lyric Landscapes of Early Cyprus

Pindar, supplemented by the scholia and other relevant texts, has established a musical Kinyras some five centuries older than “Our Kenyristḗs Apollo” at Roman Paphos. Three initial forays into Cypriot iconography have indicated earlier horizons still, although such pieces, being mute, can never prove that ‘Kinyras himself’ is intended. Nevertheless the abundant visual evidence for early Cypriot lyre culture can hardly be ignored, given its contextual details and deep antiquity. It goes far beyond Greco-Roman literary sources to converge with documentary and iconographic evidence of the larger BA Near East.

Fortunately, Kinyras’ very name connotes sympathies with the Syro-Levantine sphere and its musical cultures. This provides a welcome first road-sign for traversing the lyric landscapes of early Cyprus. We shall see that the path from Syro-Levantine lyre morphology to the Cypriot term kinýra is not entirely straightforward. But patient exploration will clarify key historical and cultural issues, ultimately establishing the LBA as a viable period for Kinyras’ genesis on the island—a proposal that can then be refined in subsequent chapters.

The general dearth of LBA musical evidence presents a considerable obstacle to satisfactory analysis of the island’s ethnomusical history, and especially its transition through the major cultural developments of the first millennium. Conversely, that of the latter period, so much more conspicuous and abundant, is potentially misleading. In fact the earlier material—votive figurines (see below), rattles, scrapers, bronze cymbals, cylinder seals with dance scenes, and two outstanding bronze stands showing harpers—is ultimately quite illuminating for the Kinyras question, and will have to be considered in due course (Chapter 15). But first we must trace the history of lyres specifically, so far as possible.

Ancient Cypriot music iconography has never been completely assembled, thanks to hundreds of first-millennium terracotta- and limestone-votive musicians in collections around the world (Figure 27). [1] Found in IA sanctuary contexts throughout the island, these figurines include many groups of dancers around a central musician, typically lyre or double-pipes—an arrangement that, I have already noted, resonates clearly with Pindar’s portrait of “Cypriot voices around Kinyras.” [2] That the medium itself goes back to the LBA is shown by two well-preserved female figurines, one playing frame-drum and the other perhaps clapping, dated to ca. 1450–1200. [3] Some hundred such figurines were also found at the sanctuary of the Ingot God at Enkomi, going back to pre-Greek levels. Although these are so fragmentary that specific instruments cannot be identified, the superabundant IA specimens make it very likely that some or many of them were arranged in circular compositions around a central lyrist or double-piper. [4] This point has been neglected, so far as I have found, in previous surveys of Cypriot music iconography. [5]

Several past studies have focused on a basic morphological dichotomy observable in the IA evidence, which has been linked to Aegean and Phoenician immigration and/or colonization. The two groups are: This apparent coincidence of chronology and morphology was systematically elaborated by B. Lawergren as follows: Lawergren tacitly begins from a (presumed) lack of pre-Greek representations, but prudently avoids definite conclusions about the LBA island. [9] Deger-Jalkotzky more boldly suggested that lyres, previously unknown, are an ethnic marker of Aegean influx (for her other morphological criteria, see below). [10] Similarly, Maas and Snyder treated the Cypriot lyres as a variety of “Greek stringed instruments.” [11] Fariselli, in her valuable recent study of Phoenician music and dance, also assumes a basic contrast between Phoenician and Aegean types in discussing the symposium bowls; but what ‘Aegean’ means in eighth-seventh century cultural terms, and within the iconographic repertoire of the phiálai, is not determined. [12]

Closer investigation shows that the current picture is too reductive. [13] A lyre-less pre-Greek Cyprus is a priori unlikely given the many third-millennium Syro-Levantine and Mesopotamian specimens, especially since second-millennium lexical evidence shows the word knr extending beyond the Syro-Levantine heartland (Mari, Assur, Hattusha, Egypt). That the same could be true of LBA Cyprus is supported in a general way by the large percentages of Semitic and Hurrian names born by Alashiyans in texts from Ugarit and Amarna, since various forms of knr had been current among these linguistic groups for centuries before the Greek influx. [14] It would fully accord with the pre-Greek island’s cosmopolitanism, which, we shall see, finds clear musical expression in the Mesopotamianizing harps on the aforementioned bronze-stands (thirteenth-century). [15] These very instruments, admittedly, have been contrasted with the round-based IA lyres in attempting to distinguish two phases of Cypriot ethnomusical history. [16] The Kourion stands certainly do give a vital glimpse of pre-Greek musical conceptions, and bear importantly on Kinyras. [17] Yet it need not follow that lyres per se were a novelty of the IA.

Clearly even a single lucky find could alter the picture significantly. And as it happens, a key piece of evidence has been overlooked. In what follows, I shall present this ‘lost daughter of Kinyras,’ thus documenting at least one lyric dimension of pre-Greek Cyprus. I next reassess the ‘Aegeanness’ of the island’s round-based lyre-representations. We can then consider the implications of our new evidence and interpretations for understanding, in broad cultural terms, the morphological ‘confrontation’ seen in the symposium bowls. Finally, we shall see what this material contributes to the linguistic prehistory of the word kinýra, thus returning us full circle to Kinyras himself.

A lovely but broken faience dish, unprovenanced but dated by stylistic criteria to the fourteenth–thirteenth century (LC II), has been on display in the Cyprus Museum for decades (Figure 21). [18] It was tersely described by P. Dikaios in the 1961 guide: The bowl belongs to a larger class of “Egyptian or Egyptianizing pieces consist[ing] chiefly of blue green or white shallow bowls … and scenes with roughly drawn fish, boats, dancing and instrument-playing figures, hieroglyphs, and lotus flowers.” [20] They are variously held to be Egyptian imports, Egyptianizing objects from a Canaanite workshop, or local Cypriot imitations of Egyptian styles and scenes. [21] Some see this elusiveness as their most striking feature, with the more than 130 faience vases and fragments reflecting “the cross currents of cultural influences on the island during this period of eclecticism as no other single body of material does.” [22]

Dikaios declined to identify the left-hand figure, whose interpretation is made difficult by several breaks in the bowl. [23] Degradation of the glaze along the shard-edges has endowed them, and hence the join lines, with a darkish color very close to the lines of the figure itself, over which they crisscross confusingly. Nevertheless, patient observation and continual reference to the underside of the dish, where the breaks may be clearly distinguished, enable a confident, if not entirely complete, reconstruction. [24] She is in fact a musician who plays for the dancing figure, while Bes, patron of much professional music, especially involving dance, oversees the performance. [25] She is a ‘ kinyrístria’, wielding a lyre of Syro-Levantine type. [26]

Parts of the soundbox can only just be detected. Two give away details, however, are quite clear. First is the slight incurve to the arms where they join the crossbar. There is also a largish, bird-head finial on the right end of the crossbar, and perhaps faint traces of another on the left; there are close parallels in Hittite and Egyptian art, one of the latter featuring a lyre-girl with a Bes tattoo. [27] Two tassels are attached to the yoke, like those found on lutes in Akhenaten’s harem and Hittite/Neo-Hittite representations. [28] Our lyrist has a short cape, paralleled by female musicians on a Cypro-Phoenician symposium bowl and the cognate musical procession/dance scene of a ninth- or eighth-century North Syrian ivory pyxis from Nimrud (Figure 31). [29] She also holds her instrument horizontally, again as usual in Canaanite and NK representations. [30] The exact position of the player’s arms, and indeed whether both are shown, have eluded our repeated autopsy and comparison.

This musical reading is corroborated by several closely related bowls. One, said to be from near Idalion, is well preserved and shows another Egyptian(izing) female figure, in diaphanous dress, playing a lute against a background of lotus-blossoms (Figure 22). [31] A very similar dish in Leiden has a lute-girl with a Bes tattoo on her thigh. [32] A third lutenist, from a tomb at Maroni and heavily effaced, may be reconstructed through a close parallel from Egypt itself. [33] While all these scenes are Egyptian(izing), the Levantine lyre shows that the corpus is to be associated specifically with the international musical groups cultivated in the NK. [34] Wherever these bowls were actually manufactured, our kinyrístria —or at least her instrument—is ultimately ‘from’ the Syro-Levantine world.

The cautious will warn that ‘pots are not people’—that the dish was perhaps valued for its exotic imagery, and so need say nothing about contemporary Cypriot music. But the dishes’ relevance to musical reality is vividly supported by the processed tortoise shells found aboard the fourteenth-century Uluburun wreck. [35] R. Eichmann and S. Psaroudakes have concluded that these were intended for Egyptian-style lutes like those of the faience dishes. [36] The shells corroborate, materially, the circulation of musical technology implied by iconography and the lexical evidence. They join the ship’s cargo as a microcosm of LBA palatial exchange—recalling that Cyprus was, if not the ship’s origin, at least a major point of call.

Moreover, faience vessels were generally not mere exotica on Cyprus, but often employed in local cultic environments—as though ritually efficacious precisely by virtue of their precious qualities. Along with other, often imported luxury items (ivory, glass, alabaster, and ostrich eggs), the vessels “occur most frequently in urban cult buildings, where they probably served as votives and containers of oil, perfume, incense and other substances used in the cult.” [37] This pattern of cultic imports provides one motivation for the arrival of the knr itself to Cyprus in this international age. Of course, our new kinyrístria is just as readily connected with scenes of secular music-making and the collecting of exotic female musicians. [38] But a cultic role for female kinyrists is clearly seen in the Cypro-Phoenician symposium bowls, which, though later, perpetuate LBA guildic traditions (as known from Ugarit). [39] And conquering kings, in taking over the musicians of their vanquished rivals, must often have brought home cult-performers. Recall the foreign musicians employed for religious festivals in second-millennium Egypt, and the pervasive sacral ambience of Akhenaten’s palace. [40] These customs provide, I believe, the best explanation for a myth reported by ps.-Apollodoros: Kinyras’ daughters, having offended Aphrodite, slept with foreigners and ended their lives in Egypt. [41]

Our ‘lost daughter’ is the clearest proof one can reasonably expect that pre-Greek Cyprus was not a lyric blank canvas. Yet by reminding us that the absence of evidence is a risky foundation for historical constructions, she bids us wonder whether she herself represents but one contour of a richer—and perhaps older—landscape that remains as yet otherwise undiscovered. As noted above, it is not unlikely that some of the smashed votive figurines from Enkomi were indeed lyre-players. [42] And with several LBA cylinder seals showing infinite processions or ring-dances, one readily assumes musical accompaniment that is simply not depicted. [43]

Now it does seem clear that several IA round-based lyres from Philistia and Cilicia—other areas of the twelfth-century Aegean diaspora—do indicate an Aegean ethnic presence and/or cultural memory. [44] In the Levant especially, an unambiguous Aegean interpretation becomes much more compelling, given that ‘eastern’ knr-type lyres are otherwise so dominant. I have already mentioned the cult-stand from Ashdod with its ‘Canaanite orchestra’—where, however, the lyre is not the Canaanite form one expects. [45] The piece adds valuable nuance to the monochromatic representation of Philistine religion in the Biblical narratives, which do not distinguish it from the surrounding Canaanite environment. [46] A tenth-century seal from the same site shows a seated musician also with round-based lyre (Figure 23), [47] and another such instrument is held by a terracotta figurine from the same site, about a century later. [48]

Equally remarkable musical evidence is found in the reliefs of Karatepe, the eighth-century Cilician site whose inscriptions celebrate the restoration of the House of Mopsos to power over the Danunians in a kingdom called Hiyawa. The latter name is a normal Luwian truncation of Ahhiyawa, and is to be connected somehow with the Aegean/Mycenaean state of this name with which the Hittites periodically clashed in western Anatolia. [49] The bilingual inscriptions [50] record two forms of the name Mopsos—Luwian Mukšaš and Phoenician Mpš—which exhibit divergent outcomes of a more ancient labiovelar; this allows reconstruction of a name that is indeed found in Linear B texts as Mo-qo-so (/Mok^usos/). Whether this is Greek or Anatolian in origin, it was certainly at home in the Mycenaean world. The simplest explanation is therefore that the later Greco-Anatolian traditions about the migration of Mopsos/Moxos—to “Cilicia and Syria, even as far as Phoenicia”—do accurately reflect population movements at the end of the LBA. [51] Given this, it is most striking to see, in a banquet scene symbolizing renewed political harmony after civil war, a round-based lyre juxtaposed with a model of Syro-Anatolian type (Figure 24). [52] There seems little doubt that the former derives from Aegean tradition in the region, among the people whose designation “Half-Achaeans” (Hypakhaioí) was already obsolete in the time of Herodotos. [53]

These Aegean lyres in diaspora contexts are not merely potent symbols of ethnic memory. They were an essential tool for its preservation. The Karatepe reliefs powerfully illustrate what is anyway a natural supposition—that Aegean migration deeds were sung not only or even primarily in Greece, but ‘on the ground’ within and between diaspora communities.

A comparable situation on Cyprus must account for at least some of the many legends about migration to the island after the Trojan War; Teukros at Salamis and the Arcadian Agapenor at Paphos are two of the more compelling examples (see Chapter 14). I shall therefore begin surveying the island’s round-based lyres from what is at once the earliest such representation, and that which permits the most viable sub-Mycenaean interpretation. Even here, however, ‘Greek’ and ‘Cypriot’ cannot be entirely distinguished. So this case will also serve as an a fortiori caution against overly Hellenocentric readings of the abundant later material.

The piece in question is an eleventh-century kalathos from Kouklia/Old Paphos, roughly the same date and place as the Opheltas obelós that first documents Greek on the island. [54] In one frame, a warrior with a sword holds a round-based lyre and parades or dances (Figure 25). In another, a man probably sacrifices a goat or ram on an altar by a tree. The vase belongs to a group of eleventh–tenth century pictorial pottery used (among other objects) as status symbols in Mycenaean-style tombs of the period. [55] Figurative painting alternates with geometric decoration; on the whole the lack of precise Aegean parallels for their iconographical repertoire makes it best to describe them as ‘Cypriot’. Yet a subset contains representations of warrior or hunter figures, armed and engaged in activities described as “macho” or “heroic,” and novel with respect to earlier Cypriot iconography. [56] One striking case shows a man drinking from a kylix and holding a figure-eight body shield—an armament that was “uniquely Aegean with a history of apparently potent symbolism,” since it had gone out of actual use centuries earlier. [57] Sherrat attractively reads this is “a symbol of a specifically Aegean, Greek-speaking past … being used to analogise and define the present.” [58]

The Kouklia kalathos may well convey a comparable message, resonating with a traditional topos of Greek poetry, and especially epic—the bifurcation and/or conflation of warrior and singer, familiar from Achilles singing kléa andrôn on his lyre and Odysseus stringing his bow like an expert lyrist his instrument. [59] This vase is the best evidence we are likely to get of a sub-Mycenaean epic tradition flourishing in Cyprus. [60] Yet its Aegean aspects are not incompatible with Coldstream’s apt comparison to “Kinyras himself” on the strength of the vase’s Paphian provenance. [61] Sherrat qualified this by stressing stylistic differences from other LBA Cypriot musical representations (the harps on the Kourion stands: see Chapter 15) and the instrument’s presumed Aegean morphology. If he “is intended to represent Kinyras,” she wrote, “then it is a quite different Kinyras … the more recognisably Greek version of himself … the appropriation and transformation of an element of common Cypriot ‘history’ into something intended to be identified as peculiarly Greek-Cypriot.” [62]

While Sherrat’s emphasis on hybridity offers a useful way forward for considering Cypriot lyre morphology more generally, note that even her reading begs the question of whether these round-based instruments were, or were not, a novelty of Aegean immigration. S. Deger-Jalkotzy saw a further Aegean marker in the tassels on the Kouklia musician’s sword, comparing a similarly adorned weapon on a potsherd (LH IIIC) from sub-Mycenaean Lefkandi on Euboea. [63] Yet much the same streamers grace the lyrist on the eleventh-century ‘Orpheus jug’ from Megiddo (Figure 13) and another non-musician figure from the same site. Any Philistine/Aegean explanation of the Orpheus jug must account for the even stronger Canaanite elements of its style and iconography. Not least is the knr-shape of the instrument itself, which makes this figure more obviously a ‘kinýras’ than his counterpart at Old Paphos. [64]

A third Aegean lyre-marker proposed by Deger-Jalkotzky, not found in the Kouklia kalathos, is the ‘zigzag’ arms of several Mycenaean-Minoan images, [65] and two EIA Cypriot representations. One is on a late tenth-century vase from the necropolis of Kaloriziki (Kourion area), which in another panel shows the same (or similar) figure pouring a libation; together the images indicate a ritual involving music and drinking, whether symposium, funerary rite, or some combination (Figure 5.5n and 20). [66] The other is the famous Hubbard amphora (Famagusta district, ca. 800), a longtime centerpiece of the Cyprus Museum (Figure 26 = 5.5p). [67] Markoe convincingly explicated the funerary symbolism of its scenes, in which the deceased, enthroned amid symbols of death and rebirth, is honored by a lyric choral ritual. [68] This is a striking parallel to the Rāp’iu text from Ugarit, with its kinnāru-led musical ensemble regaling the underworld king who is closely associated with royal ancestor cult. [69] The Hubbard vase, with its well-paralleled Syro-Anatolian and Egyptian iconographic elements going back to the MBA, offers little contextual purchase for interpreting the musician’s instrument as ‘Aegean’ rather than ‘Cypriot’.

Indeed, two southeastern Anatolian cylinder seals, not noticed by Deger-Jalkotzky, also show lyres with both round base and zigzag arms (Figure 4.5d, 5e). [70] These seals are now dated to ca. 1800, and can no longer be explained through Aegean diaspora. [71] Clearly the combination of round-base and zigzag arms was an early areal attribute spanning the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. [72] Note too several further third-millennium Syro-Anatolian lyre-representations whose bases are rather indeterminate between round and flat; or which seem flat-based while having slightly zigzag arms (Figure 4.1c, 1e–f, 5a–c). Their relationship to the more rigidly defined ground of ‘East’ and ‘West’ is anything but clear. [73] Do they constitute a chronological transition from one to the other? A geographical one? Both? Their temporal and geographic distribution makes it perfectly possible that some at least went by a form of the word knr, despite not closely resembling the (mainly second-millennium) instruments we normally associate with that word. [74]

And so while Lawergren’s distinction between ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ lyre-morphology remains broadly valid, it is not clear just where the line should be drawn. Cyprus falls precisely within the ‘disputed’ area. If we persist in equating ‘western’ with Greek/Aegean and ‘eastern’ with Canaanite/Phoenician, the island becomes a passive matrix for the implantation of foreign lyric identities—an idea not merely politically objectionable, but inherently implausible.

To be sure, there must indeed have been a time when lyres were new to the island. But given the high antiquity of chordophones in the Aegean, Anatolia, and larger ANE, we cannot definitely conclude that lyres first arrived only in the fourteenth-century (our ‘lost daughter’), or that their morphology was only ever that of the Levant. For all we know, some more rounded shape had been current well beforehand, and even went by a name prefiguring kinýra. At this point, all options must be kept open.

While an Aegean musical presence on EIA Cyprus is certainly not to be denied, and an important sub-Mycenaean ‘lyric’ component is perfectly plausible, [75] the round-based lyres are not as diagnostic as generally supposed. Contextual details of the Kouklia kalathos can indeed confirm an Aegean cultural perspective. But even here we must resist segregating Greek from pre-Greek. And the Anatolian seals gravely undermine an Aegeocentric explanation of the IA Kaloriziki and Hubbard lyrists, which are just as likely to perpetuate an old insular tradition with broader areal connections.

We must seriously consider, therefore, whether the round-based lyres of IA Cyprus were in fact, morphologically and culturally, Cypro-Aegean hybrids; and whether similar instruments already inhabited the pre-Greek island. This hypothesis solves several problems in a stroke. First, it accounts for the early ubiquity of round-based lyres in the popular medium of votive-figurines. [76] Second, it allows for the rich non-Aegean iconographic and cultic elements in the relevant representations (Hubbard amphora and the pieces discussed in Chapter 10). Finally, while these lyres would no longer be unambiguous Aegean ethnic markers, they would remain compatible with early Aegean cultural expression in a ‘colonial’ environment, if other elements justify the reading (Kouklia kalathos).

Our new kinyrístria also complicates the ‘eastern’ lyres of the Cypro-Phoenician phiálai . Did Levantine morphology disappear in the less cosmopolitan EIA, to return with ninth-century Phoenician colonization? Or was there a continuous tradition, as yet unrepresented archeologically? Here the early votive-figurines are again important, but difficult to interpret (Figure 27a–d). Their soundboxes, though roughly-formed with a small band of clay, are on the whole distinctly round. Yet their arms vary between perpendicular (as in Aegean instruments) and divergent (as often with Levantine). Are these differences mere habits of workshop production, or do they reflect significant ethno-musical distinctions? In at least one case a definite squiggle has been introduced, presumably corresponding to the ancient zigzag element discussed above. [77] Other examples, rather indeterminate between round and flat bases, could be dismissed as aberrations of mass production. [78] Coming down to the Cypro-Archaic period, a handful of examples from Lapethos, an area with Phoenician associations, have clearly divergent arms (Figure 27b, c). [79] In other cases, including more carefully crafted votives of the Cypro-Classical period, one does find a few examples with quite rectangular frame, and/or with arms flaring outwards (Figure 27d). [80] All told it would appear that we must allow for ongoing Cypro-Levantine hybrids alongside Cypro-Aegean. Whether these can be pushed back across the period ca. 1200–900 is not entirely clear, though it would not be surprising in light of our new kinyrístria .

What is certain is that the island had developed distinctive instruments by the ninth-century, when Phoenician colonists brought their own contemporary models, as shown in the Cypro-Phoenician symposium bowls ( phiálai ). These objects, manufactured from ca. 900–600 BCE, have been found far and wide, including Cyprus, Greece (especially Crete), Iraq (Nimrud), Italy (especially Etruria), Iran, and Israel. [81] Despite the lack of examples from Phoenicia itself—excavation has been minimal at most major sites—early production centers must have been located there. [82] It has also been possible, especially by comparison with the Nimrud ivories, to distinguish broadly between Phoenician and North Syrian traditions (in this and other media) on stylistic and technical grounds—with the former more obviously Egyptianizing and favoring more symmetrical, balanced compositions. [83] There are, however, a number of intermediate examples. [84]

Establishing more precise geographic origins for specific bowls is famously difficult, with many factors in play. Plunder, deportation of craftsman, and willful hybridity underlie the rich, complex evidence from Nimrud. Itinerant/immigrant craftsman and local imitation are often supposed, especially for Crete and Italy/Etruria. [85] And the bowls were subject to wide circulation through the usual mechanism of elite exchange and desire for luxury imports. [86] But some broad correlations are possible between distribution and known historical phases. Winter’s vision of an exclusive ninth-century Greco-North Syrian market [87] was clouded by early new finds from Lefkandi (ca. 900) and Crete, which indicate parallel Phoenician activity. [88] It remains the case, however, that the devastations of Sargon (722–705) effectively terminated the older North Syrian trade westward. [89] The more symbiotic Assyrian policy towards the coastal cities enabled the Phoenician schools to continue their development and circulation. This later phase coincides with Phoenician colonial ventures in the West, the regular appearance of bowls in Italy and Etruria, and the use of Spanish silver for the phiálai . [90]

It has long been recognized that some portion of the bowls must have been produced on Cyprus. [91] Not only have many been found there, but some depict known items of Cypriot material culture, including ceramic vessels (Figure 28) [92] and wheeled vehicles. [93] Moreover, several contain Greek inscriptions in Cypro-Syllabic script. While inscriptions might be added secondarily to imported bowls, in one case (Cy11, Kourion) the owner’s name was clearly engraved at the time of manufacture, accommodated by the surrounding imagery. [94] Last but not least, Cyprus is the only area that has produced finds, in both votive and funerary contexts, throughout the lifecycle of the bowls. [95]

With this we may turn to the substantial subset of bowls containing musical scenes (Figures 29, 30). The basic motif is generally seen as a celebration of Astarte/‘Aphrodite’, [96] representing a multi-stage festival involving choral song by cultic groups around a divine image. [97] The singers supported by the fourth-century Astarte temple at Phoenician Kition are a much-cited comparandum. [98] One finds various combinations of god, altar, and/or offerings-­table (Cr11, Cy3, G3, G8, U6); a procession of usually female [99] musicians; dancers (Cr7, Cy3, G3); dancing musicians (U7, drummers); and offering-bearers (Cr7, Cr11, Cy3?, Cy5, Cy6, Cy7?, G3, U6). All elements are rarely found together (G3?, Cy3); usually the scene is more or less abbreviated. [100] Where the goddess scene merges with royal and/or elite banquet (Cy5, Cy6), a hierogamic reading does seem plausible. [101] That interpretation is more elusive when the context is banquet alone (Cy13, second band), although one might still fall back on ‘sacred festival’. [102] Sometimes a fragmentary context makes closer interpretation hazardous (Cy7, Cy13, outer band). [103]

It will be seen from the clearly cultic scenes that the makeup of the ‘orchestra’ is in principle very consistent, the full complement being lyre, double-pipe, [104] and hand-percussion (usually frame-drum). This combination has clear affinities with Levantine traditions going back to the LBA; compare the musician guilds of Ugarit, the Rāp’iu text, and the musical prophets met by Saul. [105] Considerable variation in the order of musicians suggests that this element is insignificant. Emphasis is achieved rather by duplication and omission. Thus U7, by showing only dancing drummers, spotlights this aspect/phase of ritual; but the orchestra is probably implied. From the remaining bowls, it is clear that lyres enjoyed some prominence. As Table 1 shows, lyres alone appear in every other clearly cultic case. Often more than one is depicted, recalling the massed kinnōr groups of the Jerusalem temple (and, I shall argue, the kinyrádai of Paphos). [106] By contrast, the double-pipe is never certainly multiplied, [107] and is sometimes omitted altogether. This cannot be coincidence, and we must conclude that lyres were especially prominent in the cult. Recall that the kinnāru alone was divinized at Ugarit.

As it happens, only the lyres exhibit clear morphological variety, between Lawergren’s ‘eastern’ and ‘western’ types. This evidence has been neglected in previous typological analyses of the corpus, even though “when neighboring cultures share the same symbols yet choose to represent them very differently, those differences should be culturally significant.” [116] Conversely musicologists have extracted the organological data from their larger iconographic contexts, without considering how the instruments support, complicate, or contradict prevailing classification schemes. The round-based lyres open analytical areas that evade the binary distinction between North Syrian and Phoenician schools (the instruments of these traditions being apparently too similar to differentiate). [117]

Note first that the eastern morphology dominates the early phases of Markoe’s typological scheme. With one exception (G3: see below), the Aegean (including Crete) has produced only eastern specimens. Cy3, also with eastern lyre, is again of North Syrian derivation, its instrument strikingly similar to that of the ivory pyxis from Nimrud (Figure 31), although its depiction of Cypriot vessel-forms strongly suggests an insular workshop. [118] Of Phoenician or intermediate style are OJA, Cr11, G8.

By contrast the four ‘western’ examples (G3, Cy5, Cy7, Cy13) come from phases II–IV, suggesting a secondary development. It can hardly be coincidence that three have been found on Cyprus itself. Here we must accept the sane principle that, “all other factors being equal, a trait or artifact type probably originated somewhere near the center of its distribution.” [119] This is confirmed by the presence of kypriaká in Cy5 and Cy13. [120] Moreover, the instrument on Cy7 (Figure 30) has a decorative element on one of its arms that must correspond to the floral (papyrus?) detail found on lyres in the more refined limestone statuary of the Cypro-Archaic and -Classical periods—for example an Egyptianizing sculpture (ca. 575) said to be from Golgoi (the arm is topped by a lion or gryphon head: Figure 32). [121] These floral lyres are a vivid indication of a vibrant insular tradition going back to the Archaic period and doubtless beyond, [122] and call to mind early Cypriot singers like Stasinos and Stasandros. [123] Note too that these Cypriot lyres are apparently smaller, by and large, than those in Archaic representations of clear Greek provenance. The same seems true of the Hubbard lyrist, whose instrument might otherwise appear somewhat inexpertly rendered. [124] These impressions are corroborated by countless terracotta votives of the Cypro-Geometric and -Archaic periods, which invariably show quite small instruments. It is thus possible that their pitch-range was often somewhat higher than Greek models. [125] The way they are held is also distinctive, almost ‘cradling’ [126]

This clear evidence of local Cypriot preference in the phiálai should be compared, and contrasted, with the numerous finds from Italy/Etruria where the cult-music type-scene is strikingly absent. [127] Its retention and development on Cyprus through the final typological phases must be due to the fundamental importance there of ‘Aphrodite’/Astarte cult. [128] This also accounts for the ‘confrontation’ of ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ morphologies within an otherwise constant iconographic repertoire. For, while the Cypriot and Phoenician versions of the goddess were readily identifiable in broad terms (hence the shared iconography), [129] the respective cultural spheres maintained separate senses of identity (whence the variation of detail).

Undoubtedly the morphological distinction implies complex social perceptions that developed and shifted, on a regional basis, with changing Phoenician political fortunes and other demographic trends. While most such nuances now escape us, they should be recognized as ‘known unknowns’ that can at least help us frame relevant questions. What should we make, for instance, of Cy6, which, though presenting an ‘eastern’ instrument, carries a Greek inscription in the Cypro-Syllabic script, while its find location (Kourion) is not especially distinguished as an area of Phoenician settlement? Is it significant that the later typological phases are represented on Cyprus by only a single eastern specimen? Should the presence of an early ‘eastern’ example at Idalion be connected with Levantine metal-hunting in the Troodos foothills? Should we associate the unusual model from Golgoi with the undeciphered language there? [130] Or does elite exchange render any such regional analysis futile within the island? After all, while the iconographic distinction between contemporary Cypriot and Syro-Levantine lyres is clearly intentional and culturally significant, each bowl enjoyed a life of its own, and there is no practical basis for segregating one ethnicity from another in a bowl’s after-market existence. On the contrary, Cy6 suggests a quite general intermingling of Cypriots of all ethnic backgrounds in the context of elite drinking rituals during the eighth and seventh centuries.

The Olympia bowl (Figure 33) is the only ‘western’ lyre found in Greece itself. But this is no evidence of local manufacture for Aegean Greek consumption. Who would argue this for the other Aegean finds with ‘eastern’ lyres? Cr11, one should note, contains a Phoenician owner’s inscription, and of course we now know that there was an important Phoenician presence on Crete at Kommos. To be sure, the Lesbian poet Alkaios (ca. 600) knew of the ‘Phoenician lyre’ ( phοínix , presumably in a sympotic context). But it is precisely the exotic nature of both bowl and instrument that best accounts for their presence in the Aegean and the poetics of Alkaios (see further below). The Olympia bowl is therefore most economically explained in the same terms, with the exception that it must be traced to an extra-Aegean source where round-based lyres were indeed established. Once again the obvious candidate is a Cypriot workshop. Stylistically the bowl seems to stand midway between the North Syrian and Phoenician schools. [131] That it is inscribed with an Aramaean name is not problematic, given that Cy3, though produced locally, adheres to the North Syrian style (see above). Moreover, the island has produced a number of early (eighth-seventh century) inscriptions in non-Phoenician Semitic languages, attesting “the strong interaction among peoples on the island.” [132] The bowl then came through elite circulation to Greece, where the lyre’s broad similarity to contemporary Aegean instruments would have made it both exotic and familiar—though of course how it passed from Aramaean hands to its final deposition at Olympia remains a mystery.

Thus, in the symposium bowls too the ‘western’ lyre-morphology presents a distinctly Cypriot aspect. With their temple-orchestra deployment, these instruments are a world apart from the Aegean. But despite the clear kinship of this performance tradition with the Levant, we need not dismiss its insular manifestation as secondary and derivative; nor assume that it dates only from the Phoenician colonial period. This may well be a mirage of the phiálai and novel iconographic fashions. Historical connections with Syro-Levantine cult practice, in my view, must be traced to the LBA (see Chapter 15), although one may allow a syncretic reconvergence in the ninth-eighth centuries.

The natural implication of our new ‘lost daughter’ is that one or more pre-Greek forms of the word knr was/were already current on the LBA island, and persisted into the IA as Greek-Cypriot kinýra. There would remain a certain dissonance between the dominant round-based Cypriot morphology and the Syro-Levantine shapes with which one usually associates knr. Some may therefore suspect that both morphology and word disappeared from Cyprus after the LBA, to reappear with Phoenician settlement in the ninth century. Nevertheless, I believe this hypothesis of ‘double importation’ can be confidently rejected, at least as regards the word.

Certainly the symposium bowls leave no doubt that a ‘proper’ Phoenician dialect form with ū (*kinnūr) was known on Cyprus from at least ca. 900. [133] Accordingly, some scholars believe this was when kinýra first came into Greek, [134] just as Lawergren saw here the first arrival of Levantine lyres to the island. Proponents of these views also connect both ‘Gk.’ kinýra and Phoen. *kinnūr (as opposed to Heb. kinnōr) with a first-millennium ‘Phoenician Shift’, whereby the inherited sound of the Canaanite Shift (ā > ō) further developed to ū in various dialects; the evidence for this is a recurrent oscillation between ō and ū in the Assyrian, Greek, and Latin representation of Phoenician words and names. [135]

But neither of these points is decisive. First, the bowls are misleading. Consider that, if one were to judge from iconography alone, the bowls would suggest that ensemble playing was an innovation of the ninth century. But the Rāp’iu text from Ugarit proves that this was not the case. [136] A novelty in artistic representation need not imply a corresponding novelty in what is represented.

Nor can the Phoenician Shift be so rigidly applied. The evidence for LBA Canaanite vocalization is ambiguous, since neither the cuneiform of the Amarna letters (with transcriptions of Canaanite words and names), nor the special semi-syllabic Egyptian orthography used in the second millennium for writing foreign words (especially Canaanite), possessed separate signs for distinguishing ō from ū. [137] Therefore it is impossible to establish an exact value between ō and ū during the LBA, and it may in any case have varied by dialect.

A valuable parallel here is Gk. khrȳsós (‘gold’), already attested in Linear B as ku-ru-so. The long upsilon reveals that this was borrowed from a Canaanite dialect form *ḥarūṣ(u), by contrast with Akk. and Ug. ḫurāṣu. [138] The Mycenaean form indicates that the Canaanite sound was closer to ū than ō, since these two values were distinguished in the Linear B syllabary. Even if this word entered Greek indirectly, with an intermediary language introducing an adjustment of ō towards ū, khrȳsós remains a clear case of the sound of the Canaanite Shift reappearing elsewhere as ū already in the LBA. And this makes a contemporary adaptation of kinýra perfectly possible.

With kinýra , however, the Semitic original’s long penultimate vowel has been reduced—this time, certainly, due to the phonetic impact of an adapting language. [139] This would naturally occur in a tongue for which, unlike Greek, vowel length was not phonemic (that is, did not contribute to distinctions of meaning). Such was probably the case with the pre-Greek language(s) of the Aegean. [140] Whether the same was true on pre-Greek Cyprus is unclear, but E. L. Brown has reasonably suggested that kinýra could be due to “a mere underdifferentiation of the o vowel” in a “Cypro-Minoan model.” [141] Cyprus would indeed seem the obvious place for the adaptation, thanks to the prominent position occupied there by Kinyras and now “Our Kenyristḗs Apollo.” [142] Is it coincidence that Gk. mýrrha has also lost its Semitic vowel-length, and is so closely associated with Kinyras and Cyprus? [143]

Vital support for the LBA chronology proposed here comes from the PN Kinyras (ki-nu-ra) at Mycenaean Pylos; I shall explore the contextual details fully in Chapter 17, showing that a derivation from knr is indeed probable, and perfectly compatible with the special Cypriot associations I have proposed.

So I find no positive linguistic reason to exclude a pre-Greek antecedent of kinýra from LBA Cyprus, and good circumstantial evidence to support the hypothesis. Moreover, it can be corroborated by an independent line of argument.

As mentioned above, Alkaios (ca. 600) is our earliest source for an instrument called phοínix , ‘the Phoenician (instrument)’. This and several related forms ( phoiníkion , lyrophoínix , lyrophoiníkion ) are mentioned by Herodotos, Aristoxenos, the Aristotelian Problems, and an array of later historiographical and lexical sources. Some kind of lyre is definitely intended, and the ancient authors draw connections with Phoenicia, Syria, and Libya (presumably vis-à-vis the Punic colonies in north Africa). [144] Now a general Greek awareness of Phoenician instruments in the Archaic period is not in itself surprising. The discovery of the bowls in Aegean contexts is but one of many signs of an ongoing Phoenician cultural presence. Besides the stereotyped representation of the Phoenicians by Homer, [145] Sappho’s colorful description of Hektor and Andromakhe’s arrival at Troy amidst mingling myrrh, cassia, and frankincense—aromatics often imported via Phoenicia—is a good parallel for her countryman Alkaios’ familiarity with the phοínix . [146] The puzzle is rather that Greek sources never use kinýra in an unambiguously Phoenician context. Foreign instruments, admittedly, often received Greek nicknames (for instance paktís and trígōnos , applied to harps arriving from points east). [147] Nevertheless one would really expect kinýra to have been mentioned somewhere among the numerous late Classical and Hellenistic sources that attest a general Greek interest in foreign instruments. [148] After all, the Phoenician nábla(s) , sibling to the knr, enjoyed a vogue in the fourth-century, appearing several times in the fragments of Attic comedy, apparently as a novelty. [149] Kinýra , however, is missing even from the long list of foreign instruments drawn up by Aristoxenos around this same time—in which, however, he does include phoínix ! [150]

We must conclude therefore that, by phοínix , Alkaios and other Greeks meant precisely what a Phoenician would have called *kinnūr—and not only Tyrians and Sidonians, but Phoenician Cypriots too. The absence of kinýra from Phoenician contexts, therefore, is strongly marked, and requires explanation. The word was somehow unavailable for designating the Phoenician instruments with whose name it was nevertheless cognate. Evidently kinýra was already established in the Greek mind with different cultural associations, although of course this lexical situation must itself be sought at the edge of the Canaanite/Phoenician linguistic sphere. The solution to this puzzle is that the Cypriot kinýra , though distinct from the Greek kithára , was ‘Greek enough’ not to call for special comment. [151] If it seem strange that Alkaios and others be so attuned to intra-Cypriot organological nuances, consider that the Cypro-Phoenician symposium bowls present just such a careful distinction of Cypriot and Phoenician lyre-types. In other words, any awareness of Phoenician lyres in Archaic Greece (Alkaios, phiálai ) will have been matched, a fortiori, by familiarity with models current among Greek-Cypriots. This is hardly surprising given the ongoing musical interaction between Cyprus and the Aegean, discussed above. [152]

It follows that kinýra was current on Cyprus prior to ca. 900, as already predicted. The round-based instruments whose popular Cypriot character is guaranteed by countless early terracotta votives, many predating the Phoenician colony period—these will be the lyres anciently known as kinýra . [153] There remains the discrepancy between these EIA Cypriot lyres and the shapes scholars usually associate with knr. But semantic/morphological shifts are quite common in the history of instruments. Many lyre names, for instance, persisted unchanged despite the almost universal transition to lutes in late antiquity and the early medieval period. [154] I have also emphasized that LBA Cyprus could easily have housed wider lyric variety than is yet attested, with older insular shapes akin to the traditions of EBA–MBA southern Anatolia and North Syria—the “lands around Cyprus.” As I stressed at the outset, [155] we must not be too categorical in assigning knr to one particular morphology. Its general applicability to the core Syro-Levantine types of the second and first millennia is of course undoubted. But we do not know how the correspondence of name and shape may have fluctuated along the cultural interfaces of the periphery at different periods.

This investigation, though raising many questions, has reached some definite conclusions. Considerable minor variations in the early iconographical record attest both the internal diversity of the island’s lyric culture, and its overall distinctiveness as an insular tradition. There is no doubt that Aegean and Levantine influences were important determining factors. But the island was more than a receptive matrix. While the pre-Greek period remains largely a blank, we must not rule out an early lyric tradition here which had already differentiated itself from the Levant before the fourteenth century and our long lost ‘daughter of Kinyras’. She, in any case, now makes it as certain as can be that the pre-Greek island had its own lyric tradition(s), and that some form of knr was already established in Cypriot usage, being applied to instruments of contemporary Levantine morphology and very possibly earlier insular types. Whether the Aegean influx induced a general transformation from ‘eastern’ to ‘western’ morphology, or whether round-based instruments were already established on the pre-Greek island alongside Levantine shapes, this pre-Greek lexical forerunner of kinýra persisted into the IA as the standard Greek-Cypriot word for ‘lyre’, being applied to the characteristically Cypriot instruments of the early votives; it thus resisted absolute identification with the models brought by Phoenician colonists ca. 900. Yet, given the vigorous display of contemporary Phoenician tradition in the symposium bowls and the Phoenicians’ ongoing cultural presence, one should not be surprised to find traces of Levantine lyre-morphology enduring into later times. I would therefore conclude by noting, besides the occasional votives mentioned above, [156] a particularly exquisite sculpted instrument of the Hellenistic period that maintains the Archaic tradition of floral decoration (Figure 34). [157] One could attribute its flat base to the Greek kithára’s impact, but that outwardly flaring arms make ongoing Levantine influence equally likely or more so.