Today we visited Paphos. Paphos is located on the western side of Cyprus. On our we there we stopped at Aphrodite’s rock. The story behind this location is that Aphrodite was born there from the sea foam that was collected along the shoreline from incoming waves. Aphrodite is a Greek god of love. There is also a belief that if you swim around the rock three times on a full moon at night and without clothes, you will have eternal youth and beauty. It is also very common not far from Aphrodite rock that people will tie fabric to a bush. This represents the bond of a relationship very similar to the locks you see in Paris on bridges.

After visiting Aphrodite’s rock we went to old Paphos where we so the archaeological site known as the tombs of the kings. He is where many roles or people from families with a lot of minds would be buried. They would be buried in a cave that is underground and had multiple rooms. In some of the rooms, the bodies would be placed into the walls while in an esophagus. In other rooms, people would be buried straight down. It was also of belief by the Greeks that your perseverance of the body would take you to an afterlife. So at the time, it was of common practice to have large extravagant burials rather than cremations as we sometimes see today.

After seeing the burial sights we went to see an archeological sight of an ancient town. He saw lots of old mosques including what was believed to be one of the earliest forms of mosaic art. The pieces were made of rounded rocks that you could find by the sea. Other mosaics that we saw were depictions of a grape harvest, a story of a man obsessed with himself, as well as the story of the four seasons of life. Most of the mosaics depicted Greek stories while others showed depictions of geometric shapes and no geometric shapes. It was very interesting throughout the day to see the importance of the preservation of history. Not only for the need to place what you find in a museum but rather understand its importance and the story it tells about the area it was founded within. Whether that be the tombs for the artwork. Each of these combined with proper dating can help to explain the long history of Paphos.