ABSTRACT
Cyprus is an important island, one of the self-contained “small continents” as Fernand Braudel describes the islands of the Mediterranean. The much acknowledged significance of the geographical factor that has placed the island on the crossroads of continents, civilizations and maritime routes, has also made it an abode of human habitation that goes back in time for about twelve millennia. In the course of the next one and a half millennium, another major turning point was reached with the appearance of the earliest metal objects in Cyprus, attested to in the culture of Erimi, next door to Sotira. The Church of Cyprus was organized in fourteen dioceses and although originally under the Patriarchate of Antioch it was granted autocephaly, that is independence, from all neighbouring ecclesiastical jurisdictions, by the Third Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431. Ancient Cyprus emerged as a land of diversity punctuated by occasional conflict but also by creative osmosis, with an ever-changing identity.
