AYA/IO/YA DAWN GODDESS MOTHER OF KITI/KITTU Heth 8*th

I am suggesting in this blog that the name Kiti, a location in Cyprus has its origin from the Assyro-Babylonian god Kittu the son of Aja/Aya the Dawn Goddess of the East.

A recent connection between Sydyk and the Assyro-Babylonian deity Kittu has been proposed which is relevant to my research, regarding the question of who it was that first colonized industrialized and named the salt lake district of Larnaca Cyprus, Kiti. Who was it that came to Kiti, Cyprus and set up a lasting legacy near the salt lake, and mined salt and copper ore from nearby Tamasos. Today the name and location of Kiti, the same name both in ancient and modern Cyprus has had and still has around it a lot of debate regarding etymology and origin.

The recent connection of the name Sydik with Kittiu has to be the best new clue in years that I have come across. The names Sydyk and Misor has already been translate into Accadian as Kitium or Kittum, but the name has not yet been connected to the debate on Cittim and or Kition in Cyprus.

Sydyk and Misor are described as being born from Amunos and Magos who were in turn born from the Titans.
Sydyk is described as the father of the Kabeiroi, the Dioskouroi, the Korybants and the Samothracians all fathered by Hephaestus/Prometheus.

Sydyk like them was credited with the invention of mineral salts as well as the ship and practically everything technological that underpins industry, surplus trade and colonization, our Civilization.

The West Semitic name Ammi-Saduqa is translated into Akkadian as Kitum-kittum showing an equivalence of meaning between the West Semitic ṣ-d-q  and the Akkadian kittu. Kittu was similarly paired with the god Misharu whose name is a cognate of Misor, meaning "justice".

In Mari of Messapotamia, the equivalent deities of Išar and Mešar are found. There is also an Ugaritic, Proto-Canaanite reference to a god named Ṣaduq, no doubt the forerunner of Sydyk the ‘Phoenician’ rendering. The name Sydyk is of the era of the iron Age and Saduk the late Bronze Age.

For the allegorical meaning of the name, we can go to Philo of Byblos, who gave the Greek meaning as dikaion i.e. "righteousness" thus indicating that the word corresponds to the West-Semitic root for "righteousness" ṣ-d-q (compare Arabic ṣ-d-q meaning "truthfulness" and Hebrew tzedek meaning "righteousness”. TZ or S or Z are the variations.

It is still an open question as to who first Colonized Kiti in Cyprus. According to Herodotus who wrote in approximatly 500 B.C., Cyprus was colonized from the East by Proto-Cannanites and later Phoenicians  as well as from the West by Helens and Greeks. The colonization from Ethiopia he also mentions is confusing. This I believe is mistranslated. For what it is worth I think it should read Heth-iopiaian. As in Old testement Heth. 

Heth, Ḥet  (also spelled Khet, Kheth, Chet, Cheth,) is the reconstructed name of the eighth letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet. Heth continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician ḥēth , Syriac ḥēth ܚ, Hebrew ḥēth (also khet or chet) ח, Arabic ḥāʾ ح.

Heth represents the eighth or OGDOAD. The 8th also symbolizes the eternal and or spiritual motion of the ultimate cycle.  The 8th is/was the symbol for infinity and it is symbolized in its turn by the Caduceus. The Eighth also represents the power of the ordered. or governed, regular or regulated cyclical breathing of the Kosmos, presided over by the ruling "great" god in triad. As is the father, the son, and the holy ghost. Or my preference, which I believe the Age of Cronos and Rhea brought forward in Triad is "NIGHT ORDER and JUSTICE."

In Tyre, the dekade seems to unfold, with the eternal law of nature of seven  as the  seven Kabiri, the 8th, 9th and 10th in triad, the OneAll, represented by Eshmun his father Sydyk whose twin  brother was Misor. This was the decade, seven pillars of wisdom plus the Governing Triad. As was, the triad of Rhea of night, order and justice. The seven plus three is what makes the decade, ten, a 1O a One and Zero, the expression of the finite and infinite as represented by the equivalent IO and the goddess Aya or Aja, the daughter of the Shamash the dawn goddess's whom I believe the Assyrins were referring to when they referred to Cyprus as "The Lands of Ya" in the year 750 B.C.


In Babylonian mythology, Aya is the very ancient goddess of the Dawn; She was often called the Bride of the Sun. She was the Divine consort of Shamash and the mother of Misharu (god of law and order) and Kittu (god of justice). She was also the associated with sexual love and fruitfulness.
Much later, She was merged into the mythology of the goddess Ishtar, and it was said that there was a Gate of Ishtar/Aya leading out of the Underworld into the light, no doubt the opening through which the Morning Star with the Light of Dawn appeared. Like other goddesses of the dawn, she was associated with the eastern mountains which are seen as symbolically giving birth to the sun each day as it crests the peaks and rises into the sky.
The Babylonians believed that Aya's mystical union or as later described as the sacred marriage with the sun god caused all vegetation to grow and flourish. She was invoked at all beginnings when a potent surge of energy was needed to bring the renewing light of the dawn.


Herodotus referrs to the plundering of the temple of Aphrodite at Askalon by the Scythians.  He also states that Aphrodites temple in Cyprus was an offshoot from that ancient foundation of Askalon and that  this was reported to him, Herodotus by the Cyprians themselves. 

The Proto-Cannanites on arriving from Tyre and north Syria founded 'Her' KPR's, (sounded as Kypri's) temple, first at Cythera, came through and were also established at the shallow port at todays Larnaca and named it KiTI. The exact date of the earliest Canaanite settlements in Cyprus is unknown, but it has been strongly suggested that this was prior to the time of Moses, say late Bronze Age. I would guess a lot earlier, possibly the middle of the third millennium. Naturally they brought with them their wisdom, their deities, gods/religion but did not colonise the island. A known example of their presence on the island is the worship of their moon-goddess Atargatis (Derceto) later introduced at Paphos, and the Phoenician Baal who replaced El was at home at Ba-PHO and Kition.

This symbol is from the seal of the Prince of Byblos from the period 3000 to 2000 B.C. Byblos/GebEl was a coastal city in old Phoenicia (modern day Lebanon). Byblos which is in the Eastern Mediterranean had a temple of Aphrodite in antiquity. Byblos is 100km from the "island of Aphrodite".

If the orthodox date for the composition of Genesis be accepted, not only the Cananite-Phoenicians, but also the Greeks, or a people of Greek-Latin stock, were present in Cyprus, before and during the time of Moses. This must have been in sufficient numbers to make them the predominant portion of the population. As far as can be judged, over time the Cannanite-Phoenicians occupied only the eastern and southern portion of the island, which incorporated the Paphos, Limassol and Larnaca Districts. Kuklia in the Paphos district, was where they had built a temples to Ashtoreth and set up an 'asherah (a pillar symbolizing a tree, that represented the spirit of the goddess) these were their principal settlements. 

The rest of the island was apparently occupied by Proto Aryans, whose presence could be the origin of the name of Kittim  *K*T, which was the name applied to all the Greek-Latin countries of the Mediterranean , the Greek and Phoenician who were the ones who first introduced their languages to the island. This was proved by George Smith's demonstration of the nature of the non-Phoenician text of the inscription of King Melek-yathon of Citium (370 BC). The signs used in the Greek-Cyprian inscriptions are practically all syllabic.

The Testimony of Cyprian Art is reflected in the ancient art and the present population of Cyprus. What shows is the effect of Asian, Babylonian, Cannano-Egyptian, Phoenician and Greek contacts. Specimens are to be found in many museums, but the finest collection of examples of Cyprian art is undoubtedly that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The early history of Cyprus is still uncertain. However according to the Assyrian copy of Sargon I of Agade's omens, in 2300 BC, in the opinion of many Assyriologists, Sargon the first, is said to have crossed "the sea of the setting sun" (the Mediterranean) and visited all the Islands in the sea as far out as a seven day journey they took him. General Cesnola discovered at Curium, in Cyprus, a seal-cylinder apparently inscribed "Mar-Istar, son of Ilu-bani, servant (worshipper) of Naram-Sin." Naram-Sin was the deified son of Sargon who was a Moon God.

About the year 708 BC, Sargon III of Assyria invaded the Hittite lands which included Cyprus. He subdued seven of the ten  kings of the districts of the land of Ya' i.e. Cyprus. He set up his headquarters at Kittiu (Citium) the stele bearing his name, is now in the Royal Museum at Berlin. Esarhaddon and his son Assur-bani-apli each received tribute from the 10 Cyprian princes who acknowledged Assyrian supremacy. 

The Assyrians referred to the island under the name of  Ya and Ya-dan-anu, the "Wedan" (Vedan) that is a reference to the IOnians in Ezekiel 27:19. Sargon expelled the Dan-Anu from Ya/Cyprus. The referrence to Cyprus as the land. The island or the land as Ya has caused a lot of confusion for schollars who are still attempting to work out why or what or who was Ya. 

My suggestion is that Ya was a reference to the goddess Io/Aya/Issi who also gave her name to Ionia or Aya or Aja of the Sumerians, Ayk to the Armenians. 

In Genesis 1:4 the word Kittim is applied to the descendants of Ja-van, and indicates, therefore, the Greek-Latin races, whose territory extended along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and included its islands. In its narrower sense Kittim appears simply to have stood for the island or a part of the island of Cyprus occurring in the passages between Tarshish, Tyre and Sidon.


Aya we know was the dawn goddess, and we also know that she was later the bride of the sun-god Shamash and the mother through him of Misharu (god of law and order) and Kittu (god of justice)

Kition we know occurs in the Phoenician inscriptions of Cyprus under the forms K(i)t(t) and K(i)t(t)i, the latter being by far the more common.

The oldest etymology for Kition is apparently that of Josephus, who connects "Kittim" with the well-known old Cypriote city Kition (Citium), testifying to the settlment on the island. This word he further connects with it is Chethima, from Chethimus, and states that it was on account of Cyprus being the home of those people that all islands were called Chethim by the Hebrews. The derivation of an ancient Chethim from Chethimus, however, would make the m to be a radical, and this, with the substitution of Ch ( = Kh) for Kittim, renders his proposed etymology somewhat doubtful.
On the other hand the statement of Josephus, that "all islands, and the greatest part of the sea-coast, are called Chethim by the Hebrews," must be taken as the testimony of one well acquainted with the opinions of the learned in his time. In Jeremiah 2:10 and Ezekiel 27:6 the isles (plural) of "Kittim" are expressly spoken of, which confirms the statement of Josephus concerning the extended meaning of the name. In the latter passage the Greek writer seems to have been thinking more of the Cyprian Kition than of the Hebrew Kittim.
In Genesis 1:4 the word Kittim is applied to the descendants of Ja-van, and indicates, therefore, the Greek-Latin races, whose territory extended along the coasts of the Mediterranean, and included its islands. In its narrower sense Kittim appears simply to have stood for the island or a part of the island of Cyprus for all in transit, between Tarshish, Tyre and Sidon, a stopover, a passage, an in between.

In conclusion, I posit that Aya/Aja/Io/ like Issi were the renderings of the feminine principal governing the Cypriots in the Bronze Age of Cyprus and that Kittiu her son, the demi-god of order and justice was first to colonised the district which the Cypriots call Kiti, the Greeks called called Kition and the Hebrew called Chittim .

Archaeologists from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who are excavating the Bronze Age city of Hala Sultan Tekke/Dromolaxia Vizatzia on the island of Cyprus, have uncovered a spectacularly rich tomb dating from about 1200 BC.

Hala Sultan Tekke/Dromolaxia Vizatzia flourished between 1600 and 1150 BC. The city occupied an area of up to 50 hectares and had far-reaching trade connections. “In May-June we discovered a city quarter from around 1250 BC and outside the city we found an incredibly rich grave, one of the richest in Cyprus from this period, and an offering pit next to it,” said team leader Prof. Peter Fischer.“The fact that we have discovered a burial site from the Late Bronze Age is quite sensational, since those who died around this time were usually buried within the settlement.”

“The grave seems to be a family tomb for eight children ages 5–10 years and nine adults, of whom the oldest was about 40 years old. The life expectancy was much shorter back then than it is today,” Prof. Fischer said.

The team found over 100 ceramic vessels and several gold objects, including a diadem, beads, earrings and Egyptian scarabs.

The finds also include gemstones and five cylinder seals, some produced locally and some from Syria and Mesopotamia, as well as a bronze dagger.

Prof. Fischer and his colleagues assign the greatest importance to the more than 140 complete ceramic vessels, most of which were decorated with spectacular illustrations of for example people sitting in a chariot drawn by two horses and a woman wearing a beautiful dress. There were also vases decorated with religious symbols and animal illustrations.

Many of the vessels were imported mainly from Greece and Crete but also from Anatolia (present-day Turkey).

“The pottery carries a lot of archaeological information,” Prof. Fischer said. “There were for example high-class Mycenaean imports, meaning pottery from Greece, dated to 1500–1300 BC.”

“The motif of the woman, possibly a goddess, is Minoan, which means it is from Crete, but the vase was manufactured in Greece. Back in those days, Crete was becoming a Greek colony.”

According to the archaeologists, the painting of the woman’s dress is highly advanced and shows how wealthy women dressed around this time.

The motif can also be found on frescos for example in the Palace of Knossos in Heraklion, Crete.

Other finds are from Egypt. Two of the stone scarabs are gold-mounted and one features hieroglyphs spelling ‘men-kheper-re’ next to an illustration of a pharaoh.

This has given the archaeologists a unique opportunity to tie the roughly 3,500-year-old find to a historic person.

The inscription refers to Egypt’s most powerful pharaoh Thutmose III (1479–1425 BC), during whose reign Egypt peaked in size and influence as he conquered both Syria and parts of Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq.

“We also found evidence in the city of large-scale manufacturing and purple-dying of textiles,” Prof. Fischer said.

“These products were used in the trade with the high cultures in Egypt, Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Crete and Greece, which explains the rich imported finds.”