Cyprus (/ˈsaɪprəs/ ), officially the Republic of Cyprus, is an island country in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. It is situated south of the Anatolian Peninsula, and its continental position is disputed; while it is geographically located in West Asia, it has cultural and geopolitical ties to Southern Europe. Cyprus is the third-largest and third-most populous island in the Mediterranean, and is located south of Turkey, east of Greece, north of Egypt, and west of Syria. Its capital and largest city is Nicosia. The northern half of the island is de facto governed by the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which was established following the 1974 Turkish invasion. The earliest known human activity on the island dates to around the 10th millennium BC. Archaeological remains include the well-preserved ruins from the Hellenistic period such as Salamis and Kourion, and Cyprus is home to some of the oldest water wells in the world. Cyprus was settled by Mycenaean Greeks in two waves in the 2nd millennium BC. As a strategic location in the Eastern Mediterranean, it was subsequently occupied by several major powers, including the empires of the Assyrians, Egyptians and Persians, from whom the island was seized in 333 BC by Alexander the Great. Subsequent rule by Ptolemaic Egypt, the Classical and Eastern Roman Empire, Arab caliphates for a short period, the French Lusignan dynasty and the Venetians was followed by over three centuries of Ottoman rule between 1571 and 1878 (de jure until 1914). (Source: Wikipedia.org, CC BY-SA)