The island of CYPRUS, which lay off the southern coast of Asia Minor, was one of the most celebrated of those generally called the Greek Islands, though it had, probably, less claim to this designation, and was more Oriental than any of the others. It was, as was natural from its position, early settled by the Phœnicians, Herodotus speaking of the inhabitants as a very mixed race. It is not possible to determine which of several of its towns was the most ancient; but, in the early Jewish Scriptures, we read of “ships of Chittim,” probably those of Citium, one of its chief towns. In later days, Paphos, itself of remote antiquity, became the capital of the island, and the residence, as we learn from the Acts of the Apostles, of the Roman proconsul. As the centre of the worship of Venus, which is noticed so early as Homer, as well as by many later writers, Paphos was greatly visited by strangers, among whom Tacitus mentions, particularly, the Emperor Titus, when on his way to besiege Jerusalem (Hist. ii. 3-4). Her symbol, or idol, was a purely Asiatic type, and consisted merely of an upright, conical, and unsculptured stone. The history of the island was a very chequered one, and there were but comparatively short intervals of time when it was really under its own native rulers; more frequently it was held by one or other of the continental empires near it which happened for the time to be the most powerful. Thus it was, usually, in the hands of the Persians, till the overthrow of that power by Alexander, when it was secured by the Ptolemies, in whose diadem it was the most precious jewel. In the end it was, of course, seized by the Romans, becoming first an Imperial province, and then, by the arrangement of Augustus, directly under the Senate. In later times, it was the seat of a bishopric, one of the most famous of the bishops of Paphos being the celebrated Epiphanius. During the Crusades, Richard Cœur de Lion captured the island and gave it to Guy de Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, whence the title of kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem, adopted, till recent times, by some of the monarchs of Western Europe. In recent times, the Island of Cyprus has proved one of the most abundant sources of precious remains of antiquity, excavated chiefly by Mr. R. H. Lang and General Palma di Cesnola. The former gentleman has published in the Numismatic Chronicle (vol. xi. New Series, 1870), an account of the silver coins, many of native Cypriote manufacture, he lighted on while digging out an ancient temple at Dali (Idalium), in 1869. The coins were found at two several times, and, from the way in which some of them adhered together, had probably been enclosed in a bag, though no traces of it were detected. Mr. Lang believed he could trace from them the existence of the six or seven distinct kingdoms, which we know, from other sources, once existed in this island. The earliest of these coins are, perhaps, as old as the middle of the sixth century B.C.