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PERIOD GUIDE · Cyprus

The Middle Bronze Age in Cyprus: up to a century apart

The Department of Antiquities' table dates the period to 2000-1650 BCE, and the Met's timeline to about 1900-1600. On this site: a Cypriot jug with white-painted decoration, and the combined Early and Middle Bronze Age unit of Kissonerga-Skalia.

2000-1650 BCE
1 object 1 article or guide

Move through the periods

Its place in the Cyprus scheme

The whole scheme with this period marked; the periods before and after are its neighbours in the row. Boundaries follow the sources and are not to scale.

All periods and subdivisions
  1. The Neolithic in Cyprus10,000-3,900 BCE
  2. The Chalcolithic in Cyprus3,900-2,500 BCE
  3. The Bronze Age in Cyprus2,500-1,050 BCE
  4. Cyprus from the Geometric to the Classical period1,050-312 BCE
  5. The Hellenistic period in Cyprus312-58 BCE
  6. The Roman period in Cyprus58 BCE - 395 CE
  7. Early Christian and Byzantine Cyprus395-1,191 CE
  8. Frankish and Venetian Cyprus1,191-1,571 CE

Trails · Museums

Where the period’s objects lead

Trails that pass through an object of this period, and the museums that display its objects according to the records. Every chain is documented and labelled as such.

Trails through the period

Reading trail

Trade across the sea

What attests to trade and what only looks like it: a jar from the Levant, two vessels from Cyprus, ivory from Nimrud and ivories from Jerusalem. Six steps, each with what its record knows and what it does not.

6 steps

Passes through Cypriot jug with white-painted decoration.

The frame

The chronological table of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus dates the Middle Bronze Age to 2000-1650 BCE, for the whole island, and the site adopts it as its frame for Cyprus. The Department of Antiquities pages cited here could not be opened for checking on 24 October 2026; the details from them follow notes taken from those pages at an earlier stage and were not re-checked. Source 1.

Boundaries and overlaps

The Met's timeline, read on 24 October 2026, gives Cyprus a "Middle Bronze Age" of about 1900-1600 BCE: the start is a century later than the table's and the end fifty years later, so the two sources differ by up to a century at the ends. The Paphos museum's combined unit for the Early and Middle Bronze Age, 2500-1650 BCE ends in the same year as the table. Sources 2, 1, 3.

On this site

The period has two items. The Cypriot jug with white-painted decoration is dated by the museum "ca. 1900-1800 BCE" and assigned to "Middle Cypriot I", that is, inside the Middle Bronze Age by the table and by the Met alike; its findspot is not stated. "Kissonerga-Skalia: the Early and Middle Bronze Age as one unit" appears both here and in the Early Bronze Age, because its source does not separate the periods. Source 4.

Source

Sources and further reading

The research and references behind this page. Rights to external content remain with their owners.

  1. 1 Chronological table of the history of Cyprus (Department of Antiquities, Cyprus)

    Department of Antiquities, Cyprus · Not opened for checking

  2. 2 The Eastern Mediterranean and Syria, 2000-1000 B.C.

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art · 2000 · Checked

  3. 3 Paphos museum, page of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus

    Department of Antiquities, Cyprus · Not opened for checking

  4. 4 Terracotta jug, collection record 74.51.1316

    The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Checked

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