There is no certainty as to the derivation of the first settlers. They may have been either Phœnicians or Cilicians, and thus only another branch of the great Semitic family to which the Phœnicians belonged. Or colonists may have arrived from Cilicia and Phœnicia at about the same time. There is less reason for believing that any settlers came from Egypt, although the first historical conquest of the island was effected by the Egyptians. This event took place about B.C. 1440, during the reign of Thothmes III. How long it remained under Egyptian control does not exactly appear, but it next passed into the hands of the Tyrians at a date prior to B.C. 1000. It was next conquered by Sargon, King of Assyria, and when, about B.C. 600, Apries, King of Egypt, took Sidon, he included Cyprus in his conquest. Amasis, the successor and murderer of Apries, completed the work of the latter. The Cypriotes then turned for deliverance to Cambyses of Persia, and Cyprus became a dependency of the great eastern power. Again the island was shaken by revolt, and the greater part of its people joined the Ionians in an unsuccessful attempt to throw off the Persian yoke. The Athenians and Lacedæmonians, after taking a portion of Cyprus (B.C. 477), abandoned their conquests. Then came the rebellion of Evagoras, King of Salamis, whose father had been dispossessed by the Persians, the result of which was that Evagoras recovered his own kingdom, but the island still remained tributary to Persia. It then fell under the control of Alexander of Macedon, and was held by his generals for a few years after his death. Ptolemy Lagus, or Soter, again brought Cyprus under Egyptian rule, and lastly came the arms of all-conquering Rome. We need go no farther. We stand in Cyprus, upon a battle-field crossed by the armies of every nation of antiquity with any claim to warlike renown, and find in it at once the theme of ancient poets and the prize of ancient warriors. So far we may travel in the track of war, but the history of art is affected less by the conquest of battle than by permanent occupancy and the more peaceful conquest of colonization. Thus we find Phœnician art leaving a deeper impress upon Cyprus than any other, and one to be detected even amidst the confusion of Semitic and Hellenic remains. This art developed, on the one hand, into something bearing a semblance of an independent Cypriote character, and, on the other, into a form more distinctively Greek. Phœnicia was the country in which the Assyrian and Egyptian elements of decorative art were combined, and being brought on the other side into contact with Greece, the history of Greek art is thus continued backward into a remote antiquity. [Illustration: Fig. 147.--Phœnician Vase, from Curium. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Mus.)] [Illustration: Fig. 148.--Phœnician Vase, from Dali, with Phœnician Inscription. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)]