By treaty between the British Government and the Ottoman Empire. .Tune 4, 1878, Asiatic Turkey was placed under British protection, and permission was given to England to occupy Cy prus. Sir Garnet Wolseley was appointed Gover nor, and was installed as administrator, July 23. The head of the administration is the High Commissioner, who is assisted by an execu tive council consisting of three office-holders, and a legislative council of eighteen members, one-third of whom are office-holders; the rest are elected on a property qualification, three by the Mohammedan and nine by the non-Moham medan population. The municipalities are ad ministered by elected councils. Education is to some extent controlled by the Government, and is chiefly of an elementary character. The total number of schools in 1S99 was 40S, of which 339 were in receipt of some aid from the Government, while the rest were maintained by endowments or private contributions. The total enrollment in all the schools was a little over 19.000. of which number 4300 were 'Moslems. Justice is admin istered by a supreme court, assize. district magis trate, and village courts, all of them with the exception of the first having natives for judges. For administrative purposes Cyprus is divided into the six districts of Nicosia, Larnaka, Lima sol, Famagosta, Poplin, and Kyrenia. The chief sources of revenue are tithes, which are paid in kind, taxes on property, salt monopoly, and customs. The revenue shows an increase from /107,777 ($83805) in 1895-96, to £200.03S t$1,003.190) in 1899-1900, while the annual grant from Great Britain shows a decrease from $230,000 in 1896-97 to $65,000 in 1899-1900. The currency consists of English, Turkish, French, and native coins. The weights and measures are Turkish.
The population, hi 1891, was 209,280, of wloan three-fourths were Greeks, 47.928 being Moham medans; in 1901 it was 237,022, including 51.309 Mohammedans.
The early civilization of the island is known only from the excavations of recent years, which have thrown little light on the ethnic affinities of the primitive inhabitants. (See CvenurrEs.) There are but scanty traces of the Stone Age, hut the Bronze Age, both in the earlier period when pure copper is used and in the later period after the introduction of tin, is char acterized by a well-developed and clearly marked civilization. presenting close analogies to that represented in the lower strata. at Troy. The people seem to have been pastoral, and to have avoided the mountains and forests. They early learned to work the rich copper-mines of the island, and seem to have been somewhat in advance of their neighbors in Syria and on the islands of the ...Egean. From its situation, Cyprus was exposed to foreign influ ences, and seems to have served as intermediary between Egypt and Syria and the Myeeturan civilization of the West. The Myeenwan civiliza tion seems to have reached the island about B.C. MOO and to have continued for about SOO years. Whether it was introduced by Greek colonists is uncertain, tint these colonists certainly came to the island before the Dorians had occupied Peloponnestis, and before the introduction of the later Greek alphabet: for they spoke a dialect closely akin to that of the Arcadians, and used a clumsy syllabic mode of writing, which seems akin to that of southern Asia 'Minor and pos sibly of Crete. The Greek and Phtenieian set tlements belong to the Iron Age; the latter are found chiefly along the southern coast, where they remained predominant in Citium, Amathus, and Marion even in later times. The Greeks at first settled aiong the northern shores and at the eastern and western extremities of the great plain which crosses the island at Amathus, Sala mis, Soli, and later predoininated in Paphos, Curium. and Lapathus. Whether the worship of Aphrodite, which flourished greatly in Cyprus, developed from that of a nude nature-goddess of the original inhabitants or from t hat of the Phamician Astarte is uncertain. but it reached the greatest splendor and sensuality among the Greeks. who regarded Cyprus as the favored spot where the goddess was horn from the sea-foam. The island was invaded by Thothmes III, of Egypt. and in the eighth century before Christ was tributary. to the Assyrians. In the sixth century it was conquered by Amasis of Egypt, and on the conquest of that kingdom by Camby ses. passed under Persian rule. The Greeks of Cyprus joined in the Ionic revolt, hut were eon Tiered, and Cypriote vessels were in the fleet of Xerxes. The attempt of CIMOB to join Cyprus to the Athenian League was unsuccessful, and the island remained tributary until EN-agoras (q.v.) became King of Salamis (mu. 410.374),
made himself master of much of the island, and nearly succeeded in casting otf the Persian yoke. After the battle 'of lssus, when Alexander ad vanced into Phoenicia, all the cities of Cyprus declared in his favor, and sent ships to assist him in the siege of Tyre. Under the Persian rule the cities had been alloNsed a large measure of self government under the control of kings, who seem to have claimed descent from heroic ancestors. After the death of Alexander, the possession of this island, so important for its seemingly in exhaustible forests (it is now quite bare of trees), became an object of contention among his successors, being especially sought by An tigonus and Ptolemy. It finaily passed into the hands of the latter and was for a long time a valued dependency of Egypt. In B.C. 58-57 the tribune Clodius proposed and Cato effected its annexation by Rome. Under Augustus it was made a proconsular province, and from this time is scarcely mentioned in ancient history. Cyprus is noticed in Acts iv. 36, where it is mentioned as the native place of Barnabas; and in Acts xi. 19.20 it appears prominently in con nection with the earliest spreading of Christian ity. During the reign of Trajan (Am. 116) it was the scene of a rising of the Jews, who are said to have killed 24,000 of the other inhabit ants. After the division of the Roman Empire, Cyprus passed under the Byzantine emperors. in 646 the Arabs became masters and destroyed the city of Salamis. Two years later the Greeks recovered sway; but in 802 it was -again con quered by 1-larun-el-Rashid. who was soon com pelled to relinquish it to the Byzantine rulers. In 1184 Isaac Comnenus made Cyprus an independent sovereignty. In 1191 Richard of England ejected Comnenus, and in 1193 put Guy de Lusignan in possession as compensa tion for the loss of Jerusalem, of which Guy had been appointed king. For three centu ries, under this dynasty, the feudal system flourished in Cyprus, the cities of Nicosia and Famagosta were adorned with churches, splendid even in their ruins, and the island seems to have been rich and prosperous. Through the Venetian Catarina Co•naro, the wife of James II., the Republic of Venice came into full possession of the island in 14S9 and held the rule for about eighty years. In 1370 the Turks invaded Cyprus, quickly subdued the country districts, took the capital (Nicosia) after a siege, and murdered 20,000 of its inhabitants. Famagosta held out for a year and then made a capitulation, which was immediately violated by the Moslem gen eral, who slowly tortured to death the governor of the city. From that period Cyprus continued a part of the Turkish Empire. In 1878 it was placed under English control by a treaty, which recognized the sovereignty of the Sultan, and assured him an annual income of f92,746. In 1882 a new constitution was promulgated, and under English rule the prosperity of the island has greatly increased. The antiquities of the island have been the subject of much unscientific and inaccurate exploration, conducted chiefly for the purpose of obtaining booty. Of these earlier excavations the most productive were those of L. P. di Cesnola, whose collections are for the most part in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Later excavations in the modern scientific method have been conducted by the Cyprus Ex ploration Fund, the British Museum, Ohnefalsch Richter, and others.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Unger and Kotseily, Die Inset Bibliography. Unger and Kotseily, Die Inset C'ypern ihrcr physischen und organischen Naito 'web, etc. (Vienna, 1865) ; Sassenay, Chypre, histuire et gc'ographie (Paris, 1878) ; de This Latrie, L'ile de Chyprc (Paris, 1879) ; Lang, Cyprus (London, 1879) ; Baker, Cyprus As I Sam It (London, 1879) ; Eyler, Dere/opine/it of Cyprus and Rambles in the Island (London, 1899 ) ; Trarels in. Cyprus (Nicosia, 1890) ; Cobham, An Attempt on a Bibliography of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1893) ; Engel, Cyprus (Berlin, 1811) ; Cesnola, Cyprus: Its Cities, Tenths, end Temples (New York, 1878) ; id., Salaminia (Lon don, 1882) : A Deseriptire Atlas of the Cesnola. Collection (New York, 1S85) ; Perrot and Chipiez, Ilisloire de l'art antique, vol. iii. (Paris, 1884; English translation by Armstrong, London, 1835) ; Ohnefalsch-Richter, Cyprus, the Bible, and Homer (London, 1893) ; Myres and Richter, Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum. (Oxford, 1890) ; the inscriptions in the Cypriote dialect are published in Collitz, Sammlung der grie chisehe• Dialekt-Insehriften, vol. i. (Gottingen, 1884) ; Schmidt, Sammlung kypriseher Inschrif ten in. epiehoriseher Schrift (Jena, 1876).