Kythrea / Değirmenlik

Kythrea Κυθραία Değirmenlik
Basic data
State :	Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (de facto)
District :	Lefkoşa
Geographic coordinates :	35 ° 15 ′  N , 33 ° 29 ′  E Coordinates: 35 ° 15 ′  N , 33 ° 29 ′  E
Residents :	3284 (2011)
Mayor :	Osman Işısal (CTP)
Website:	Turkish municipality

Kythrea ( Greek Κυθραία Kythrea , Turkish Degirmenlik ) is a village in the district Lefkoşa in the internationally unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus with about 5,000 inhabitants. The village is located on the southern slope of the Pentadaktylos about 15 km northeast of Nicosia (Lefkoşa) and 20 km southeast of Kyrenia (Girne) near the main road to Famagusta (Gazimağusa). Kythrea lies in a narrow valley and extends over a length of about four kilometers.

There is a parish of the Cypriot Maronite Church in Kythrea .

history

Chytroi , Assyrian Kitrusi ( Ki-it-ru-si ), ancient Greek Chytroi ( Χύτροι ), also Chythroi , is an Iron Age city-kingdom and an ancient city in northern Cyprus.

As early as the Neolithic Age , people settled in the area, which at that time was particularly fertile due to the water-rich springs (Kephalovrysi).

In the 7th century BC Chr. Was Kitrusi ( Ki-it-ru-si ) an independent kingdom. The ruler Pilagura is documented on the Kition stele of Sargon II . Rollinger wants to equate the name with the Greek Pythagoras.

Later the city came under the rule of Salamis and did not gain until 311 BC. Their independence again. The importance of the city is documented by numerous Hellenistic and Roman inscriptions.

Ancient Chytroi was about 1.5 km southeast of Kythrea near the ruins of the Church of St. Demetrius of Alexandria . To the north was the Acropolis.

A masterpiece of bygone days is a water pipe from the Kephalovrysi spring to Salamis , which was built as a covered canal and aqueduct . It is not certain whether the construction took place during the Roman Empire or not until the Byzantine period . Today the source has largely dried up.

Around 911 the place was attacked and destroyed by Arab soldiers. In the early Middle Ages , the place had a monopoly on flour production in Cyprus. In 1879 there were 32 mills in the village. Today there is still a mill in Başpınar. It is said that cauliflower was grown in Kythrea and brought to mainland Europe for the first time in 1604. However, this thesis is controversial.

In 1928 a statue of the Roman emperor Septimius Severus was discovered in Kythrea . The 2.08 m high statue is now restored in the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia .

The village has been occupied by Turkey since the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. The previous inhabitants were expelled to the still free regions of the Republic of Cyprus, most of the current inhabitants are settlers from Turkey.

literature

• TB Mitford : Further Contributions to the Epigraphy of Cyprus. American Journal of Archeology 65/2, 1961, 93-151.
• NGL Hammond , Cyril John Gadd, Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen: The Cambridge Ancient History , Cambridge University, 1970, pp. 808-823.

Web links

• Internationally recognized city council in exile in free regions of the Republic of Cyprus
• Kythrea
• Değirmlik - Kythrea - Chytroi: "Witnesses of History"

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robert Rollinger: The Ancient Greeks and the Impact of the Ancient Near East. Textual evidence and historical perspective (c. 750-650 BC) . In: RM Whiting (Ed.): Mythology and Mythologies. Methodological Approaches to intercultural Influences . Proceedings of the Second Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian intellectual Heritage Project. Paris, France, October 4-7, 1999 (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001), 252. helsinki.fi  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as broken. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.