amphoriskos of bichrome Iv ware, Cypro-Archaic I period (750-600 BC), Kythrea

26.8.17 Mesaoria, midday, the land is pounding, my heart is pounding. Kythrea.

The Romans built an aqueduct to transport water from Kythrea to Salamis, to meet the needs of the city. The main fountain had dried up before the war, probably due to the many drillings. The village is built amphitheatrically on the south side of Pentadaktylos and the visitor can still see through its architecture the wealth and glory that the area experienced, due to the exploited Pentadaktylos’s water reservoirs, water being an extremely valuable commodity in Cyprus. I sat under the pines outside the village and made this painting note of the dry fi elds of the Mesaoria plain at the end of August.