View PDF version of this page

CHAPTER XV. EXCURSION FROM LARNACA TO THE SALINES, THE VILLAGE OF CITTI AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. Now that I have returned to the south of the island I will go on to describe the rest of its coast. Leaving Larnaca, and still keeping south, you pass the town of the Salines, and close to the church of St Lazarus, which I mentioned in my second chapter. It seems the proper place to speak of certain ancient Armenian inscriptions discovered in a wall of the enclosure of the church, which preserve the names and country of some devout Armenians, and the dates on which they came to express their reverence for the subterranean tomb which has been for many years considered the spot in which Lazarus, who was restored to life by our Lord, was buried the second time. As years passed the devotion to the place cooled down, perhaps because people grew convinced that the Lazarus was not he whom Christ raised from the dead, but a St Lazarus, bishop of Cyprus. If that be so or not I leave others to determine, here I will merely speak of the inscriptions, which have provoked some controversy among men of letters. In 1766 the Chevalier Niebuhr, geometrician to the King of Denmark, visited Cyprus, and enquired about certain inscriptions, said to be somewhere about the church of St Lazarus, which Mr Swinton had supposed, with some hesita-tion, to be Phoenician. He went himself to the spot, and, for

View PDF version of this page