History of Arkatena

Documents described Cyprus  in 3,000BC as a fabulous land when intricate partnerships had developed amongst merchants from all over this region. They wrote about the trading that occurred through Cyprus with the cultivation of grain, olive oil, and wine. The famous Coumandaria wine of Cyprus is considered one of the oldest wines, as archeologists have uncovered wine particles from thousands of years before Christ. These products, along with the profits obtained through the trading of copper and other metals resulted in fancy urban centers in Cyprus that had courtyards, toilets, and wells. The Cypriot rulers controlled the huge ships coming from the various empires of Persia and Rome, as well as the land merchants from China, helping to establish the Silk Road, always insuring they procured bits of the finest goods. Skilled craftsmen created items of gold, bronze, ivory, carved wood, and fabric colored with the famous Tyrian purple dye from shellfish. 

Many rulers governed throughout these early pre-Roman years, from the Assyrians to the Egyptians to the Persians to the Greeks, whereupon the Greek language became established in Cyprus. Then a collapse of societies occurred, called the Dark Ages around 1100BC, for reasons that remain unclear. Perhaps it was a confluence of a climatic drought that occurred throughout the region plus a series of earthquakes, triggering marauding by the mysterious “Sea People”. These pirates are portrayed as disenfranchised sailors and refugees, who invaded much of the eastern Mediterranean area and disrupted systems and elegant lifestyles.

As the Romans gained control, their influence spread east to claim Constantinople as their capital. Thus began the Byzantine empire, initially covering a broad swath of territory from as far south as Sudan, as far west as Portugal, as far north as France and east to Iran. In Cyprus, Byzantine rulers controlled the lands for over a thousand years, from 300AD to the 1400’s, whereupon the Franks, and then the Venetians ruled. In addition to the trading that occurred throughout these millennia was a sharing of various foods, spices, and culinary knowledge. Imagine being exposed to all the foods from the Levant region and the Romans, then spices coming from China and India along the Silk Road.  

The raised bread that used fermented chickpeas to produce the “white foam”, as written by the poet Prodromus in the 12th century, may have originated from the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, but it is only in Cyprus, where the “arcates” is gathered. After the collapse of the Byzantine empire in 1453, this chickpea-yeast bread was found in the small villages that dot the countryside of Cyprus. Prior to the collapse of Byzantium, the villages of Koilani and Omodos had been the favored property of whatever rulers were in power, who ensured their favorite foods were produced. Yet, precisely because an island is isolated, once this bread tradition in the villages had become established, the tradition persisted after the 1400's, throughout the Ottoman empire and up to the present. The Cypriots had claimed it for themselves, naming it Arkatena, which in the Cypriot dialogue, means “to labor”. And gathering the foam is certainly a task that takes much time and effort. The oldest written record for Arkatena is from a poem handwritten in Cypriot Greek from 1545 by Antoni Drakos who was born in Koilani. This book of poems was discovered in Venice in 1969, then shown to the Pope, who immediately recognized its’ historical value.