Lythragkomi is a mixed community of the occupied district of Ammochostos, on the Karpasia peninsula. It lies 45 kilometres northeast of Ammochostos, at an elevation of 150 metres. Just outside the village stands the monastery of Panagia Kanakaria, known for the mosaic of its apse. In the 1960 census it had 275 inhabitants, of whom 170 were Greeks and 105 Turks.

Name

The origin of the name is not known. In the Venetian list of villages of the late fifteenth century the village is written “Lethrancomi”.¹ The nineteenth-century Greek philologist Athanasios Sakellarios writes it “Λιθράγκωμη”,² while the British archaeologist David Hogarth and the British architect George Jeffery write “Lythrankomi”.³

Founding and first records

Lythragkomi first appears in a written source in a Venetian list of the late fifteenth century, published by the nineteenth-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie. There “Casal Lethrancomi” is recorded together with its prastia, that is, the small settlements that depended on it. The same list records separately a village “Canacharia”, which Mas Latrie identifies with Kanakaria in Karpasia, where the Greek monastery stands.⁴

Archaeological sites

One kilometre west of the village, at the site of Troullia, the Department of Antiquities recorded in 1966 a deposit of sherds of the archaic ancient Greek period. Among them was a large piece of the neck of an amphora with painted decoration in the local style of eastern Cyprus: a bird with open wings lowers its neck to peck against a background of lotus flowers. The Cypriot archaeologist Vassos Karageorghis described the scene as unusually lively and realistic for the vase painting of the period.⁵ The site, with its fortified acropolis and its cemetery, is an Ancient Monument.

On the slope east of Troullia, at Akrades, the Swedish archaeologist Einar Gjerstad explored tombs. The sherds on the surface date the site to the pre-Hellenic period.⁶

Hogarth noted traces of an old settlement east of the village, and near the monastery of Kanakaria three large blocks set on edge, one of them with a deep hollow in its upper surface.⁷ The same monoliths, about a metre high, are described by Sakellarios, who also mentions many ancient ruins north of the monastery, known as “Akri”.⁸

Greek medieval period (“Byzantium”)

From the early Greek medieval period survives the church of Panagia Kanakaria, whose oldest parts date from the 6th century. According to Cyprus Religious Heritage, the church was damaged in the Arab raids and rebuilt in the 11th–12th century.⁹ Jeffery recognised in the twelfth-century church the remains of a much older one: marble columns with Corinthian capitals, reused in the narthex and in the south porch.¹⁰

Frankish rule, Venetian rule

In the Venetian list Lythragkomi was one of the 23 royal villages of the bailiwick of Karpasia, that is, it belonged directly to the state and not to a feudal lord.¹¹ Sugar was produced at that time in neighbouring Kanakaria: in October 1468 King James II sold to Andrea Cornaro the sugar of the village of Kanakaria and of Akanthou.¹²

Turkish rule

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who held property, Lythragkomi is recorded as a mixed village, with 21 property-holding households. They had fields, 116 trees, mostly olives, a horse-driven mill and beehives, and some 190 sheep and goats, 21 oxen and cows and a few pack animals.¹³

Churches and monasteries

The Greek Orthodox parish church of the village, at the eastern edge of the old settlement, is dedicated to Saint George and was built in 1900.¹⁴

North of the village stands the monastery of Panagia Kanakaria. It was abandoned in the 19th century and its church became a parish church of the village. The 2009 list dates the church to the 6th, 8th, 12th and 18th centuries. It has three aisles, with domes added later over the central aisle; the narthex was rebuilt in 1791. Jeffery, who saw it in 1914, describes the apse mosaic: the Virgin seated with the Child on her knees, dressed in white and holding a scroll, and around them, on the arch, medallions with saints on a gold ground, each with its inscription. It was already in poor condition.¹⁵ Kanakaria is an Ancient Monument.

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew cereals, fodder crops, olives, carobs and tobacco, and a large part of the land was state forest, such as Kavallis and Mazeri.¹⁶ In 1959 the Lythragkomi Co-operative Grocery and the Lythragkomi Co-operative Credit Society were founded.

Education

In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Lythragkomi had 30 pupils and one teacher.

Population

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, Lythragkomi had 194 inhabitants in 1881, 193 in 1891, 191 in 1901, 254 in 1911 and 303 in 1921.¹⁷ In 1931 it had 320 inhabitants, 229 Christians and 91 Muslims, and in 1946 369, of whom 259 were Orthodox and 110 Muslims (the 1931 and 1946 censuses recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 275 inhabitants, 170 Greeks and 105 Turks, and in 1973 195 Greeks and about 80 Turks (estimate).

National struggles

In the 1950 enosis plebiscite 151 inhabitants signed, practically all the adult Greek inhabitants. The EOKA Fighters’ Register records 36 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or assisted the Struggle. The EOKA hero Ilias Papakyriakou came from Lythragkomi.¹⁸

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Lythragkomi was occupied by the Turkish army. Most of the Greek inhabitants, as in other villages of Karpasia, stayed in their homes and found themselves in confinement, enclaved.¹⁹ According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in October 1975 150 Greeks were still living in the village, under constant pressure to leave for the free areas. In March 1976 the Greek elementary school reopened for a short time, but by the end of the year very few remained, and in the end they too were expelled.²⁰ The Greek population of Lythragkomi was thus ethnically cleansed, and since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the inhabitants from returning.

Two inhabitants of Lythragkomi, both soldiers, were recorded as missing. Neither went missing in the village itself: one went missing on the Lapithos–Keryneia road and the other in the area of Templos. The remains of one have been located and identified, while the other is still missing.

In 1979 Kanakaria was looted and the apse mosaic was torn out. According to the Department of Antiquities, as quoted by Cyprus Religious Heritage, two medallions with the apostles Luke and Bartholomew were returned in 1983. Four fragments of the mosaic returned to Cyprus on 30 August 1991, after a lawsuit brought by the Church of Cyprus and the Republic of Cyprus before a court in Indianapolis in the United States, and in 1997 further fragments were found, among them the medallions of the apostles Thaddaeus and Thomas. The crosses have been removed from the church, which is kept locked. From the church of Agios Georgios the crosses and the bell have been removed, and in 2022 only the carved wooden iconostasis, without icons, remained inside. The Greek Orthodox cemetery, north of the monastery, is in ruins, and of its graves only a few pieces of a cross survive.²¹