Kyra is a Greek community in the occupied part of the Lefkosia district. It lies 6 kilometres east of Morfou, at an elevation of 110 metres, in the Morfou region. Its land is crossed by the Ovgos river, and the Ovgos dam lies on it.¹ In the 1960 census it had 580 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

The origin of the name is not known. According to a local tradition, recorded by the Cypriot folklorist Nearchos Kleridis and cited by the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village took its name from a “kyra” (lady), a queen or noblewoman of medieval times who lived in the area. The tradition connects her with a large cistern, where the lady bathed and went boating. The foundations of the cistern survived near the school, and it was fed by a spring below the village church, which later dried up. To the same “rigaina”, that is, queen, the tradition also attributes the epithet of the monastery of Agios Georgios tou Rigati, where she went to pray.²

The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) records it as “Kyra, i”.

Archaeological sites

At the site of Alonia, near the village, the Cypriot archaeologist Porphyrios Dikaios made trial trenches in 1945, for the Department of Antiquities, in a pre-Greek settlement. He found layers of ash and floors, without walls, and pottery of the so-called Filia phase, which took its name from neighbouring Filia and marks the beginning of the Bronze Age in Cyprus. The trenches at Kyra are among the few sources researchers have for the settlements of this phase. In the same year Dikaios rescued at the site of Kaminia, in a cemetery that had been looted, a tomb with two burials, metal knives, earrings and clay vessels.³

Within the village itself, in the school yard, the Department of Antiquities rescued two tombs. The first, which had been opened by illicit diggers, was found in 1962. Its finds belong to the Ptolemaic Greek (“Hellenistic”) and Roman periods: lamps, an inkwell, a “Megarian” relief bowl, glass vessels and perfume bottles, a necklace of faience beads, gold earrings and a silver coin of Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The Cypriot archaeologist Vassos Karageorghis saw in the find an indication that there was a cemetery of those years there. The second tomb, found in 1964, is of the Classical Greek period and contained clay jugs and six silver hair spirals.⁴ These finds show that the land of Kyra was inhabited from pre-Greek times and that on the site of the present village there was a cemetery from the Classical to the Roman period.

In 1845 the German archaeologist Ludwig Ross found at the monastery of Agios Georgios tou Rigati, which the British architect George Jeffery renders as “St. George the Royal”, tombs, some ancient and some medieval.⁵

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Kyra is recorded with 30 property-holding households, all of them Christian. They had mainly fields, cotton fields, 153 olive trees and 36 mulberry trees, a water wheel (manganos) with a cistern and an olive press. Their animals were few: oxen, cows and goats.⁶

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village, at the south-eastern edge of the old settlement, is dedicated to the Panagia Chryseleousa. It dates from the 16th century and was later restored. The village cemetery, 150 metres further south, replaced an older one, which closed in February 1902 for health reasons.⁷

About three and a half kilometres north-east of the village, on a hill, stands the monastery of Agios Georgios tou Rigati, also known as Oreiatis, which the Gazetteer writes “Agios Georgios o Rigatos”.⁸ The 2009 list of the occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus dates it from the 10th to the 19th century and classes it as an Ancient Monument, and its church is entered in the Register of Ancient Monuments. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the church was the katholikon (main church) of a small monastery that was a metochi (dependency) of the Holy Sepulchre.⁹

The village also had the chapel of Agios Stefanos, of the 16th century, who according to the Community Council of Kyra is the patron saint of the village,¹⁰ the chapel of Agios Stylianos and the church of Saint John the Theologian.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the southern part of the land of Kyra lay over the large aquifer of Morfou. Boreholes, the waters of the Serrachis and the Ovgos and the Ovgos dam, with a capacity of 845,000 cubic metres, allowed more and more land to be irrigated. Before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly citrus fruit, oranges and citrons, vegetables, cereals and fodder crops, and in 1973 78 stock-breeders of the village kept 589 sheep, 520 goats and 1,410 poultry. The monastery of Saint Chrysostom held a good deal of landed property on the village’s land.¹¹ In 1947 the Kyra Cooperative Credit Society was founded.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the population of Kyra grew continuously until 1973, thanks to its productive farming, the good road and its nearness to Morfou. According to the same source, the village had 193 inhabitants in 1881, 196 in 1891, 239 in 1901, 247 in 1911 and 248 in 1921.¹² In 1946 the village had 362 inhabitants, of whom 361 were Orthodox and one a Muslim (the 1946 census recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 580 inhabitants, all of them Greeks, and in 1973 782 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Kyra had 128 pupils and four teachers.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 191 inhabitants of Kyra signed. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 12 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The EOKA fighter Georgios Charalambous, from Agios Epifanios Soleas, lived in Kyra.¹³

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Kyra was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek population was subjected to ethnic cleansing. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

Seven inhabitants of Kyra, five soldiers and two civilians, were recorded as missing. The remains of two have been identified, while five are still missing. Two went missing in Kyra itself and five elsewhere: in the area of Lapithos and Karavas (three), on the Tymbou–Aglantzia road and at Argaki. A civilian from Kyra was killed in the CYTA area in Lefkosia. Within the land of Kyra two civilians were killed.

The church of the Panagia Chryseleousa and the cemetery lie within a Turkish military camp, and it has not been possible to inspect them.¹⁴ The Turkish army demolished the chapel of Agios Stefanos. The monastery of Agios Georgios tou Rigati, which had been renovated shortly before the invasion, was looted and destroyed, according to the Community Council of Kyra.¹⁵ The 2009 list records its church as seriously damaged and in danger of collapse, and in 2023 its interior was completely ruined, with the floor destroyed and pieces of the altar table scattered.¹⁶