Don’t Be Fooled!

For some decades now the scholarly world has been perpetuating a scam, one that has several times duped the editors of Archaeology Odyssey.

In “The Last Days of Hattusa,”^a for example, Trevor Bryce quotes an ancient letter from the king of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra on Syria’s Mediterranean coast) to the “king of Cyprus,” which could be taken to imply that around 1200 B.C. Cyprus was known by the name familiar to English speakers today. In fact, “Cyprus” comes from the Latin name for the island, which derives from the ancient Greek word kypros. Although the origins of this Greek term are uncertain, most agree that it was based on a Semitic word meaning “henna”—perhaps an allusion to the color of copper, the island’s most famous resource.¹