In mythology, the Giants felled by Heracles in the Gigantomachy are buried under Mykonos and the other isles in the archipelagos. The island's name seems to derive from the ancient for either mound of rocks or rocky land. A later myth links the island to the hero Mykonos, son of King Anios of Delos.
The island was first settled by the Carians and the Phoenicians, but it's the Ionians who were dominant around 1000 B.C. Ancient sources refer to two cities on the island, mention it as a place where Daetes and Artaphernes landed, and describe it as a rather poor island. Deities worshipped on Mykonos were mainly Dionysus, Demeter, Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, and Heracles.
The island passed under Roman rule, then under Byzantine dominion. It was during their rule, in the seventh century, when defensive fortifications were built to guard against raids by Arab pirates.
After the Fourth Crusade, in 1204, the island was ceded to Andreas and Ieremias Gyzis. In 1292 the island was pillaged by the Catalans and effectively left to Venetian control who, in turn, administered it as part of Tinos. While under Venetian rule, the island is sacked by Barbarossa, an admiral of Suleiman the Magnificent.
Passing subsequently under Ottoman rule, it is governed by the chief of the Ottoman fleet, the Capudan Pasha, and virtually self-administered as its Venetian and Turkish administrators did not which to clash.
As a rule, the island's population in modern times fluctuated between 2,000 and 5,000, but swelled in the late 18th century and early 19th century by migrants from Crete as well as Naxos, Folegandros, Sikinos, and Kimolos fleeing epidemics or conflicts on their respective islands. Mykonos was an important resupply station for foreign merchant ships. The island's inhabitants gradually turned to maritime activities and commerce, having earlier tried their hand at piracy.
During the 1821 independence revolt, islanders, led by Manto Mavrogenous-daughter or a powerful aristocratic family who had been raised in Trieste where she had been exposed to the Enlightenment and its ideas-repel an attack by the Turkish fleet and take part in the independence war.
With the establishment of the modern Greek state, Mykonos emerged with a urban dynamic and class which cultivated its ties to southern Russia, Italy, France, Alexandria, Asia Minor, Constantinople, and the emerging center on Syros.
The prevalence of steam engines near the end of the 19th century and the opening of the Corinth Canal in 1904 weakened Mykonos and many islanders migrated, many abroad-to Russia before the first world war and to the United States afterwards-or to large urban centers within Greece, such as Athens and Piraeus.
Excavations begun in 1873 on Delos by the French Archaeological School established the area in the consciousness of the global elite which had the ability and desire to travel to Greece. From the 1930s onwards, celebrities began visiting the island and discovering, alongside the archaeological treasures of Delos, the joys offered by Mykonos. After the second world war, the island's tourism boomed and today it ranks among the world's top destinations.