A cross section of histories and cultures, Cyprus is still making sense of its modern identity. Selina Denman reacquaints herself with the island that shaped her. Owen Tozer The marble plaque is improbably specific. The Greek inscription, from 2013, reads: “On this beach, on 9 January one thousand years ago, Aphrodite stepped onto the shores of Pafos.” A hulking rock formation marks the spot where the Greek goddess of love is said to have emerged off the coast of Cyprus in a flurry of sea spray and spume, posing naked, at least according to Botticelli's 15th-century rendering, on a giant scallop shell. She has long demanded deference on this sun-hardened island at the far-eastern edge of the Mediterranean —the ancient temples at Palaipafos, Amathous, and Kition, where she was once worshipped and has been downgraded over the ages into the bare-chested Aphrodite statuettes sold in souvenir shops across the land.…