In the ancient and sun-drenched island of Cyprus, specifically within the coastal majesty of Paphos, there once reigned a king named Cinyras. He was a man of immense wealth and prestige, descended from Pygmalion, and his court was a place of unparalleled luxury. Cinyras and his wife, Cenchreis, were blessed with a daughter named Myrrha, whose beauty was so profound that it rivaled the goddesses themselves. However, this beauty became the seed of a terrible tragedy. Some accounts suggest that Myrrha’s mother boastfully claimed her daughter was more beautiful than Aphrodite herself, while others suggest Myrrha failed to pay proper tribute to the goddess of love. Regardless of the catalyst, Aphrodite’s vengeance was swift and cruel: she did not strike Myrrha down with lightning or plague, but instead infected her heart with an uncontrollable and forbidden lust for her own father, King Cinyras.
Myrrha’s life soon became a waking nightmare. As she grew into adulthood, suitors from across the Mediterranean—princes of Greece, lords of the Levant, and kings of the islands—flocked to Paphos to seek her hand in marriage. Yet Myrrha rejected them all. To her, every other man was a shadow compared to her father. She recognized the horror of her feelings, often contemplating the laws of nature and the differences between the animal kingdom and human society. In her private moments, she wept bitterly, wishing that she had been born under a different lineage or that the gods would strike her dead before she could act on her dark impulses. The internal conflict tore her apart; she was trapped between the purity of filial love and the scorching heat of the curse Aphrodite had placed upon her.
Desperate and seeing no escape from her torment, Myrrha eventually decided to take her own life. She prepared a noose in the privacy of her chambers, intending to end the shame before it could manifest into sin. However, her nurse, an elderly woman who had cared for Myrrha since infancy, discovered her just in time. The nurse, sensing the depth of the princess's despair, pleaded with her to reveal the source of her sorrow. After much resistance and many tears, Myrrha finally confessed the truth. The nurse was horrified by the revelation, but her devotion to the princess outweighed her moral reservations. Fearing that Myrrha would attempt suicide again, the nurse promised to help the girl fulfill her desire, hoping to preserve her life even at the cost of her soul.
An opportunity arose during the annual festival of Ceres (Demeter), a time when the married women of Paphos, including Queen Cenchreis, were required to remain chaste and secluded from their husbands for nine nights of ritual purity. The King, left alone and softened by wine during the festivities, was vulnerable. The nurse approached Cinyras, telling him that a beautiful young woman from a noble family, deeply in love with him, wished to visit his bed in secret. She claimed the girl was shy and required total darkness to maintain her modesty. Cinyras, intrigued and his judgment clouded, agreed to the arrangement. That night, the nurse led a veiled and trembling Myrrha into her father’s chambers. In the absolute darkness of the royal bedroom, the curse reached its fruition, and the father and daughter committed the act that would haunt the history of Paphos forever.
This clandestine arrangement continued for several nights. Cinyras became increasingly curious about the identity of the woman who visited him with such passion and consistency. On the final night, he hid a lamp in the room, and as Myrrha lay sleeping, he brought the light close to her face. The revelation was catastrophic. Seeing his own daughter in his bed, Cinyras was seized by a fury so intense it eclipsed his paternal love. He drew his sword, intent on slaying Myrrha for the sacrilege they had committed. Myrrha, woken by the light and the cold steel of the blade, fled the palace in terror. She ran through the moonlit streets of Paphos and out into the wild countryside, her heart pounding with the knowledge that she carried her father’s child.
For nine months, Myrrha wandered the earth, crossing the lands of Arabia and the desert reaches of the East. She was a fugitive from her own blood, physically burdened by her pregnancy and spiritually crushed by her guilt. Exhausted and unable to run further, she reached the land of the Sabaeans. There, she sank to her knees and prayed to the gods for a middle ground—she did not wish to live among the living, for her presence was a stain on the earth, yet she feared to join the dead, for she believed her crime would offend the shades in the underworld. She begged for a transformation that would remove her from the human realm entirely.