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Located in the middle of the eastern Mediterranean at the crossroads of Anatolian, Egyptian, Levantine and Aegean influences, Cyprus is the perfect place to try to understand the process of the Hellenisation of its populations. The western part of the island, more than any other region, is testament to this progressive Hellenisation from the late Bronze Age to the annexation of Cyprus by Ptolemy, satrap and then King of Egypt. Two iconic regions allow us to follow this Hellenisation step by step, thanks to the results of recent excavations by the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus and the French Archaeological Mission at Paphos along with other foreign missions: one is the settlement which developed around the sanctuary of the Great Goddess, then becoming the seat of the city kingdom of Paphos, and the other, the new harbour city, founded at the end of the 4th c. bc, which became the seat of the Ptolemaic governor of the island. From the Roman period onwards, the first Paphos was named Palai Paphos, in order to distinguish it from the new harbour city Nea Paphos.