Leaving Syria, we proceed to Cyprus, which may be considered an outlying part of Palestine. Its size, its position between the east and the west, and its wealth in gold, silver, copper, and iron, made it an important station for the early Pelasgo-Hellenic or Græco-Italic race which passed westwards, using the Hellespont and the Bosphorus for ferry-places, and the Ægean Islands for stepping-stones. Thus Cyprus became the ‘cradle of Greek culture, the cauldron in which Asiatic, Egyptian, and Greek ingredients were brewed together.’ General Palma (di Cesnola)[600] has proved, by his invaluable finds, which have ‘added a new and very important chapter to the history of art and archæology,’ that early Cypriote art was essentially Egyptian, modified by Phœnician and Assyrian influences, and eventually becoming Greek. Hence, too, with the dawn of Hellenic civilisation, migrated westwards some of the fairest classical myths. Cyprus was the very birthplace of Venus,[601] an anthropomorphism which rendered infinite service to poetry, painting, and sculpture. Idalium (Dali) was the capital of Cinyras, Kinnári the harper,[602] the Crœsus of his day; it was the site of Myrrha’s sin and the death-place of her son Adonis. The latter, who corresponds with the Tammuz of Palestine and the Assyrian Du-zi (Son of Life), is made by Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii. 14) an ‘emblem of the fruits of the earth cut down in their prime.’ Here was the _atelier_ of Pygmalion, Fa’am Aliyun (_Malleus Deorum_), the hammer of the gods;[603] and here upon his breathing statue of ivory he begat Paphos, the king. Finally, here flourished the poets who preceded the Homerid chief; and here was born Zeno, the Stoic, the ‘Phœnician.’ The history of Cyprus begins soon after the beginning. An inscription of Thut-mes III. speaks of the ‘false breed of the Kittim’; and the island is everywhere on the monuments called Asibi. In the cuneiforms the word is ‘Kittie’: we also find ‘Atnán’: hence, possibly, the Hellenic ‘Akamantis.’ It is the ‘Chittim’ of the Hebrews (Joseph. ‘A. J.’ i. 7), and perhaps their ‘Caphtor’; the latter word, however, appears to be the Egyptian ‘Kefa’ or ‘Keft’ (a palm or Phœnicia), converted into the son of Javan and grandson of Japhet. ‘Kittim’ and its congeners survive in the Greek Citium, now Larnaca, from ‘larnax,’ a mummy-case, a coffin. I have already noticed (chap. iv.) the disputed origin of ‘Kypros’ and ‘Cyprus.’