Discovering Ancient Cyprus at Cyprus House
The Cypriot High Commission opens Cyprus House for a weekend on the island's deep past — Aphrodite's myth on the Saturday, the archaeologists who dig it up on the Sunday.
Cyprus House on St James’s Square is the Cypriot High Commission’s own address, and for one weekend in November its Cultural Section opens the building for two days on the island’s deep past. The pairing is deliberate: Saturday takes the myth, Sunday the fieldwork the myth is built on — and the second day is the more unusual of the two, handing the floor to the excavation foreman rather than the curator.
Both days are free and both require advance booking, which is the only barrier — there is nothing to buy. They are the London weekend of Discovering Ancient Cyprus, a longer programme from the Cultural Section that continues into December and closes with two days in Oxford in collaboration with the Ashmolean.
Aphrodite's Island: The Goddess of Cyprus and Her Journey Through Antiquity
Cyprus House · St James's
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
Cyprus House · St James's 22 November
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. Runs 11:00 to 14:45; free, with advance booking essential.