Motides is a small Greek community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 11 kilometres west of Keryneia, at an elevation of 120 metres, on the northern slopes of the Pentadaktylos, between Karavas, Elia and Palaiosofos. It was one of the smallest villages of the district and lived in close connection with neighbouring Karavas. In the 1960 census it had 53 inhabitants, all of them Greeks.

Name

The origin of the name is not known with certainty. The official place-name index of Cyprus (the Gazetteer) writes “Μότηδες”, while in local use and in the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia the name is written “Μότιδες” (both forms are pronounced Motides). The English architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus in the early 20th century, writes it “Motidhes” and “Motedes”. The stream that runs through the village’s land towards Karavas has the same name, and one place-name is called “Potamos tous Motides” (the river of Motides).¹

Founding and first records

Motides is not mentioned in the lists of villages of Frankish and Venetian rule preserved by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florio Bustron and the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie. On the village’s land the Gazetteer records the place-name Prastion. In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, a settlement of the same name appears, which the digital edition of the survey places less than half a kilometre from the village, with two property-holding households, Christian and Muslim. They had grain fields and vineyards, about 470 trees, mainly olives and carobs, a wine press for grapes, goats and oxen.²

According to a village tradition, recorded by one of its inhabitants on the website of the Municipality of Karavas, Motides was once a chiftlik, that is, the large estate of a wealthy landowner. This memory was supported by a large half-ruined house with vaulted rooms, where oil was stored in large jars. The village also once had an olive press, which stopped working around the end of the 19th century.³

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, from 1884 to 1933 Motides was included within the municipal boundaries of Karavas; after 1933 it acquired its own community authority.⁴

Archaeological sites

In the autumn of 1959 the Department of Antiquities systematically surveyed the hills between the Pentadaktylos and the Keryneia–Myrtou road, in the area of Karavas, Motides, Palaiosofos, Elia and Ftericha. This surface survey was directed by the British archaeologist Hector Catling and the Cypriot archaeologist Kyriakos Nicolaou. 182 sites were mapped, most of them unknown until then, among them one at Motides. Many pre-Greek sites were recorded in the area, many of the Ptolemaic Greek period and above all sites of the early medieval Greek period, with olive mills and presses. The finds show that the slopes around the village were inhabited and cultivated from very early times.⁵

Churches and monasteries

Motides had no parish church of its own, and the 2009 list of the occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus records no church in the village. The inhabitants belonged to the parish of Agios Georgios of Karavas.⁶

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, before 1974 the inhabitants grew mainly citrus fruit, lemons and citrons, carobs and olives, and to a lesser extent peaches, apples and cereals; stock-breeding was almost non-existent.⁷ In the last years before the invasion lemon trees spread quickly over a large part of the village’s land. Many inhabitants also worked in Karavas, and went there for whatever they needed. In the same period new houses began to be built in the village, and foreigners, drawn by the view towards the sea, bought land and built holiday homes.⁸

Education

Motides had no school of its own. The children went to the elementary school of neighbouring Palaiosofos or to the elementary schools of Karavas, and then to the Greek Gymnasium of Lapithos.⁹

Population

The population of Motides was always very small. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 31 inhabitants in 1881, 35 in 1891, 38 in 1901, 34 in 1911 and 41 in 1921.¹⁰ In 1931 the village had 52 inhabitants, all of them Christians, and in 1946 59, all of them Orthodox (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 53 inhabitants, all of them Greeks, and in 1973 40 Greeks.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Motides was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek inhabitants were subjected to ethnic cleansing. Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants. No missing persons from the village are recorded, nor any dead of 1974 within its land. The refugees of Motides are members of the Refugee Association “O Karavas”, which unites the inhabitants of Karavas and of the neighbouring villages of Motides, Ftericha, Palaiosofos and Elia.¹¹