PAPHOS, an ancient city and sanctuary on the west coast of Cyprus. The sanctuary and older town (Palaepaphos) lie at Kouklia, about 20 m. west of Limasol, about a mile inland on the left bank of the Diorizo river (anc. Bocarus). New Paphos (Papho or Baffo), which had already superseded Old Paphos in Roman times, lies 10 m. farther west, and 1 m. south of modern Ktima, at the other end of a fertile coast-plain. Paphos was be lieved to have been founded either by the Arcadian Agapenor, re turning from the Trojan War (c. 1180 B.c.), or by his reputed contemporary Cinyras, whose clan retained royal privileges down to the Ptolemaic conquest of Cyprus in 295 B.C., and held the Paphian priesthood till the Roman occupation in 58 B.C. The town certainly dates back to the close of the Bronze age (c. 1200 B.C.) and had a king Eteandros among the allies of Assur-bani-pal of Assyria in 668 B.C. In Hellenic times the kingdom of Paphos was only second to Salamis in extent and influence.
Paphos owes its ancient fame to the cult of the "Paphian god dess (7) HacSta avaaaa, or 7) HacNa, in inscriptions, or simply ©d), a nature-worship like that of Phoenician Astarte. The Greeks identified both this and a similar cult at Ascalon with their own worship of Aphrodite (q.v.) and localized at Paphos the legend of her birth from the sea foam, accumulated here in masses on certain winds which also cause remarkable jets of spray. Her grave also was shown in this city. She was worshipped, under the form of a conical stone, in an open-air sanctuary not unlike those of Mycenaean Greece, the general form of which is known from late gems, and Roman coins; its ground plan was discovered by excavations in 1888. It suffered repeatedly from earthquakes,
and was rebuilt more than once ; in Roman times it consisted of an open court, with porticos and chambers on three sides, and a gate way through them on the east.
After the foundation of New Paphos and the extinction of the Cinyrad and Ptolemaic dynasties, the importance of the Old Town declined rapidly. Though restored by Augustus and re named Sebaste, after the great earthquake of 15 B.C., and visited in state by Titus before his Jewish War in A.D. 70, it was ruinous and desolate by Jerome's time; but the prestige of its priest-kings partly lingers in the exceptional privileges of the patriarch of the Cypriote Church (see CYPRUS, CHURCH OF).
New Paphos became the administrative capital of the whole island in Ptolemaic and Roman days, as well as the head of one of the four Roman districts ; it was also a flourishing commercial city famous for olive oil, and for "diamonds" of medicinal power. In A.D. 960 it was attacked and destroyed by the Saracens. The site shows a Roman theatre, amphitheatre, temple and other ruins and rock tombs, part of the city wall, the moles of the Roman harbour, and a ruined Greek cathedral. (See also CYPRUS.)