Larnakas tis Lapithou is a Greek community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 17 kilometres west of Keryneia, at an elevation of 260 metres, on the southern foothills of the Pentadaktylos. Important ancient inscriptions, Greek and Phoenician, were found on its land, and to its west stands the monastery of the Panagia ton Katharon. It is the birthplace of the EOKA hero Stelios Mavrommatis. In the 1960 census it had 797 inhabitants, of whom 796 were Greeks.

Name

The origin of the name is not certain. Two ancient inscriptions from the village’s land mention a place called Narnaka: a Greek one speaks of the priests of Poseidon with the epithet Narnakios, that is, of Poseidon of Narnaka, and a Phoenician one of the god Melqart of Narnaka.¹ In the 15th century the village is written “Larnaca de Cerines”, that is, Larnaka of Keryneia. The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) records it in the masculine gender, “o Larnakas tis Lapithou”.²

Founding and first records

The ancient cemetery and the sanctuaries on the village’s land show that the place was already inhabited in antiquity. The village under its present name first appears in a written source in the 1460s, in the list of the fiefs distributed by King James II. It is preserved by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron, who writes the village “Larnaca de Cerines”.³

Archaeological sites

In the area of the village lies a large ancient cemetery. There, according to the British architect and curator of the ancient monuments of Cyprus George Jeffery, the American consul Luigi Palma di Cesnola found the ruins of a small oblong temple and many fragments of statues. In the same area an altar with a bilingual inscription, Greek and Phoenician, was also found, which by 1918 had already been destroyed.⁴

In 1888 the British archaeologist David Hogarth copied in the village a pedestal with a Greek inscription of the priests of Poseidon. In 1893 an expedition of the French School at Athens, with the archaeologist Paul Perdrizet, excavated at Larnakas and found a marble statue base with a long Phoenician inscription, which is today in the Louvre Museum.⁵

Antiquity

The place most probably belonged to the ancient kingdom of Lapithos, on the other side of the mountain.⁶ Its inscriptions, two of which date from the years of the Ptolemies, show that there were sanctuaries here and that Phoenicians also lived in the area, alongside the Greeks.

The bilingual altar, most probably of the early 3rd century BC, was dedicated in Greek to Athena and to King Ptolemy, and in Phoenician to the goddess Anat, whom the Phoenicians identified with Athena. The Greek text reads:⁷

Ἀθηνᾷ Σωτείρᾳ Νίκῃ καὶ βασιλέως Πτολεμαίου Πραξίδημος Σέσμαος τὸν βω[μὸ]ν ἀνέθ[ηκ]εν. Ἀγα[θ]ῇ τύχῃ.

That is: “To Athena, the Saviour, Victory, and for King Ptolemy, Praxidemos son of Sesmas dedicated the altar. With good fortune.”

The Greek inscription on the pedestal that Hogarth copied is a decree of the priests of Poseidon honouring a benefactor of theirs, Noumenios son of Noumenios. Hogarth established that the god is called there “Ναρνάκιος” (Narnakios) and not “Λαρνάκιος” (Larnakios), as it had been read earlier.⁸

In 274/273 BC a local official, Yatonbaal, “ruler of the land”, set up a statue in the sanctuary of Melqart of Narnaka and recorded in the Phoenician inscription on its base six generations of his ancestors. It is most probably the last official Phoenician inscription of Cyprus.⁹ The inscriptions show that Greek gods, Athena and Poseidon, were worshipped at Narnaka together with Phoenician ones, and that the dedications and the decrees of the priests were written in Greek.

Frankish and Venetian rule

In Bustron’s list Larnakas is given as a fief to Andruva Cuduna. In the index of the edition of Bustron he is identified with the “ser Andruva Guduva” of a 16th-century Venetian list of the revenues of the feudal lords, where his heirs are recorded with an income of 200 ducats a year.¹⁰

Turkish rule

In the property survey of the Ottoman administration of 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Larnakas is recorded as a mixed village, with 32 property-holding households. They had mainly grain fields, a few cotton fields and mulberry gardens, eight threshing floors, five springs of running water and an olive press. Of their 573 trees 533 were olives, and the rest carobs, mulberries, almonds and two lemon trees. They kept 360 goats, 25 sheep, ten pairs of oxen and a few cows.¹¹

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox church of the village, in the south-western part of its old core, is dedicated to Saint Dimitrianos and dates from the 19th century.¹² In the cemetery, according to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, a rock bears marks that local tradition attributed to the horse of Saint George.¹³

West of the village, on a slope below the cemetery, stands the monastery of the Panagia ton Katharon, which is an Ancient Monument. The 2009 list dates it from the 16th to the 18th century. In the early 20th century, according to Jeffery, it belonged to the archbishop. Its church, which he considered no older than the 18th century, has richly decorated pointed doorways on the north and west sides, while only a small part of the monastery buildings survived.¹⁴ According to local tradition, recorded by the Encyclopaedia, the holy spring of the monastery helped with diseases of the eyes and “cleansed” the sight.¹⁵

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants lived from farming and stock-breeding. They grew cereals, fodder crops, almonds, carobs and some citrus fruit, and in 1973 167 stock-breeders kept 2,200 goats, as in the survey of 1832/33 the village’s main herd, as well as 383 sheep and many poultry. North of the village its land reached the ridge of the Pentadaktylos, with part of the Lapithos–Karavas forest and the small forest of Korfi. In earlier times the village was known for its silversmiths.¹⁶

In 1941 the New Cooperative Credit Society of Larnakas tis Lapithou was founded and in 1950 the Cooperative Grocery.

Population

The population of Larnakas grew steadily. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 376 inhabitants in 1881, 388 in 1891, 471 in 1901, 562 in 1911 and 566 in 1921.¹⁷ In 1931 it had 609 inhabitants, all of them Christians, and in 1946 719, all of them Orthodox (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 797 inhabitants, of whom 796 were Greeks, and in 1973 873 Greeks. In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of the village had 107 pupils and four teachers.

National struggles

In the 1950 Enosis plebiscite 456 inhabitants signed, essentially all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 33 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The EOKA hero Stelios Mavrommatis came from Larnakas tis Lapithou.¹⁸

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Larnakas tis Lapithou 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.

Three inhabitants of the village, two soldiers and one civilian, were recorded as missing. The remains of two have been located and identified, while one is still missing. All three went missing elsewhere: in the Kythrea–Belapais area, in Keryneia and at Myrtou. Three other inhabitants, two civilians and one soldier, were killed elsewhere, in the area of the Pentadaktylos, in the ELDYK area in Lefkosia and at Orka. In Larnakas itself four dead of 1974 are recorded, all civilians; one of them was wounded in the village and died later in Keryneia hospital.

The occupation authorities illegally converted the church of Agios Dimitrianos into a mosque.¹⁹ The 2009 list records it as desecrated and looted, as also the monastery of the Panagia ton Katharon, which is now falling into ruin.