15. Crossing the Water

I have now shown that the evidence for a musical Kinyras is much more extensive than previously realized; that this was not a secondary accretion, but an early and essential dimension; and that his erstwhile divinity echoed into the Roman period as “Our Kenyristḗs Apollo.” We have also seen that his multifaceted reflection of pre-Greek Cyprus in IA myth implies that he was somehow established prior to Aegean immigration. So far as I can see, these findings can only be reconciled by accepting that:

1. Kinyras is at heart a Divine Lyre, akin to Kinnaru at LBA Ugarit and very probably other cognates on the mainland; and that:
2. This Divine Lyre was imported by one or more Cypriot cities in the LBA, from one or more specific origins and/or in a more general emulation of mainland culture. He then lingered on into the IA to be used differently by different communities at different times.

My phrasing shows that many specifics remain to be considered. What material is there in the Alashiya texts and other contemporary documents to support and elucidate the proposed importation of a mainland god? Why was a Divine Lyre imported at all? How and when did it develop so many nonmusical attributes and powers? What evidence is there in LBA Cypriot music iconography for the kinds of ideas associated elsewhere with divinized instruments and musician-kings? How and when did this ‘Kinyras’ come to symbolize the island’s pre-Greek culture in its entirety? I shall address each of these questions in turn.

That a Kinnaru-like figure could have been imported to LBA Cyprus finds good general support in the island’s cosmopolitan outlook at this time, and close political and cultural engagement with its mainland periphery—NK Egypt, the Hittite Empire, and especially Hurro-Luwian Kizzuwatna/Cilicia, and Syro-Levantine sites like Ugarit and Byblos in the core area of knr-culture. The relevant material includes clear evidence for ongoing cultic and theological engagement between island and mainland.

In one of the Amarna letters, an unnamed Alashiyan king explains why he has sent Pharaoh only 500 talents (?) of copper. “Behold, the hand of Nergal is now in my country; he has slain all the men of my country, and there is not a (single) copper-worker.” As Nergal is a Mesopotamian underworld god associated with war, death, and plague, the king seems to mean that a plague or war has struck his kingdom (one of his queens also died). [1] But ‘Nergal’ itself is a conventional Akkadian calque used in international communication, so that a corresponding local figure must be assumed—one of many examples of the period’s supralocal theological outlook. [2] We may reasonably suppose, a fortiori, that this unnamed Alashiyan god was equally seen as a form of Resheph—the Syro-Levantine god connected with war and bringing and averting disease and other disasters—since Resheph was himself early on glossed as Nergal at Ebla, Ugarit, and elsewhere. As a neighboring god, Resheph is also more likely to have had an actual cult on Cyprus, as he did in NK Egypt. [3] Note that the Cypriot Ingot God (see below) is of the smiting type often associated with BA representations of Resheph. [4] Related to this puzzle is a famous bilingual inscription from the sanctuary at Tamassos (ca. 375), where Apollo, also associated with plague, was given the Greek title Alasiṓtas (spelled syllabically), thus masking a pre-Greek god. [5] The corresponding Phoenician text gives “Resheph ’lhyts,” where the epiclesis is modeled on the Greek. [6] Here too it is unclear whether we are dealing with three originally distinct DNs, with the Alashiyan one implied or forgotten; or whether the latter already bore a form of the name Resheph in the LBA, and was then distinguished from his mainland namesake by immigrant Phoenicians of the first millennium. [7]

The same Amarna letter contains another illuminating detail—the Alashiyan king’s request for an ‘eagle-diviner’, presumably to help counter the “hand of Nergal.” [8] Whether this diviner (Akk. šā’ilu) sought guidance from bird-flight, or conducted lustration rituals through avine sacrifice or some other abuse, is uncertain. [9] But clearly Alashiya participated in the international circulation of scientific knowledge and cultic technique that is otherwise well documented between the Great Kings of this period. One may note here several Cyprocentric variants of the myth of the Egyptian king Bousiris: in one he is advised by the Cypriot mántis Phrasios to counter a nine-year famine by sacrificing strangers to Zeus (Phrasios himself became the first victim); in another version Pygmalion is the adviser. [10] A well-known parallel from within the Amarna letters is the statue of Ishtar of Nineveh, which the Mitannian king Tushratta sent twice to Amenhotep III. [11] The purpose of these missions is unclear, but obviously the presence of the divine statue was somehow efficacious; and it will have been accompanied by appropriate personnel, including cult-musicians to judge from Hurro-Hittite ritual texts involving this goddess. [12]

One should also note here a divinatory liver-model found at Ugarit and rather ambiguously inscribed as “belonging to ’Agp-ṯr, when he acquired the young man from the Alashiyan.” [13] The underlying transaction and relationships are obscure. But it confirms the circulation of esoteric knowledge generally, and liver-divinization specifically, between LBA Cyprus and the mainland. Recall the association of the Kinyradai with extispicy, and the priestly tradition that the art was imported from Cilicia. [14]

Several further texts bear on the acculturation or syncretism of Cypriot and mainland divinities. From Ugarit comes a Hurrian list of gods receiving sacrifice, beginning with El; alongside Kothar-wa-Hasis and several Hurrian deities (including Kumarbi and Teshup) is a little geographical triad of “the god of Alashiya, the god of Amurru, the god of Ugarit.” [15] It sounds as if the three were seen as analogous—presumably the lord of each local pantheon. This text, whatever the occasion of the underlying rite, is vital evidence that the state cult of Alashiya was seen as a distinctive system, and yet was equally incorporated into a larger theological community spanning island and mainland. If the “god of Alashiya” could be honored at Ugarit, the reverse must also have been true. This is an important parallel for Kinnaru and Kinyras.

The international profile of Alashiyan cult is further seen in another Ugaritian text, seemingly from the harbormaster to the king and dealing with a sale of ships. The official reassures him that “I myself have spoken to Ba‘al ˹Ṣaphon˺, [16] to the eternal Sun (Šapšu), to Astarte, to Anat, to all the gods of Alashiya.” [17] It is generally agreed, from the final phrase, that one of the parties to the transaction (a merchant?) was an Alashiyan. But how to account for the juxtaposition of these specific divinities? Should “all the gods of Alashiya” be taken in apposition to Ba‘al, Shapsh, Astarte, and Anat, so that these Semitic figures become representatives of the Alashiyan pantheon? [18] (‘Ba‘al’ is a theophoric element in several Alashiyan PNs. [19] ) A second suggestion—that the Ugaritian official has used local Semitic names to refer to their Alashiyan equivalents—would require such extensive functional correspondences between the two pantheons that some de facto syncretism of Alashiyan and Semitic divinities would have to be supposed. [20] Or are “all the gods of Alashiya” simply conjoined to the Semitic gods, so that the Ugaritian and Alashiyan parties to the transaction are both divinely represented? [21] This seems the readiest interpretation: it is only natural that, in an Ugaritian document, local gods be named and foreign powers treated generically. But even this interpretation would hardly prevent one or more Syro-Levantine gods from being recognized on Alashiya itself in some hybrid form. At the very least, the text reinforces the impression that the Cypriot and mainland gods were intimate neighbors.

Of the deities named in the previous text, Astarte and Anat are especially important given Kinyras’ intimate alliance with Aphrodite in our sources. Either goddess could inform the Aphrodite Énkheios (‘of the Spear’) known on the IA island. [22] Other mainland powers who seem to share attributes with the historical Aphrodite are the Syrian Ishara, resembling “the bridal aspect of Ishtar”; and Asherah, whose maritime associations equally recall Baalat Gebal (the ‘Lady of Byblos’) and Isis. [23] Of course, any such analysis of Aphrodite must equally account for the island’s own Great Goddess, whose cult goes back to the Chalcolithic period. [24] Figurines in clay and steatite show that Paphos was a key site long before its monumentalization in the thirteenth century. [25] Thus, in contemplating the influence of a mainland goddess on the island one must look to syncretism and theological reinterpretation. While the EIA must not be ignored as a fertile time for syncretic developments under Aegean and Phoenician stimuli, [26] the interpretation of local goddesses as forms of Ishtar/Astarte is a richly documented phenomenon of the LBA.

One example bearing directly on the Alashiya question is the so-called Ishtar of Nineveh, a form of the Hurrian Shaushka who was hybridized with Inanna/Ishtar in third-millennium northern Mesopotamia, apparently in the Old Akkadian period. [27] She was then brought westwards in the MBA through Hurrian infiltration of North Syria and southeastern Anatolia, emerging (for instance) as the patroness of the fourteenth-century Mitannian king Tushratta. After the Hurrianized kingdom of Kizzuwatna (Cilicia) was integrated into the Hittite kingdom during the early fourteenth century, [28] Ishtar of Nineveh entered the state cult there, where she joined some twenty-five regional goddesses who could be labeled with the logogram IŠTAR. [29] Her legacy is also seen at thirteenth-century Ugarit, where an Astarte-of-the-Hurrian-Land (‘Aṯtartu-Ḫurri) was venerated; and she was evidently the dynastic patron of Shaushgamuwa of Amurru (south of Ugarit). [30]

The goddess is linked to Alashiya in the Hittite Ritual and Prayer to Ishtar of Nineveh. [31] The purpose of the ritual, which derives from the MH period and Hurrian incantatory practice, was, in time of plague, to entice Ishtar of Nineveh—using “trails of edibles converging on the offering site” [32] —back from whatever foreign land she was lurking in, and thus restore the royal family to health and the natural world to abundance. After the goddess’s statue has been appropriately prepared, the diviner-priest (^lúḪAL) is instructed to work through a long catalogue of lands according to a fixed epicletic formula (“O Ishtar … [if you are in Nineveh] then come from Nineveh. If you are [in] R[imuši, then come from Rimuši],” etc.). [33] Alashiya occurs midway through this litany. To be sure, we seem to have a “boilerplate list of names” intended to encompass most of the known world. [34] Hence a very similar (though slightly smaller) catalogue, which also includes Alashiya, appears in another Hittite evocation rite addressed to the Cedar Deities. [35] Nevertheless, many of the places are indeed known to have hosted cults of ‘Ishtar’ in various guises (including Astarte)—Nineveh, Mitanni, Ugarit, Amurru, Sidon, Tyre, and Canaan, to name the more obvious. There is therefore no a priori reason to doubt that Alashiya too housed a goddess identifiable as Ishtar. [36] Also valuable is I. Wegner’s observation that Aphrodite’s birth and arrival to Cyprus, as told by Hesiod, is embedded in a succession myth of ultimately Hurrian extraction. [37]

The presence of some form of Ishtar cult on LBA Cyprus is corroborated by a fragmentary Hittite treaty with Alashiya of late date (perhaps from the reign of Tudhaliya IV, ca. 1245–1215). [38] After the enumeration of divine blessings that Alashiya will receive from honoring her duties (these include reporting military threats and housing and extraditing Hittite exiles as required), a damaged clause calls for placing the tablet “before Ishtar.” As G. Beckman points out, this is “significant for the religious history of Alashiya, because the Hittites insisted that such documents be placed in the temple of the chief deity of their vassals.” [39] It should follow that not only did the Hittites recognize a form of Ishtar on the island, but that this perception was shared by the treaty’s Alashiyan participants.

Nearby Ugarit provides another example of multiple Ishtars coexisting. [40] Besides the Astarte-of-the-Hurrian-Land (‘Aṯtartu-Ḫurri) mentioned above, the pantheon texts list an unmarked Astarte, and a further Astarte-of-the-Steppe (‘Aṯtartu-Šadi) who perhaps symbolized the dynasty’s pre-urban, Amorite past. [41] Recall that while Astarte is elusive in Ugaritian mythological texts and PNs, she was nevertheless important in the royal cult; an ‘entry ritual’ designed to lure the goddess to the royal palace seems to have contained a Hurrian hymn, and Kinnaru was one recipient of offerings. [42] Astarte-of-the-Steppe is also found in an edict from the reign of Ammistamru II (mid-thirteenth century) whose two brothers, after receiving their inheritance and a sentence of exile to Alashiya, were made to swear by the goddess no longer to challenge him or his descendants. [43] It has been suggested that Astarte-of-the-Steppe was invoked here as being a divinity shared by Ugarit and Cyprus, [44] though a status as dynastic patroness would seem to suffice. But one may at least assume that the princes, like others exiled to Alashiya, brought with them their own religious beliefs; they are thus a microcosm of cultic communication between island and mainland.

And so it is hard to avoid agreeing with J. Karageorghis that “at some point … there must have been some kind of syncretism between oriental and Cypriot religions.” [45] This has been equally inferred from the late LC II Cypriot goddess-figurines, going back to the fifteenth century, which exhibit close stylistic sympathies with contemporary mainland figurines, especially of North Syria, while equally maintaining inherited Cypriot features. [46] More general support can be sought in Cypriot sacred architecture of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries, which exhibits strong sympathies with mainland sanctuary design; Enkomi, Kition, Palaipaphos, Myrtou, Ayia Irini, and Athienou all hosted “free standing rectangular structures located in or beside an enclosed temenos, the latter serving to isolate the building and act as an area of cult activity in its own right.” [47]

Several later traditions, all difficult to evaluate, allege early Cypriot cult- or city-foundations instigated from mainland sites. Herodotos reports a Cypriot belief that ‘Aphrodite Ourania’—that is Astarte/Ishtar—had been imported to the island from Ascalon, held to be her oldest cult-site. [48] But as the latter detail is no doubt incorrect and due to local pride at Ascalon, and because this was a locus of Philistine settlement in the EIA, the tradition may present a special Aegean aspect and be of limited value for the pre-Greek period. [49] Possibly the Father of History conflated a specific Ascalonite claim with a general Cypriot awareness that their goddess had an early continental aspect. Pausanias at any rate gives an account evidently designed to correct Herodotos, in which Ourania is (in one sense rightly) traced to ‘Assyria’ (here Mesopotamia), while the inhabitants of Paphos and Ascalon share the distinction of next oldest cult centers. [50]

An apparently independent tradition was entered by Eusebios for the year 1425 of his lost Chronicle. This held that Paphos, along with Melos, Thera, and Bithynia, was ‘founded’ (condita/ektísthē) either by ‘Phoinix’—a standard Greek eponym for ‘Phoenicia’, by which we must also understand ‘Canaan’ [51] —and/or in connection with the abduction of Europa and the search for her by Kadmos ‘the Phoenician’. [52] The exact date of course has no real value, as Eusebios and the earlier Greek chronographers on whom he drew introduced many distortions in rationalizing their sources—which were myths and legends far more often than documents. But the Trojan War serves as one major anchor for all such constructions, so that this ‘foundation’ was definitely seen as predating the Aegean migrations to Cyprus. [53] To dismiss completely a LBA setting for these ‘Phoenician foundations’ because of their association with Phoinix or Kadmos would beg the question of what cultural realities underlie those myths. While Thasos and Thera are perhaps more readily connected with Iron Age Phoenician trade and settlement, [54] S. Morris has argued compellingly that those pursuits were “a revival, or survival, of Late Bronze Age Canaanite maritime trade”; of Levantine influence in the cult installation at Mycenaean Melos (Phylakopi), she writes that “appreciating these discoveries requires suspending the separation of Bronze and Iron Ages.” [55] In any case, the tradition of an early ‘Phoenician foundation’ at Paphos need not stand or fall with the other sites named; and there is certainly plenty of archaeological evidence from thirteenth-century Paphos for regular trade and cultural contact with the Levant. [56]

These multiform traditions at least represent more general memories of cultural commerce between island and mainland in the LBA, even if the complex lines connecting specific sites were largely effaced. One may recall here an alternative pre-Troy ‘Phoenician’ legend: according to Vergil, ‘Belos’ of Sidon had extended his power into Cyprus before Teukros came seeking a new home. [57] Specific traditions may nevertheless sometimes preserve historical content. Given that Paphos was rightly believed to have stood before the coming of the Greeks, should we not equally contemplate some Levantine ‘ctistic’ venture here? It would be natural to associate this with the monumental new sanctuary of the thirteenth century, and posit a reinterpretation of the goddess in terms of an international Ishtar-type. [58] Moreover, as I shall argue in Chapter 19, Kinyras’ foundation of the cult, which the Paphian priesthood regarded as a fama recentior, is in startling agreement with legends in Syriac sources relating to Byblos, a city with which Kinyras is often connected.

Given Kinyras’ intimate relationship with Aphrodite, his arrival to Cyprus is readily intelligible in connection with the importation of an Ishtar-figure. This would explain why at Paphos, for instance, Kinyras enjoyed cultic devotions within the goddess’s sanctuary, while the city’s Kinyrad kings served as high priests of their ‘Queen’ (Wánassa). [59] This hypothesis is well supported by material explored in Part One. We saw Hurro-Hittite sources illuminating the mechanism of cult-transfer through the ritual ‘division’ and transplantation of a god together with all its attributa—including sacred musical instruments, representing the cult’s own ritual-music requirements. As it happened, our best evidence concerned a form of Ishtar—evidently one of the most international deities. [60] There was also much evidence connecting Ishtar to stringed instruments, with kinnāru, zannāru, and zinar all defined as the ‘Instrument of the Divine Inanna’ (^giš.dINANNA and variants) in and before the LBA. [61] And we saw that the divinized balang Ninigizibara was described as Inanna’s spouse in an OB balang-composition. [62] Here we have all the necessary ingredients for a Divine Lyre crossing to LBA Cyprus as an integral part of ‘Ishtarizing’ the Cypriot goddess.

For the crucial question of how a Divine Lyre could engender so rich a mythological cycle as Kinyras enjoyed, we saw clear examples in Mesopotamian texts (Lugal-e, Gudea Cylinders, Babylonian Erra Myth), and probably the Hurro-Hittite Song of Silver, of mythological narratives spun around anthropomorphized objects and materials of cult and magic. In all of these, the narratological role of the personified item reflected the real-world position or function of the item itself. I have also argued that the same pattern underlies the several lamentable metamorphoses that afflicted Kinyras’ family members, resulting in cult-objects and processes (Chapter 12). We are thus justified in seeking further correspondences between the mythology of Kinyras and the realia of lyre-cult, particularly the intersection of both with Astarte/Ishtar/Inanna and her function as a royal patroness.

It is perfectly conceivable that, in importing some form of ‘Ishtar’ cult, LBA Cypriot kings equally emulated the performance practices and ritual poetics of one or more continental neighbors, the latter themselves influenced by Mesopotamian archetypes.

Shulgi and his successors had presented themselves as ideally able to conduct state rituals. David is depicted as doing so in the Bible, Saul verges on such abilities, and Solomon is distinctly Shulgi-like in his superhuman attainments, which include song-writing and the construction of instruments. [63] If a royal ceremony be viewed as a single act, the king (or queen) is its protagonist. Supporting roles like liturgical music—as clearly laid out in the Inandık vase—might then be logically subsumed in the royal performance. Compare the Ugaritian texts, where singers and other cultic agents, though undoubtedly present, are virtually invisible. Even in Hittite rituals, which give much more practical information, the cultic hierarchy remains rather obscure. [64] Recall that David led the leaders of his musical guilds and even his own Chief Singer. [65] The intermediate material from Ebla, Mari, and Ugarit is of a different kind, but the kinnāru(m) is consistently found in regal contexts. So too the ^giš.dINANNA in Hittite ritual.

These texts, I argued, adumbrate an ancient standard that the kinnōr-playing David consciously emulated. Despite later theological revisions, David remains our most vital and illuminating parallel for understanding the interplay of cult-object and mythological persona embodied by Kinyras. David’s rise to power in 1 and 2 Samuel is structured around his ability to play upon his kinnōr. He is qualified to be king precisely because he is an inspired ‘kinyrist’—able to effect spiritual catharses, establish political harmony, and communicate with the divine. Like Kinyras, David was a (would-be) temple-builder, a lyre-playing priest-king, a sometime lamenter, and both song-subject and performing role for later psalmists. [66]

I submit that one or more LBA Cypriot kings predicted David in presenting themselves as the ‘lyre-player’ king—as Kinyras. Where David is an historical figure dressed in legendary garb, Kinyras is the legend who clothes one or more historical figures. These two realms, the historical and the ideal, are bridged by the Divine Lyre itself, since such cult-objects were simultaneously material and mythogenic. [67] Its essential, original connection with royal ritual music will have made the Divine Lyre a welcome transplant to Alashiya, helping its state cult meet international standards. Associated ritual functions, to judge from the comparative material, could have included celebratory processions, ritual lamentation, and royal ancestor veneration on a Syro-Levantine model—a practice that in the Levant belongs preeminently to the BA, [68] although its survival and evolution can be traced at IA Paphos (Chapter 16).

As the Mesopotamian and Biblical parallels indicate, divinized instruments enabled a monarch to communicate with, and give voice to, the instrument’s master god. [69] For Gudea, this was Ningirsu; for David, Yahweh. For the Alashiyan king, it will have been the Ishtarized Cypriot goddess. ‘Kinyras’ was probably envisioned as her inseparable, lyre-playing consort, uniquely qualified to sing and do the royal deeds and songs she loved. As Frazer suggested over a century ago, his stance as Aphrodite’s priest-lover probably reflects some hierogamic relationship between king and goddess. [70] Obviously relevant is the early Mesopotamian concept that a king enjoyed his position by the grace of Inanna/Ishtar, with whom in Neo-Sumerian royal poetics he enjoyed an intimate, sexualized relationship. [71] A recurring motif is his preternatural beauty, by which, as a new Dumuzi, he wins the Divine Queen; similarly Kinyras, like Adonis, was famed for his beauty, [72] as were David and Solomon (the latter cultivating Sidonian Astarte). [73] While it is unclear how such hierogamic ideologies corresponded to underlying ritual systems, the Inandık vase graphically warns against wholesale denial of the sexual rites that scholars once commonly assumed.

Any or all of the aforementioned contexts could have entailed at least notional, and perhaps literal, musical performances by the king himself. I have argued that for Mesopotamian rulers, as for David and Solomon, dedication to music symbolized the peaceful leisure that resulted from establishing a harmonious realm. A. Caubet’s suggestion that the Hurrian Hymn to Nikkal from Ugarit was composed by king ‘Ammurapi himself [74] is perfectly plausible given the traditional attribution of psalms to David, Solomon, Mannaseh, and perhaps Hezekiah. [75] Even as a monarch was praised by his own court singers, he himself could praise the gods in song—especially his divine patroness, who upheld her protégé’s terrestrial office. Note that the Hittite king, in presiding over the state’s complex religious hierarchy, served nominally as high priest in the cult of Ishtar-Shaushka. [76] An especially striking model for Kinyras as lyre-singer and priest of ‘Aphrodite’ is the ‘Singer(s) of Astarte’ (šr. ‘ṯtrt) who was/were housed in the palace of Ugarit. [77] Remember that in Ugaritic usage ‘singer’ must often have implied kinnāru accompaniment. [78]

Also important here is Kinyras’ role as a diviner, given Ishtar’s muse-like function as a source of divine knowledge in royal prophecies, a conception going back at least to the OB period in Mesopotamia. The Paphian Kinyradai conducted extispicy within the cult of Aphrodite, who presumably guaranteed its efficacy (Chapter 16). A kinnāru may also appear in a Hurrian liver-omen text. [79] While the N-A royal prophecies make no mention of music, [80] an ecstatic prophet featured in the Ishtar ritual from OB Mari focused on Ninigizibara. [81] And of course the Bible provided abundant evidence for kinnōr-prophets—preeminently David—as mouthpieces of the divine. [82]

On the basis of comparative material and systematic considerations, I have posited a LBA Cypriot ideology of the musician-king who oversees a peaceful, powerful kingdom under the protection of the goddess, whom he praises, and with whom he communicates, through song.

These ideas are startlingly corroborated by the exalted and allusive symbolism of two well-known, four-sided bronze stands prominently displayed in the Cyprus Room of the British Museum. Many such stands (and tripods) have been found at sites in Cyprus, the Levant, and the Aegean—unsurpassed masterpieces of second-millennium bronze-work. [83] Their sides were filled with openwork decoration (ajouré) exhibiting a variety of subjects. Although they come from contexts as late as the eighth century, dating is complicated by the heirloom effect; stylistic parallels in other media show that these stands reached the peak of their development rather in the pre-Greek thirteenth century, with iconographic forerunners on Cyprus as early as the fifteenth. [84] Recent technical analysis by G. Papasavvas has proven that these objects originated on Cyprus itself, were purposefully exported, and eventually inspired local imitations (notably on Crete where the metallurgical technique was also borrowed). [85] While the stands are thus “uniquely Cypriot artifacts,” they were “produced under mutual, hybridized influences bearing the stylistic and iconographic imprint of the Aegean and the Levant.” [86]

The first of the two musical stands shows a seated robed figure playing a harp of Mesopotamian type. [87] He occupies the left side of the panel and faces a tree (Figure 38). [88] Each of the other three panels has the tree, repeated exactly, beside a further figure; but here the tree is always on the left of the frame, and the figures also face leftwards. Proceeding rightwards—as the musician himself faces—one comes first to an ingot-bearer. Next is a figure who carries two mysterious, long rope-like objects over his shoulder, which R. D. Barnett dubbed “cup and two napkins.” (Are these bolts of fine cloth? Sails? Nets? Soutzoukos?) Α final figure holds two jugs, or perhaps bundles of fish or dates.

For Barnett, the tree united the four scenes, and was their focus: it was a Sacred Tree, celebrated by all four figures. [89] H. Catling, accepting that the repeated tree made the four sides a coherent composition, countered that it need only indicate an outdoor setting. [90] The two interpretations could come together in a sacred grove (a known locus of dance-rites in Archaic Cyprus). [91] There is in any case every reason to accept that this is a Sacred Tree, that ancient motif that came to the island via Mitannian(izing) glyptic, and remained a frequent motif in LBA Cypriot seals and other media. [92] The Sacred Tree’s symbolism of fecundity is clearly appropriate here, given the three figures and the variety of products they carry. Barnett is therefore probably right that the Tree is the ultimate focus of the celebration, and so the intended recipient of the harper’s song. Recall the ‘Orpheus jug’ from eleventh-century Megiddo, where again a Sacred Tree was the focus of musical celebration, this time by a ‘kinyrist’. [93] In both cases, a goddess is probably symbolized. [94] We shall see precisely this combination of elements again in the Lyre-Player Group of Seals, with their winged lyrists, from eighth-century Cilicia (Chapter 21).

As Catling rightly stressed, however, another symmetrical element must be equally significant: the musician confronts the other figures. Given this composition, he asked, “could it not be the musician to whom the offerings are brought?” [95] The musician is further differentiated from the ‘porters’ by being seated, clearly indicating some higher status. The harper thus serves as a secondary focus of the composition, much like the lyrists in the model shrines discussed above—an intermediary agent of the higher divinity embodied by the Sacred Tree. [96] One thinks of Inanna/Ishtar in her role as royal patroness. [97]

The stand apparently combines the motif of the seated king or god receiving offerings with music as an index of the prosperous and well-ordered state. [98] Whether or not it portrays some specific occasion, the offerings are a generalized picture of plenty. (Compare Homer’s portrait of the ideal king, under whose rule a kingdom flourishes—unlike Ithaca, which awaits the return of its lyrist-king. [99] ) The idea is reinforced by the distribution of produce around the stand—this, with the central Tree and musician, suggests something rather like the center and periphery of modern theory. The Hittite KI.LAM festival, with its regional offerings and musical celebrations symbolically renewing the kingdom and its ruler, is a very suggestive parallel. [100] In any case, the imagery has inevitable political overtones. It is therefore surely significant that the musician is a controlling element of the composition, while being himself subordinate to the most fully centralized element, the Sacred Tree.

Even if the harper is ‘only’ a celebratory musician, he can still readily symbolize the harmonious working of royal power, just as the porters represent the fecundity that results. Yet this is but the mirror image of a king who advertizes his flourishing regime by assuming a musician’s stance, as did Shulgi, Ishme-Dagan, David, and Solomon. [101] There is every reason, indeed, to believe that the harper is enthroned. The same sort of double-value is exploited to good effect in many other ANE scenes where one cannot distinguish between royal and divine recipients of gifts. As Catling put it, there is “no telling whether he is divine or human, or even whether he is but an intermediary for the god or prince to whom the fruits of land and sea are brought as gifts.” [102] Yet it may be this very ambiguity that is the scene’s most important element. The harper may slip between musician, musician-king, musician-god, or king who serves as a musician-god to the still higher master-god(dess) in the Tree. Such multiple registers, simultaneously operative, would closely resemble what we saw with the balang-gods of Mesopotamia. And the same patterns seem to be illustrated by the Lyre-Player Group of Seals, which are probably the clearest surviving images of a Divine Lyre (Chapter 21).

Whatever the exact intention, the stand is important for attesting on Cyprus, already in the pre-Greek period, an ideologically-charged conjunction of music, metal, and kingship—all three important mythological attributes of Kinyras.

The second stand is open to a complementary interpretation. [103] Its main (upper) panels show, in order, a lion, a sphinx, a chariot and driver (with another figure flying through the air above), and two musicians attended by a server or offerings-­bearer (Figure 39). These instruments have been erroneously called lyres, but they too are harps of Mesopotamian inspiration—with rounder angles than on the first stand, but essentially identical to each other (though slight variations accommodate other elements of the scene). [104] Again the four images work together, perhaps “a procession and a ritual feast which includes music and drinking.” [105] Here too the seated musician faces all other figures; he is evidently the focus of the composition and the occasion and/or ideology it illustrates. [106] Clearly the symbolic treatment of chordophonic music-making on the previous stand was not unique, but part of a coherent iconographical repertoire on thirteenth-century Cyprus.

The present stand, however, emphasizes power and prestige over plenty. Mycenaean kraters with chariot-racing scenes are frequently found in elite Cypriot burials from the fifteenth through thirteenth centuries (LC II). [107] Sphinxes are an equally potent image. The most frequent monster in the corpus of stands, sphinxes enjoyed a long tradition in Cypriot iconography from the LBA into the Archaic period. They are found in various media—glyptic, ivory, gold, bronze, ceramic—and despite stylistic evolution are consistently connected with royal or divine figures and Sacred Trees. [108] A striking parallel are the ‘cherubim’, lions, and trees that adorned the (much larger) wheeled-stands built for Solomon (by Cypriot artisans?). [109] But the better analogy for our purposes is the juxtaposition of lyrist and sphinx in some of the eighth-century Lyre-Player Group of Seals, including one from Ayia Irini, near Morphou (Figure 46, Type IIc). [110] As C. D’Albiac remarks, “It is tempting to think that the memory of strange beings accompanied by a Lyre Player lingered at Paphos.” [111]

Also of interest is the representation of two musicians, one seated and presumably enthroned, the other standing and facing him. This composition as a type—that is, in its normally nonmusical contexts—indicates reverence of and/or offerings to a king by his subjects, or to a god by a royal, hieratic, or other devotee. The stand’s introduction of mirrored musical performance recalls the oscillations in Mesopotamia between musician-kings and balang-gods. Here again is the ‘confusion’ of musical performance by an actual officiant, and the (notional?) musicality of royal and/or divine figures. And of course the standing figure may himself be a king, performing before a god upon whom is projected this selfsame image of musician-king. [112]

Thus, both stands, with differing emphases, adhere to a symbolic system—one that is, moreover, consistent with what has been established for Kinyras. This was acutely perceived already by N. Coldstream, with whose observations we may best conclude:

Although the ideology of both stands accords very well with a ‘Kinyrad’ interpretation, an organological complication must be confronted. It would have been most convenient if the musicians were given some form of Syro-Levantine lyre. Instead we find Mesopotamian(izing) harps. Yet this is not a fatal problem. Actually it is quite suggestive.

First, for all we know these harps were locally called knr in the generic sense of ‘stringed instrument’. [114] We saw that several Sumerogrammic expressions meaning ‘Inanna-instrument’ embraced a variety of chordophones, including lyres and probably harps: in other words, precise morphology was less essential than ritual function and conceptualization. [115] If the Sacred Tree on the first stand does indeed symbolize a goddess, its harp would have been readily viewed as an ‘Inanna-instrument’.

Second, recall that in the Gudea Cylinders the balang-god’s function was, like an orchestra conductor, to supervise and coordinate the performance of all instruments. I have argued that Kinnaru played such a role on the basis of his unique divinization at Ugarit, where—as the ancestral lyre of the region—he presided over a complex environment of cultic music deriving from the convergence of several cultural traditions across many centuries. [116] Similarly, Shulgi and Ishme-Dagan claimed to play virtually all instruments—including the zannāru. [117] Thus, any musical scene with divine and/or royal significance is potentially relevant to the Kinnaru-Kinyras question. One may partially compensate for the ‘missing lyre’ by comparing the cosmopolitan musical ensembles of NK Egypt, in which both Mesopotamian(izing) harps and Syro-Levantine lyres and lutes are juxtaposed. Such harps are found again at Alalakh and among the Hittites, in both cases an exotic addition to strong local lyre traditions. [118]

Finally, it is very possible that when these upright harps came west from Mesopotamia—evidently in the early- to mid-second millennium—associated conceptions were also imported. Two implications must be entertained. First, the classical Mesopotamian tonal system may have played an important role in this international musical world—as is already suggested by the Hurrian hymns from Ugarit. [119] Second, the harps may imply a parallel spread of divinized instruments and the associated ideology. The stands may therefore portray Cypriot monarchs emulating a Mesopotamian model of royal music-ideology going back ultimately to the likes of Shulgi and Ishme-Dagan. [120] As with the expression ^giš.dInanna, we must remain flexible as to organology, since the ideas might easily be transferred from one instrument to another more local one—namely the knr.

Both stands present music as the controlling element of a larger symbolic system. This is already a startling ‘prediction’ of Kinyras, as an originally musical figure who subsumed further nonmusical functions. But the parallel is all the more striking for the ingot-bearer of the first stand, given the metallurgical Kinyras of legend. This strongly suggests that a metamusical Kinyras goes back in some form to the thirteenth century (at least); and the same conclusion is urged by independent evidence from Mycenaean Pylos (Chapter 17). This brings us to the puzzling disjunction between the versatile Kinyras of IA Cypriot myth and the powers and associations that can be reconstructed for a Divine Lyre à la Kinnaru of Ugarit.

I have argued that the Divine Lyre’s importation to Cyprus was one aspect of a more general theological engagement with the mainland, especially as concerned royal cult and its patronage by ‘Ishtar’. This context, I submit, can also illuminate the expansion of Kinyras, whose totalizing function as a culture-hero goes well beyond the usual type of prôtos heuretḗs, the legendary inventor of some one cultural pursuit. [121] The royal hymns of Shulgi and Ishme-Dagan proclaimed the king’s superhuman perfection in all civilized arts; similar ideas were applied to Solomon. Like Shulgi, Kinyras established standard measures and ensured that they were scrupulously upheld (“talents of Kinyras”). Both were expert diviners. [122] The ideal king also built and restored temples. Gudea built the house for Ningirsu; Shulgi’s father Ur-Nammu initiated ziggurats at Ur, Eridu, and Nippur, and restored Inanna’s complex at Uruk; similar works for Inanna and other gods are attested for Shulgi and Amar-Suen. Although these were historical projects by historical figures, their promotion entailed aspects of mythmaking, as seen clearly in the Gudea Cylinders. It is in keeping with this that Gudea, Ur-Nammu, and Shulgi all assumed the guise of master builder and brickmaker in poetry and/or iconography. [123] Just so, legend held that Kinyras built Aphrodite’s great sanctuary at Paphos, and invented both bricks and tiles. [124] As the ideal of royal perfection accounts for the metamusical Kinyras, so it explains the musical powers of Shulgi, Ishme-Dagan, David, and Solomon. Shulgi claimed expertise in both celebratory song and lamentation, and both were practiced by David. We saw the same dual musical function with Kinyras (Chapters 9, 10, and 12).

But how does this interpretation of Kinyras as a metamusical artifact of Alashiyan royal cult and ideology harmonize with the obviously popular character attested by IA Cypriot legend—without which, after all, we would have no evidence for Kinyras at all? This gap could be spanned if the idea was publically projected and instituted with sufficient vigor to become rooted in popular thought. [125] Such an impulse is clearly seen in the N-S inscriptions and iconography, although the Ur III kings were eclipsed in long-term popular memory and myth by their predecessors Sargon and Naram-Sin of Akkad. A better parallel for Kinyras in this respect is David, whose perennial legends preserved pieces of period propaganda—his kinnōr-playing among the most tenacious. The proposal is given further substance by two sets of LBA iconographic evidence—cylinder seals and votive figurines—which attest musical performance in the service of state cult at a fairly popular level. This material is particularly relevant to the metamusical Kinyras for its connection with metallurgy—his most prominent secondary attribute.

It is certainly startling to think that a legendary priest of Aphrodite and hieratic ‘kinyrist’ could be credited with metalworking. But recall the industrial use to which lamentation singing and other music was put in Mesopotamia. [126] Conversely, the conjunction of metal-processing facilities and cult sanctuaries at Enkomi, Kition, and other Cypriot sites reveals a systematic sacralization of the LBA copper industry. Evidently metallurgy was seen as a kind of magical art, its geological basis and human development both ultimately in divine hands. [127] This is the readiest explanation of the famous ‘Bomford Goddess’, a female bronze figurine of unknown Cypriot provenance and probably twelfth-century or earlier date, who stands upon an ingot. [128] H. Catling associated her with a then-recent sensation from a sanctuary at Enkomi—the so-called Ingot God, who also surmounts an ingot (Figure 40). [129] Though found in an assemblage of items dated to the late twelfth or early eleventh century, stylistic criteria show that the Ingot God—akin to the smiting-god type of BA Syria and the Levant—is actually rather older. [130] G. Papasavvas has demonstrated, through technical analysis of the seam between ingot and feet, that the former was added at a relatively late stage, transforming a Levantine type into a distinctively Cypriot idol—embodying and upholding, through a combination of martial and metallurgical attributes, state control of metallurgical production and distribution. [131] Now J. Webb has persuasively argued that a second chamber—the west adyton, whose cult-figure is lost—must once have housed a divine consort for the Ingot God, analogous to the Bomford Goddess. [132] These analyses lend strong support to Catling’s hypothesis that Cypriot metallurgy was a sacred industry governed by a divine couple—the goddess who guaranteed the fecundity of the mines, and the god who controlled and protected the industrial processes. [133]

What either would have been called in this period cannot of course be verified. [134] Yet Aphrodite’s epithet Kythéreia, which many have seen as a feminine version of the name Kothar, provides a probable way forward. [135] The pairing of Kothar and Kythéreia (or rather a pre-Greek forerunner of the name [136] ) would also conform to the well-attested ANE pattern of male and female divine couples sharing a name. Yet the hypothesis that a form of Kothar was present on Cyprus in the LBA—whether as a local interpretation of an indigenous smith-god, or in some more active guise—potentially returns us to Kinyras, as the two figures were eventually syncretized, most clearly on Cyprus itself. We shall return to these issues below (Chapters 18 and 19).

Whatever their names, the Ingot God and Bomford Goddess, along with the metallurgical workshops at sanctuaries and the first stand discussed above, all exemplify a larger program of “copper production and divine protection” going back to the fifteenth century and represented by a wide range of further material (not restricted to Enkomi). This includes miniature votive ingots and elaborate, seemingly ritual scenes on cylinder seals whose iconographic repertoire likewise features bronze ingots. [137] J. Webb has persuasively argued that cylinder seals—appearing in the fifteenth century under the stimulus of Mitannian glyptic, but soon developing a distinctive Cypriot idiom [138] —were a pervasive and effective medium for the dissemination of state ideology on the island, with specific iconographic registers targeted at different tiers of the hierarchy through which copper production was managed and controlled. Members of the higher echelon sported unique, complex, and exquisitely executed scenes using an internationally oriented symbolic repertoire. ‘Middle management’ was favored with simpler, repetitive designs that exemplified obedience to authority and maintenance of the status quo. [139]

This latter category includes fairly numerous scenes of infinite processions or ring-dances—indistinguishable performance modes given the circularity of the medium (Figure 41). [140] The dancers typically move against a backdrop of trees, perhaps a sacred grove. Such performances would naturally entail musical accompaniment, which we must assume is simply not shown. This may help explain the numerous clay rattles that have been found in mainly LBA tombs. [141] K. Kolotourou has rescued these finds from obscurity by stressing the subtle, yet potentially profound, psychological and sociological effects of collective rhythmic performance. [142] Moreover, several bronze cymbals going back to ca. 1200–1150 [143] may be confidently connected with state cult; using valuable material and needing laborious manufacture, these instruments must derive from higher levels of ‘musical management’, as was seen at Ugarit and in the Bible. [144]

Two cylinder seals of the procession/dance group show a figure carrying an object interpreted by some as a stringed instrument (Figure 42). [145] Unfortunately the identification is rather uncertain. In the second of these, illustrated here and dated ca. 1600–1200, the object may be a harp akin to those of the second Kourion stand discussed above, elongated to fit into the scene; it is held in an impossible playing position, but could be seen as an offering to the seated king or god.

Nevertheless, a chordophonic aspect to metallurgical cult-music is quite plausibly inferred from the hundred or so broken figurines found in the sanctuary of the Ingot God, where their placement around the west adyton indicates that it was his female consort who was the primary focus of worship [146] —an important point given Kinyras’ subordination to Aphrodite. As already mentioned, these figurines probably included choral groups around central lyre- and pipe-players. [147] They seem to go back to the main pre-Greek phase of the sanctuary (Sol III, LC IIIB), although they continued to be devoted (Sols II–I)—even as the sanctuary was gradually abandoned during the population shift to Salamis by the eleventh century. [148]

Both the glyptic dance-scenes and the presumed musical figurines from Enkomi indicate the musical enactment of state ideology at a popular social level, specifically in the context of metallurgical cult. This in turn provides both a real-world context for the blending of associations embodied by Kinyras, and a mechanism for elements of a symbolic system to persist across the period in which Aegean immigration unfolded. Such continuity-despite-change is paralleled by the late career of the Ingot God himself, who was carefully cached in a ritual, which, it seems, officially terminated the sanctuary’s use. [149]

A more precise understanding of the historical circumstances behind the Divine Lyre’s arrival and evolution is considerably hindered by the disputed problem of the island’s political configuration in the LBA, which was probably not static. Several scenarios may be suggested.

First, and to me most plausible, is that an expanded, metamusical Kinyras was already a more-or-less island-wide phenomenon by the thirteenth century. This may have been through the Divine Lyre’s use in a centralized cult at a time when all or most of Cyprus was under the control of a single royal house, say, hypothetically, in the fifteenth century under Enkomi; or in the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries (the time of Alashiyan correspondence with Amarna and Ugarit), with central power located perhaps near Alassa and/or Kalavasos. [150] Whatever the exact political arrangements in Alashiya, the close proximity of Ugarit and its diplomatic relations with Alashiya impose themselves as exemplary, although Syro-Hurrian material deriving from Kizzuwatna and North Syria also presents many suggestive parallels. With the later thirteenth century, one must allow for the possibility of political fragmentation and fleeting Hittite control. [151] Yet even here one could suppose regional inheritances of an earlier Alashiyan ideology, so that Kinyras might maintain a supralocal profile. In other words, at this stage Kinyras may have represented kingship on the island, rather than over it.

Alternatively, one may look to a specific regional Kinyras of the LBA who then became generalized in the IA. Here one must think first of Paphos, with which Kinyras is so commonly connected. The attractive hypothesis that Paphos was the principal sacred site of a state centered around Alassa, whose name is clearly related to Alashiya, needs further investigation. [152] Be this as it may, IA Paphos was one of the most conspicuous sites of cult continuity, and the goddess’s most internationally renowned sanctuary. The Paphian kings could therefore rightly claim inheritance of LBA ideology and traditions; because their kingship depended on the grace of the goddess, they ‘played the part’ of Kinyras in carrying out the duties of her cult, and called themselves his descendants (as we shall see in the next chapter). Following this hypothesis, Kinyras would then have become a magnet for collective memory, widely accepted by the island’s various ethnic groups as a figurehead of pre-Greek times. As other IA kings vied with Paphos in establishing rival ideologies, competing claims of Kinyrad ancestry might be advanced, or the virtuous Kinyras undermined; I have argued for both developments at Salamis, at different stages. [153]

On any historical scenario, Kinyras must be seen as a product of the LBA, deriving from the self-image projected by one or probably more Cypriot kings to their subjects. The original Kinyras resided at the intersection of royal ideology and sacred lyre-cult—that is, in the execution of liturgical music in the contexts of state ritual. After the ‘Great Collapse’, the old ideology rang on in popular memory under his name. His original attributes were best preserved at Paphos, to which we now turn.