Here, in a souvenir shop I came across an eye-opening book by the painter and founder of the Cyprus College of Art near Paphos, the late Stass Paraskos. Famous for being the last artist in Britain to be found guilty of obscenity, he naturally did not shy away from his island's history. Mixing fact and fiction in Aphrodite, The Mythology of Cyprus, Paraskos invents a pilgrim to bring an eye-witness account of the spring festival of Aphrodisia including the rites, sacrifices and mystical unions with the Goddess, all intermingled with the realities of finding a room and dodging thieves and prostitutes among the throngs of Greeks, Egyptians, Persians and Philistines. The account is based on authentic sources and the book ends with surviving traces of the Aphrodite cult in modern Cyprus.

Virtually no trace of the temple remains but Homer's description in the Iliad matches a Roman coin from around 200 AD excavated at Kouklia and now in the British Museum. It depicts an open-sided stone building with votive pillars encasing a vast conical stone – the ancient representation of the goddess of fertility. The site’s museum – once a crusader manor house – now contains this phallic monolith, blackened by the custom of local woman to anoint it with olive oil, well into modern times.

The site today also has a copy of a beautiful mosaic of Leda baring her bottom to the lustful Zeus disguised as a swan (the original is in the Cyprus Museum).

The hills where Ares killed Adonis while hunting – both were lovers of Aphrodite – no longer echo with the call of hounds and cymbals but the quiet thwack of golf clubs wielded by players from the Aphrodite Hills Hotel.

And it's the enduring power of this name that has secured the EU’s Capital of Culture title for Paphos and had it listed as a World Heritage Site. Unesco’s stipulation for the latter honour is that it can only be given to sites of "outstanding universal value". Nea Paphos and Kouklia, through their association with a figure who has inspired writers, poets and artists throughout human history, clearly tick that box. Thanks to Aphrodite, Paphos is looking forward to a rebirth that will build on the astonishing ancient culture that lies just under the surface of modern Cyprus.

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