Larnaca and the (Second) Tomb of Lazarus

Saturday 5 October 2013. I've skipped a day from the previous entry about Bethlehem. This is because the ship stayed in Ashdod for a second day. But so did we. We didn't venture off the ship at all.

Today however we have arrived in Cyprus. To Larnaca to be more precise. We haven't booked a tour but instead get tickets for the shuttle bus which drops us off at one end of the seafront and we stroll the length of the Promenade until we come to a wooden jetty.

This is a far simpler affair than you might expect to find at a British seaside town. The resort, at this time of day anyway, is a lot quieter than Blackpool... In fact we hardly saw anyone stirring, we had the Promenade pretty much to ourselves apart from a few other people who had also come off the ship.

Even the beach was deserted at this early hour - around 10:00am. Tourists staying in Larnaca were perhaps sleeping off the after effects of last night's binge?

A little further on from the jetty was a small fortress. Living near the coast was both good and bad in medieval and earlier times. Good because there were fish to be caught in the sea and bad because there were plenty of pirates looking for easy loot, whether that was goods or slaves.

Also by the jetty was a marble statue of the Venetian winged lion, looking very smug and pleased with itself. It had been a gift from Venice, just one of an incredible string of invading rulers since Biblical times (by legend, Larnaca was established by the great grandson of Noah) and Venice itself was chucked out by the Ottomans in 1571.

We left the seafront and saw a very grand church, which we made our way to. This church is another Biblical link - the second tomb of St Lazarus, the friend of Jesus who had been raised from the dead.

His first tomb was at Bethany on the Mount of Olives. He lived a further thirty years and was made Bishop here by St Peter. Another tradition is that he and his sisters were set adrift in a boat and ended up in Marseilles in France, which also claims a site as his tomb.

Yet another version is that after the remains of the saint were taken from Cyprus to Constantinople, they were taken by the Crusaders to Marseilles.

The taking of the saint's relics to Constantinople is a long accepted version. However in 1970 a fire here in Larnaca caused much damage and during renovations human remains were found in a marble sarcophagus under the altar. Obviously not all the saint's remains had been removed.

The iconostasis - the framework for the row of icon paintings on either side of the altar - was carved between 1773 and 1782 and gold plated twenty years later. The church is rich in its icons and paintings, including one of St George on horseback, slaying the dragon. A large chandelier hangs over the main body of the church.

Holy Land Cruise Index Page
European Churches and Cathedrals Index

Uffington, Horse and Dragon, King Arthur and St George

Thursday 30 May 1998. Leaving Oxford behind, we drove on to Uffington, the site of our last white horse of the week and a place of considerable mystery.

The horse is thought to be the oldest of the white horses of England and is not a true representation, but rather a cartoon, loose formed, styled for speed and grace, picked out on the crest of the highest hill in the area as though galloping for the safety of the hill fort a few yards away.

We parked the car and started walking towards the horse, but meeting a white sheep first... As we approached the hill we could see... something...

There is a problem here. The horse is on the crest of the highest hill... There was someone else, a couple walking down from the horse.
"Where can you see it from?" the chap asked me in a puzzled voice. I pointed at the sky.
"Up there," I said. The only way you can see the entire drawing is from the air. From the ground you can only see bits of it.

This could explain why it looks so little like an actual horse of course... You have to wonder what contemporary opinion was at completion. Did the commissioning king or chieftain exclaim "Bloody Nora, what a pillock! How is anybody supposed to see it?!?" and have the unfortunate artist put to death on the spot? Or is it a horse at all?

Just below the horse is a smaller flat-topped hill with a large white spot in the middle of it. This, according to an ancient folklore, is where St George slew the dragon. It is said that the dragon's blood, being spilt here, inhibits the growth of grass, leaving the white spot forever to mark the place. Which is fine except that there are no records to show that St George ever came to Britain at all.

"Yuck!" his page said, "Britain? Why would you go there? Full of blue-painted twits and dragons all over the place! They'll take you for a dragon slayer!"
"They'll take me to their hearts or not at all..."

There is a school of thought that says the drawing is of the dragon, not a horse. Another that it is St George's steed.

We left the horse and turned to have a look at the near by hillfort. Turning away from Dragon Hill (that's really its name so someone believed in it!) we saw another natural feature. The Manger. Formed by melting ice as the ice age ended (always a good time for ice to melt...) it is the supernatural feeding place of the white horse which on moonlit nights (this is the legend you know, I'm not making it up!) canters or rolls down the hill (alright... I did make that bit about rolling up...) to feed. Three sets of brackets in a single sentence, by heck, that's not bad!

And here's Miss Franny trogging along the rampart wall of Uffington hillfort. It's quite a large hillfort and has been suggested for the site of King Arthur's Battle of Badon, mentioned in the Annals of Wales. It's in a strategic position as it protects the ancient trackway known as the Ridgeway. But there are so many contenders for Badon and it is unlikely we shall ever know.

So another school of thought is that the horse is that of King Arthur. The scouring of the white horse, to stop grass growing to obliterate it, was turned into a festival that occurred every seven years and included games such as wrestling and cheese rolling. Cheese rolling sounds a crazy sport doesn't it? You can't help wondering if it started by accident when some twit dropped his cheese and had to hare off down the hill after it and everyone laughed and rolled their own cheeses after him in an attempt to knock him down, thus inventing the game of skittles...

Where are we going next? Blimey, this holiday is almost done!

Return to Wiltshire, Cotswolds and Avon 1998 Index