Myrtou is a Greek community in the occupied district of Keryneia. It lies 23 kilometres west of Keryneia, at an elevation of 270 metres, on the southern side of the Pentadaktylos, on the road that links Lefkosia with Keryneia by way of Panagra. On its land stands the monastery of Agios Panteleimon, which until 1917 was the seat of the Metropolis of Kyrenia.¹ In the 1960 census it had 710 inhabitants, of whom 706 were Greeks.

Name

In the Italian sources of the 15th century the village is written “Mirtu”.²

Founding and first records

Myrtou appears for the first time in a written source in 1461, as “Mirtu”, among the villages that King James II took away from the nobleman Gautier de Nores. The event is recorded by the 16th-century Cypriot chronicler Florios Voustronios. A little later the village is also recorded in a Venetian list of the royal villages of the late 15th century.³

Archaeological sites

At the locality Stefania, at the north-western edge of the village, lies a pre-Greek cemetery of the Middle and Late Bronze Age. It was excavated in 1951 by the Australian archaeologist Basil Hennessy, for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the University of Sydney, in co-operation with the Cyprus Museum. The contents of the tombs had been disturbed by the water that flooded them from time to time. The metal finds were few, and most of them were found in one tomb.⁴

In 1966 the Department of Antiquities excavated, in a rescue excavation, a rock-cut chamber tomb at the western edge of the village. A long stepped passage led down to the entrance of the tomb, and inside the chamber, opposite the entrance, there was a bench. Two boat-shaped silver earrings and vessels were found, among them an askos. The tomb most probably belongs to the Classical ancient Greek period.⁵

The well-known Late Bronze Age sanctuary at the locality Pigades, with its stone-built altar and its “horns of consecration”, the religious symbol in the shape of horns that was also known in the Aegean, bears the name of Myrtou in the literature, because it lies a little south-east of the village. It lies, however, on the land of neighbouring Asomatos, where it is described.⁶

Frankish and Venetian rule

During the years of Frankish rule Myrtou was a fief of Gautier de Nores, who also held Vasileia, Kormakitis, Karpaseia, Kampyli and Margi. In the war for the throne between Queen Charlotte and her half-brother James, Gautier was taken prisoner in 1461 by James’s men. Voustronios relates that he refused to swear allegiance to James, because he had sworn to defend Charlotte, and for this reason the king took his villages from him and left him only a small allowance to live on. From then on the proverb “the faith of Sir Gautier” remained in Cyprus, said of stubborn people.⁷

James then gave Myrtou, together with Lythrodontas and Agios Ilias, to Piero Bustron, of the Voustronios family, to which the chronicler also belonged. In the Venetian memorandum of the late 15th century, published by the 19th-century French historian Louis de Mas Latrie, “Casal Mirtu” is by then a royal village, that is, it belonged directly to the state, and it is recorded in the bailiwick of Lapithos, together with Vasileia, Kampyli, Karpaseia and Klepini.⁸

Turkish rule

The monastery of Agios Panteleimon, at the edge of the village, was founded at the beginning of the 18th century and became the seat of the Metropolitan of Kyrenia.⁹ On the saint’s feast day, 27 July, a great fair was held at Myrtou. The 18th-century Cypriot historian Archimandrite Kyprianos writes that crowds flocked there from all over Cyprus, for pilgrimage and for trade. At one of these fairs, in the 1760s, the leaders of a revolt against the Turkish governor of the island met Halil, the commander of Keryneia castle, and made him their leader.¹⁰

According to local tradition, recorded by the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the Metropolitan of Kyrenia Lavrentios was arrested in 1821 near the monastery, while he was resting under a pine tree called Psatharotos. The place-name “Pefkos Psatharotos” survives in the official gazetteer of place names of Cyprus (Gazetteer), a little east of the village. Lavrentios was beheaded in Lefkosia on 9 July 1821, together with the other bishops, when Archbishop Kyprianos was hanged.¹¹

In the property survey carried out by the Ottoman administration in 1832/33, which recorded only those who owned property, Myrtou is recorded as a Christian village with 28 property-holding households. The inhabitants had fields with cereals and cotton, a vineyard and 266 trees, mainly olives, mulberries and carobs, an olive press, beehives and around 260 sheep and goats. The survey records separately the monastery of Agios Panteleimon, which had far more property than all the rest of the village.¹²

British rule

The Greek philologist Athanasios Sakellarios, who travelled in Cyprus in the 19th century, writes that the monastery of Agios Panteleimon, where the Metropolitan of Kyrenia had his seat, stood in a forest of pines and cypresses, with abundant water and a large orchard of fruit trees.¹³ In 1884 the government closed the cemetery within the monastery grounds, and the new cemetery was made in a small wood about half a kilometre to the east. The Metropolis of Kyrenia remained at the monastery until 1917.¹⁴

Because of its central position, the village became the administrative centre of the villages on the southern side of the Pentadaktylos. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in 1903 Myrtou was linked by road with Keryneia and Lefkosia, in 1905 it acquired a police station, and later a land registry office and a village court operated there, serving the whole area.¹⁵

Churches and monasteries

The church of the village was the church of the monastery of Agios Panteleimon. The 2009 list of occupied churches of the Church of Cyprus dates the monastery to the 17th–18th century. The present church was built in the 18th century on the site of a smaller church.¹⁶ The monastery is an Ancient Monument.

The British architect George Jeffery, who recorded the monuments of Cyprus at the beginning of the 20th century, found the monastery complex almost complete. He describes an older barrel-vaulted aisle dedicated to the saint, separated from the main church by an arcade on short columns, and, on the south side, a portico with pointed arches. Under its central arch was an altar-shaped tomb, which according to tradition belonged to a famous physician. Jeffery singled out the gilded carved wooden iconostasis, which incorporated pieces of an older medieval iconostasis, and the icons, which he believed might be medieval.¹⁷

At the locality Stefania the chapel of Agios Nektarios was built.¹⁸

Economy and society

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, in earlier times the inhabitants were less occupied with farming, because many of the estates of the area belonged to the monastery, as the survey of 1832/33 already shows. Many were marble-workers and worked in small quarries, the “vines”, to the north and west of the village, which sent marble and gypsum to Pitsilia, Solea and Marathasa. Before 1974 the inhabitants grew cereals, fodder crops, citrus and carobs, and many houses of the village kept the traditional architecture of the plain, with mud bricks, inner courtyards, arches and earthen flat roofs.¹⁹ In 1940 the New Co-operative Credit Society of Myrtou was founded.

Education

According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, from the middle of the 19th century a school operated at the monastery, where the hieromonk Parthenios taught basic reading and writing free of charge to novice monks and to boys and girls of the village. At the beginning of British rule the British inspector Spencer found the village’s two schools closed, and the only teaching was done by a monk. A little later the Metropolitan of Kyrenia Chrysanthos founded a regular elementary school, with the scholar Ieronymos Varlaam as its first teacher, and the monastery school operated until 1920.²⁰ In the school year 1973–74 the Greek elementary school of Myrtou had 110 pupils and 4 teachers.

Population

The population of Myrtou grew steadily. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the village had 278 inhabitants in 1881, 317 in 1891, 381 in 1901, 430 in 1911 and 537 in 1921.²¹ In 1931 the village had 587 inhabitants, 584 Christians and 3 Muslims, and in 1946 683, of whom 673 were Orthodox and 10 of another religion (the censuses of 1931 and 1946 recorded only religion). In 1960 it had 710 inhabitants, 706 Greeks, 3 Maronites and one other, and in 1973 828 Greeks.

National struggles

In the Enosis plebiscite of 1950, 433 inhabitants of Myrtou signed, practically all the adult Greek inhabitants. The Register of EOKA Fighters lists 27 Greek inhabitants of the village who took part in or supported the Struggle.

The Turkish invasion of 1974

During the Turkish invasion of 1974 Myrtou was captured by the Turkish army and its Greek population suffered ethnic cleansing. According to the Great Cyprian Encyclopaedia, the monastery was damaged by Turkish bombardment. Those inhabitants who stayed in the village were enclaved: there were 43 in October 1975, 38 in January 1976 and 14 in May 1976, and by August 1976 all had been expelled.²² Since then the Turkish occupation forces and the illegal occupation authority prevent the return of the inhabitants.

Three inhabitants of Myrtou, two soldiers and one civilian, were recorded as missing. The remains of one have been located and identified, while two are still missing. The two soldiers were lost in Keryneia, and the civilian in the village itself. Two more inhabitants of Myrtou, a civilian and a soldier, were killed elsewhere, in Keryneia and in Omorfita. On the land of Myrtou two dead of 1974 are recorded: a soldier and a civilian.

The church of the monastery of Agios Panteleimon was desecrated and looted, and the 2009 list records the monastery as severely damaged, almost demolished. Today its grounds are fenced off and closed.²³