Coat of arms of Cyprus Coat of arms of Cyprus The coat of arms of the Republic of Cyprus depicts a dove carrying an olive branch (a well-known symbol of peace) over “1960”, the year of Cypriot independence from British rule. The background is a copper-yellow colour; this symbolises the large deposits of copper ore on Cyprus (chiefly in the form of chalcopyrite, which is yellow in colour). The arms is not violating the rule of tincture, since the dove is not argent (silver) but blazoned as of the colour proper, i.e. it has the colour it would have in nature, in this case white.
Neuil mine by sphalerite, pyrite and chalcopyrite. The ore therefore belongs to the mineralisation type "sphalerite-pyrite-galena-chalcopyrite". A radiometric lead isotope study on the basement lodes yielded an age of 300 to 250 million years BP (Lougnon, J. et al. 1974). The lodes belong clearly to a late Variscan phase and were definitely formed after the intrusion of the Piégut-Pluviers Granodiorite into the paragneisses during the late Pennsylvanian (elsewhere lodes can be found that also formed within the granodiorite). Yet the metal impregnation is most likely genetically related to the granodiorite. The spatial arrangement of the lodes points towards local southeasterly extension within