Cyprus House gives a November weekend to the island’s deep past, with the myth of Aphrodite on the Saturday and the archaeologists who uncovered the island’s history on the Sunday.
The Cultural Section of the Cyprus High Commission promotes the island’s history and culture in Britain and brings the Cypriot community and a wider public together to share it. It works from Cyprus House, its own building at 13 St James’s Square, which lets it give a whole weekend to a single subject.
In November it gives that weekend to the island’s deep past. Saturday takes the myth of Aphrodite, the goddess whose story begins on Cyprus. Sunday turns to the fieldwork behind the island’s archaeology. A session reads the archive of Grigoris Antoniou, an excavation foreman whose contribution went largely unrecorded, and a documentary follows the excavations themselves.
Both days are free, with advance booking required. They form the London weekend of Discovering Ancient Cyprus, a longer programme that continues into December. It closes with two days in Oxford in collaboration with the Ashmolean, built between 1678 and 1683 around Elias Ashmole’s cabinet of curiosities as Britain’s first public museum.
Aphrodite's Island: The Goddess of Cyprus and Her Journey Through Antiquity
An afternoon on the archaeology, mythology and long cultural afterlife of Aphrodite, the goddess whose story begins on Cyprus.
It starts at three, with doors at half past two, and falls in the same season as the Ashmolean’s Aphrodite — The Making of a Goddess, which opens in Oxford on 8 October and runs to April. Free, with advance booking required.
The Archive of Grigoris Antoniou & SKAMMATA
A morning of film and archaeology built around two projects. Professor Theopisty Stylianou-Lambert presents her work on Grigoris Antoniou, a Cypriot excavation foreman whose contribution to the island’s digs went largely unrecorded, followed by a keynote from Dr Thomas Kiely, Curator of the Cyprus Collection at the British Museum.
Danae Stylianou’s SKAMMATA screens alongside — an 87-minute documentary produced by the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, following the people and the discoveries behind excavations across the island. The whole session, both films and the discussion after each, runs from eleven until a quarter to three; free, with advance booking essential.