18.06.2024
Neues Museum
On Monday, 17 June 2024, the Cyprus Hall in the Neues Museum on Museum Island was officially reopened by Dr Vasiliki Kassianidou, the Minister of Culture, Republic of Cyprus, in collaboration with Claudia Roth, Germany’s Federal Commissioner for Culture and the Media. The event included performances of Cypriot and Greek choral works by the ’HXOS Chor Berlin conducted by Stelios Chatziktoris. The reopening will allow visitors to once again admire the statue of a goddess with a dove (Aphrodite/Astarte), small sculptures from a number of different temples, a drinking cup from Kition and artefacts from the royal tombs of Tamassos.
Cyprus is the easternmost island in the Mediterranean and is regarded as the mythological birthplace of the goddess Aphrodite. Cyprus occupied a prominent position in European prehistory from the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE, when copper mining began to flourish. The copper deposits in the area attracted a new wave of settlers, and major hubs were established near the coast, which were responsible for managing and regulating the mining and trade of the sought-after metal. In the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE, Cyprus saw the advent of its cultural heyday, which coincided with the dawn of the New Kingdom in Egypt and the emergence of the Mycenaean culture, the oldest European civilisation on the Greek mainland. The island became a hub of Eastern Mediterranean trade and connected the surrounding continents of Europe, Asia and Africa. The trade network between Cyprus, Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia and Greece extended all the way to the western Mediterranean region.
The fascinating diversity of modern-day Cypriot art and culture stems from the colonisation of different cultures, the traces of which have been present since antiquity. The Phoenicians, Greeks and Egyptians were the first to establish colonies on the island, before it moved into the Persian and Roman spheres of influence. This cultural diversity is reflected in the material legacy of a number of city centres on the island and continues to define Cypriot society to this day.
When the Neues Museum on Museum Island reopened in 2009, the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte’s completed Cyprus collection and the Cyprus holdings of the Antikensammlung were presented to the general public in one room. This space, situated on the ground floor of the Neues Museum, has since been designated the Cyprus Hall.
The united Berlin collection of Cypriot antiquities is one of Germany’s most comprehensive and diverse collections, encompassing a period spanning from 2500 BCE to the end of the 4th century CE; together with the collections of the British Museum in London, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the National Museum in Copenhagen, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, it showcases artefacts from Cypriot antiquity outside Cyprus.
