Agios Epiktitos is a large Greek community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 7 kilometres east of Keryneia, 60 metres above sea level, on a coastal terrace about half a kilometre from the sea. Its land stretched from the forests of the Pentadaktylos down to the shore. In the 1960 census it had 1,192 inhabitants, 1,181 of them Greeks.

Name

The village takes its name from Saint Epiktitos, to whom its parish church is dedicated. According to local tradition, the saint was one of the “three hundred Alamanni saints” who came to Cyprus from the Holy Land, and lived as a hermit in a cave over which his church was later built. The tradition of the three hundred saints, who took refuge in Cyprus when the Saracens conquered the Holy Land, is already recorded by the 15th-century Cypriot chronicler Leontios Machairas, and among the names he gives is a Saint Epiktitos.

Claude Delaval Cobham, a British official in Cyprus who published a large collection of texts on the island in 1908, saw a worn manuscript of the saint’s liturgical office. He notes that the saint was commemorated on 12 October at his church, and that according to tradition he was a soldier of German origin and a companion of Saint Auxentios.

Antiquity

At Vrysi, on a headland of the village’s coast, lies a pre-Greek settlement, a scheduled ancient monument. It was excavated from 1969 to 1973 by the archaeologist Edgar Peltenburg, in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities. Its people built their houses in deep artificial hollows, so that the settlement was partly underground. Eighteen stone-built structures were found, many of them rebuilt two or three times, together with narrow winding passages and yards. Radiocarbon dates place this phase in the 4th millennium BC. The earlier settlement was protected by a ditch four and a half metres deep. The inhabitants lived mainly from farming and domestic animals, and less from fishing.

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

In the village’s countryside stands the chapel of the Agioi Fanentes, also known as the Agioi Saranta (Forty Saints), built over a cave. The Church of Cyprus list of churches in the occupied areas dates it to the 9th century, the Greek medieval period of the Arab raids. During Turkish rule it was converted into a mosque. The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, found it in ruins.

Frankish and Venetian rule

The village is named as early as the 14th century, in the chronicle of Machairas, in the events of 1385. The rock-cut chapel of Agios Pavlos dates from the same age, the 14th or 15th century.

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Agios Epiktitos is recorded as a mixed village with 34 property-holding households. The inhabitants had grain fields, mulberries, gardens and 1,571 trees, mostly olives and carobs, and kept mainly goats and oxen.

In 1856 the villagers built the new parish church of Agios Epiktitos. In 1862 the chapel of Agios Stefanos was built; it stands in the middle of the village cemetery, in the area called Agia Stefani.

British rule

The Greek philologist Athanasios Sakellarios, who travelled in Cyprus in the 19th century, writes that Agios Epiktitos, half an hour east of Keryneia near the sea, had Christian and Muslim inhabitants, and that near it there was a rock-cut cave. In 1892 the government closed an older cemetery of the village. The chapel of Agios Georgios was built in 1908. Jeffery describes Agios Epiktitos in 1918 as a modern village picturesquely set on rising ground, with its church and the chapels of Agios Stefanos, the Prophet Elias and the Agioi Fanentes.

In 1941 the village’s Cooperative Society of General Services was founded. In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite, 580 inhabitants signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 39 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

Churches and monasteries

The ruined chapels of the Panagia and Apostolos Andreas and of Agios Mamas also stand on the village’s land.

Population

The population grew steadily. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 398 inhabitants in 1881, 444 in 1891, 594 in 1901, 753 in 1911 and 827 in 1921, of whom 751 were Christians and 76 Muslims.¹ In 1931 the village had 777 inhabitants, 720 Christians and 57 Muslims, and in 1946 1,109, of whom 1,047 were Orthodox and 61 Muslims (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 1,192 inhabitants, 1,181 Greeks and 9 Turks, and in 1973 1,252 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek primary school had 126 pupils and 4 teachers.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Agios Epiktitos was taken by the Turkish army and its Greek population was ethnically cleansed. Those who stayed in the village were enclaved. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, they numbered 160 in October 1975 and 133 in February 1976, and by September 1976 all had been expelled. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

Twelve people from Agios Epiktitos, six of them civilians, were recorded as missing. The remains of three have been located and identified, while nine are still missing. Four of the civilians vanished in the village, three of them on 3 August 1974; the other eight vanished elsewhere, in the Seragio prison, at Glykiotissa and at other places in the Kyrenia district. One more civilian from the village was killed at Palaikythro. On the land of Agios Epiktitos 14 dead of 1974 are recorded: 4 soldiers and 10 civilians, in the village, in its area and on the sands of Pachyammos. Five were killed on 28 and 29 July 1974; others were killed while enclaved, in December 1974 and in May and June 1975.

The occupation authorities have illegally converted the church of Agios Epiktitos into a mosque, and the chapel of Agios Georgios, built in 1908, into a small mosque. The cemetery chapel of Agios Stefanos has been desecrated, looted and seriously damaged, and now lies in ruins. The chapels of Agios Nikolaos, Agios Georgios tou Sporou and a second, 19th-century chapel of Agios Georgios have been desecrated and looted. The Prophet Elias has been shut inside a Turkish military camp. The chapel of Agios Dimitrios, built in the early 1970s, has been illegally absorbed into a casino complex. Agios Sergios has been demolished, and luxury villas have been illegally built on its site.