Egkomi is a Greek community in the occupied district of Ammochostos. It lies 7 kilometres north-west of Ammochostos, at sea level, near the northern bank of the Pediaios, at the eastern edge of the Mesaoria, and its land reached the coast of the bay of Ammochostos. Within its land lie the pre-Greek city of Egkomi, part of the necropolis of ancient Salamis and the Monastery of the Apostle Barnabas.¹ In the 1960 census it had 667 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

The origin of the name has not been explained by a linguist. There is also a village of the same name in the district of Lefkosia. The official gazetteer of Cyprus writes “Έγκωμη”, and the British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in 1918, “Enkomi”. The form Enkomi prevailed in the international literature on the archaeological site. The village church, Panagia Chrysoegkomitissa, also takes its epithet from the village.²

Archaeological sites

West of the village, at the site of Agios Iakovos, lies the city of Egkomi, the most extensively excavated city in Cyprus from the last centuries of the pre-Greek period. It was founded around 1650 BC on a sheltered bay of the east coast, later filled in by the silt of the Pediaios, and for about five centuries it was one of the main ports from which Cypriot copper left for the eastern Mediterranean. In the 13th century BC it was surrounded by a wall of huge stones, enclosing about 16 hectares, with a gate on each side, and its streets were laid out on a regular grid. At its northern end stood a fortified building that was also a copper-smelting workshop.³

The first excavations were mainly a search for tombs: by Alessandro Palma di Cesnola in 1876–1878, by the South Kensington Museum in 1882 and by the British Museum in 1896, which opened about a hundred tombs in a single season. One of them, Tomb 93, yielded about 1,430 grams of gold jewellery, more than any other tomb on the island. They were followed by the Swedish Expedition in 1930 and from 1934 by the French Mission of Claude Schaeffer, which showed that the tombs lay within the city itself, among the houses and streets. From 1948 to 1958 the Cypriot archaeologist Porphyrios Dikaios excavated for the Cyprus Museum, in a joint mission with the French, and his stratigraphy is still the basis for dating the site. Excavations stopped in 1974.⁴

Three sanctuaries were excavated in the city. Two of them yielded the bronze cult statues of the “Horned God”, a young man wearing a horned headdress, and the “Ingot God”, an armed god standing on a base in the shape of a copper ingot, that is, the bar into which copper was cast for trade. Egkomi has produced 123 of the 232 known inscriptions in the Cypro-Minoan script, more than half. Cylinder seals, ivories, glass vessels and Mycenaean kraters with painted scenes from the tombs show contacts with Egypt, Syria and Palestine and the Mycenaean world. Some scholars identified Egkomi with the capital of Alasia, the kingdom that sent copper to the rulers of Egypt and the Near East, and the French excavators named the site “Enkomi-Alasia”; the identification has not been generally accepted.⁵

Part of the necropolis of Salamis also lies on the land of Egkomi. Between the Salamis forest and the Monastery of the Apostle Barnabas are the so-called Royal Tombs, of the 8th to the 6th century BC, where the Department of Antiquities found chariots, sacrificed horses and rich offerings in the entrance passages. At the eastern edge of the village rises Tumulus 77, excavated in the 1960s by Vassos Karageorghis. It contained no burial, but a large pyre with life-size clay heads, fired by the flames. Karageorghis suggested, with reservation, that it was the cenotaph raised by the people of Salamis for their last king, Nikokreon, and his family.⁶ South-east of the village the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places locates the sanctuary at the site of Toumpa, where in 1890 the Cyprus Exploration Fund found clay statues of the 7th and 6th centuries BC.⁷

According to the former Director of the Department of Antiquities Sophocles Hadjisavvas, after 1974 Egkomi was left neglected, and the Turkish Cypriot side rejected his proposal for urgent work at the site.⁸

Antiquity

The city of Egkomi was destroyed twice, around 1200 BC and a generation later. At that time pottery of the type of the Mycenaean workshops was being made in Cyprus, and many scholars link it with the arrival of people from the Mycenaean world of the Aegean, although the question is debated. In the 11th century BC the city was gradually abandoned and its inhabitants moved to Salamis, founded at that time on the coast a few kilometres to the north-east.⁹ From then on the land of Egkomi became a burial ground of Salamis and belonged to its kingdom, the largest of the ancient Greek kingdoms of the island, until the death of Nikokreon in 311/310 BC put an end to the kingship.

According to the Acts of the Apostles, Barnabas, Paul and John Mark landed at Salamis around AD 45 and preached in its synagogues. Later tradition holds that Barnabas was a native of Salamis, was martyred there and was buried in a cave west of the city. The tomb that tradition points to, on the land of Egkomi, is one of the ancient rock-cut tombs of the necropolis of Salamis.¹⁰

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

According to tradition, the relics of the Apostle Barnabas were found in this tomb around 478, in the reign of the emperor Zeno, after a vision of Archbishop Anthemios. Anthemios built a large church on the spot, with a monastery and a hostel for pilgrims. Tradition links the discovery with the privileges granted by Zeno to the Archbishop of Cyprus, although the independence of the Church of Cyprus from Antioch had already been recognised by the Council of Ephesus in 431.¹¹

Turkish rule

In the property survey made by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Egkomi has 26 property-holding households, all Christian. They grew mainly cotton, madder (the plant from whose root a red dye was made) and cereals, had a few mulberries and ten olive trees, and kept 680 sheep, cows, oxen and mules.¹²

Churches and monasteries

The village church is dedicated to Panagia Chrysoegkomitissa and dates from 1736. According to Jeffery, it replaced an older church, and two dates of rebuilding, 1736 and 1867, were carved on its facade.¹³

North of the village, about one and a half kilometres from its centre, stands the Monastery of the Apostle Barnabas, an Ancient Monument. Its present church, with two domes, was built in the middle medieval Greek period; the 2009 list dates it from the 5th to the 11th century. Its eastern part had once collapsed and was replaced by a small apse. About 150 metres east of the monastery entrance, a small chapel covers the rock-cut tomb where, according to tradition, the relics of the Apostle were found. Near the monastery is the Agiasma (holy spring) of the Apostle Barnabas.¹⁴

The chapel of Agia Aikaterini, known as the “prison of Saint Catherine”, also an Ancient Monument, belongs to Egkomi as well. It is a large vaulted tomb of the 7th century BC, which was reshaped in the Roman period and in the Middle Ages was dedicated to Saint Catherine; according to tradition the saint had been imprisoned there.¹⁵

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly cereals and kept many sheep, while many worked in nearby Ammochostos. The village coast, especially the beach at Klapsides, had begun to develop for tourism in the last years before the invasion. South of the village ran the Cyprus railway, which operated from 1905 to 1951, with a station bearing the name of Egkomi.¹⁶ According to the Union of Displaced Communities of Ammochostos, several inhabitants worked on the excavations, and in the 1930s the club “Salamis” was founded in the village, with a theatre group and a football team.¹⁷ The Egkomi Cooperative Credit Society was founded in 1952 and the Cooperative Grocery in 1956.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 159 inhabitants in 1881, 210 in 1891, 263 in 1901, 273 in 1911 and 284 in 1921.¹⁸ In 1931 Egkomi had 328 inhabitants, 326 Christians and 2 Muslims, and in 1946 602, of whom 601 were Orthodox and one a Muslim (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the increase was due mainly to the proximity of Ammochostos and its growth.¹⁹ In 1960 the village had 667 inhabitants, all Greeks, and in 1973 826 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school had 106 pupils and four teachers.

National struggles

In the 1950 plebiscite for union with Greece, 360 inhabitants signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 2 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Egkomi was occupied by the Turkish army and its Greek population was subjected to ethnic cleansing. According to the statement of the Cyprus Government to the European Commission of Human Rights, the last inhabitants who had remained in the village were expelled between 27 and 30 June 1975.²⁰ Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants’ return.

Two inhabitants of Egkomi, both civilians, were lost in the village and are still missing. Two people killed in 1974, both civilians, are also recorded in the village. One more inhabitant, a civilian, was killed in the Ammochostos area.

The monks of the Monastery of the Apostle Barnabas were forced to leave it in 1976, and the occupation authorities illegally converted the monastery into a museum. According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, they also illegally converted the church of Panagia Chrysoegkomitissa into a mosque, after removing the crosses; the Greek Orthodox cemetery of the village has been abandoned, and the crosses of the graves lie scattered.²¹