The last two weeks of May saw me trading in grey Scotland and dusty libraries for sunny Cyprus, lazy days, and a breathtaking wedding. But it wasn't all poolside Piña Coladas and walks along the harbour. I was on a Greek island (kind of - Cyprus is actually a republic and partially controlled by Turkey), and my mythic mind wouldn't rest. So this is a blog post specially dedicated to some of my favourite myths of Cyprus!
The Birthplace of Aphrodite
In the beginning, there was Chaos. And then there were gods. But the Olympians didn't just walk in, fully formed and ready to rule. No, like the rest of us, they had parents and they had grandparents. After the Chaos, there was Ouranos, or Uranus, (not so much the god of the sky, but literally The Sky) and Gaia (The Earth). Gaia, Mother Earth, gave birth to Ouranos, Father Sky, without the need of a father or impregnation. They were mother and son, they were brother and sister and they were husband and wife. Don't judge, options were limited - these were the primordial gods, the gods of the beginning of time itself. Together, Ouranos and Gaia had several groups of children - three Cyclopes (giants with one eye each), three Hecatonchires (giants with a hundred hands each), and the twelve Titans. Ouranos feared his giant children and trapped them in the Earth, i.e. his wife's belly, but he allowed his Titan children to roam. Agonised Gaia charged Cronos, one of her Titan children, to help her. One night when the Sky was on top of the Earth, or Ouranos was - ahem - on top of Gaia, Cronos sneaked up behind them, castrated his father, threw his penis down to earth and sent Ouranos to the depths of Tartarus (the Underworld). Ouranos professed that his son will meet the same end as his father and, down the line, Zeus castrates his father Cronos in much the same way.
But let's go back to that cast-off penis.
Ick. Anyway. Ouranos' penis lands in the sea, and from the mixture of sea foam and - well - penis foam, a figure emerges. This figure is the immensely beautiful form of Aphrodite, and the beach she first walks upon is in Cyprus.
Many people assume that Aphrodite is Zeus' daughter or sibling, since that's the case for most of the Olympic Pantheon. But now you know that she is, in fact, his aunt and the oldest of the Olympians. Although, in a weird but unsurprising paternalistic and patriarchal turn of events, Zeus sort of ... adopts her as his daughter, bequeaths her to his son Ares (the god of war), but then has to marry her to his other son Hephaestus (ugly, lame-footed god of the forge), who she then cheats on... a lot.
Botticelli's The Birth of Venus depicts Aphrodite's birth on the coast of Cyprus, and even includes one of the Horai (the seasons, personified) dressing her, as described in Hesiod's Theogony and the Homeric Hymns. What it does seem to leave out, however, is the quintessentially Greek irony that the goddess of beauty is born from something so disgusting, that the goddess of sexual love is born from a castration, that the goddess of womanliness (in some respects) is born solely from a penis.
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| 'The laughter-loving Aphrodite went to Cyprus, to Paphos, where is her precincts and fragrant altar.' Homer's Odyssey 8.362-3 *Found on a coastal walk around Paphos* |
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| This is the Petra tou Romiou, or Aphrodite Rock, in Cyprus. It is believed to be the place where Aphrodite walked onto shore. |
Cyprus may be a small island, but the different areas can be miles apart in terms of history, culture, and geopolitics. I stayed in Paphos, which has its own rich history of myth. Here's one:
Once upon a time in Ancient Greece, there lived a Cypriot sculptor. His name was Pygmalion and there are two things you need to know about him. One, he created the most beautiful marble sculptures of women, based on the patron goddess of his land, Aphrodite. Two, he absolutely hated prostitutes. He would look at the Cypriot women who claimed to be honouring the goddess, but were in fact using her as a justification for their sex work, and he was disgusted. Yes, Pygmalion was an arsehole, because anyone who hates sex workers is an arsehole. Especially people who claim to be pro-women, but no not like that, how dare you capitalise upon your own body etc. etc. ... am I calling Pygmalion a SWERF? Maybe.
If you're sitting there thinking 'What is a SWERF?' then check out this website but here's a summary:
'Sex worker exclusionary radical feminism (SWERF) is a subgroup of radical feminism characterized by whorephobia and hostility to the third wave of feminism. This tiny sliver of feminism promotes socially conservative attitudes toward sex and sexuality. [...] The term SWERF was coined to match that of trans exclusionary radical feminism (TERF), as their memberships overlap. Their ideology also overlaps as both subgroups follow a prescriptive, normative, approach to feminism, i.e., telling women what to do — TERFs with their gender, and SWERFs with their private parts.'
Hopefully you've gone away and read about inclusive and intersectional feminism and now you're back for more. Or you were already intersectional and pro-sex workers, in which case, good for you and as you were. Anyway, back to Pygmalion.
Pygmalion made a statue of Aphrodite so beautiful that he dressed it, covered it in flowers and wreaths, and wept because he loved it so. That's right, he fell in love with a statue. It was so pure and beautiful, unlike all of the corrupt Cypriot women in the town. He lay with it as a husband lies with a wife, and he prayed to his goddess for deliverance from the suffering of unrequited love. Pygmalion, as well as a SWERF, is by this point also reeking of INCEL (quick warning: the INCEL rabbit hole is one of the darkest, most despairing cesspits of the internet, and should be entered with extreme caution, if at all).
But Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, matrimony and sex, had a soft spot for Pygmalion. Not only was he from her home town, but he had fallen in love with the likeness of her. How nice.
So one night, Pygmalion is lying in bed with his statue, thinking about how hopeless it all is, and he gradually becomes aware of how warm the marble is beneath his hands. His body heat must have warmed it up... but no, the statue is emitting its own lifelike warmth. With a sigh, she is marble no longer, but a living woman, whom Pygmalion names Galatea and then promptly has sex with. They have a daughter named Paphos, whose name is later given to the region of Cyprus where this supposedly occurred, and they all lived happily ever after.
Or, alternatively, a piece of marble is given life, and she is immediately raped by her creator (for all intents and purposes, her father), she is married to him without any say in the matter (if, indeed, she knew how to say ... or is he teaching her to speak like she is a child alongside habitually having sex with her?), and then she has a child from this union. While Ovid proffered the former version in his Metamorphoses, Madeline Miller rewrites the story through a contemporary lens in her short story Galatea, which is reminiscent of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, and contends with contemporary ideas of gaslighting alongside the ageless experiences of women's oppression by medical professionals and husbands alike.
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All in all, I had an amazing time in Paphos, Cyprus. I got to spend some quality time with family I don't get to see nearly enough, I saw my cousin get married at what will probably be the most glamorous wedding I will attend in my entire life, and I ate and drank way too much. I also put my knowledge of mythology to the test, and decided that if academia doesn't work out, being a tour guide somewhere in Greece would be a very sunny second. But, as great a time as it was, I do find myself glad to be back in Glasgow, surrounded by books.
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