Antikyra

Antikyra or Anticyra is a port on the west coast of the Gulf of Antikyra named after it. That gulf is a north-coast bay of the Gulf of Corinth. The settlement was made basically on a floor and beach fringing the northeast side of the mountainous Desfina Peninsula. Inscriptional evidence in the region proves that it has been continuous under the same name since classical Greece. Pausanias, an ancient writer, believed that at the beginning of the classical period it had two names, Antikyra and an earlier, Homeric name. Considering that the archaeology from that specific location dates only from the Geometric period, Pausanias' belief about the earlier antiquity of the site is suspect. However, tombs from Medeon across the gulf date to the Middle Helladic (Middle Bronze Age) period, and the Desfina Peninsula as well as the Pleistos river valley were populated during the Mycenaean Period (Late Bronze Age). Although Antikyra does not appear in the Homeric Catalogue of Ships, which is almost a sine qua non for protohistoric Bronze Age antiquity, the southwest fringe of the Desfina Peninsula is known to have been the Mycenaean port area for settlements of the peninsula.