AIA Norton Lecture: The Strangeness and Beauty of Cypriot Art

Last night’s AIA lecture by William Childs of the University of Princeton began with an overview of the archaeological site of Polis Chrysochous (Ancient Marion) and so too will this blog. He excavated there from 1983-2007 following in the footsteps of his teacher Erik Sjöqvist.

The site is located on the extreme Western shore of Cyprus, it was discovered by a farmer in the 1880s when the trees he was planting for an orchard began disappearing. Confused, the farmer went to investigate and found that the property he had bought was in fact crawling with tombs! As a result, he decided to hire Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, the German journalist-turned-archaeologist, to have a look around.

The Swedish Cyprus expedition that began in 1929 was under Erik Sjöqvist. The ancient, archaic city of Marion extended at least 1km by .5 km along the ancient shore line. This first city was destroyed (burnt to the ground) probably as a result of the Ionian revolt (490s) though there is no literary evidence for this. After the destruction it was rebuilt on a smaller scale and existed in that form until 312 BCE when it was destroyed by Ptolemy Sotere. After this point it shrank again.

The Archaic and Hellenistic city of the Iron Age is what interests us. To the east of the main city lies a temple building surrounded by a temenos wall and beside it was a bothros where all the valuable cult artifacts that were left were buried. Several terracotta heads, belonging to figurines, were found within the bothros. Interestingly they were representative of different populations. Two such finds were the head of a levantine female with traces of black and red paint and a Nubian female also with traces of red and black paint on the headdress. If you want to learn more about the different phases of the temple and the finds from the area you can visit the project website.

For those of you who love concrete, you may be interested to know that a building in the site has what may be the earliest true concrete floor. It was built way before the Romans decided to use caementicium for everything. Unfortunately, counter to regulation, a bulldozer was used to excavate the area in question before the antiquities authority was informed and the beautiful ashlar walls that were preserved in some areas up to three courses high were destroyed. Alas for the encroachment of modern civilization.

Evidence for contact with Egypt was found in the form of faience pots and a wall relief from the rubble of the temple walls. There is also evidence for Assyrian control in the form of a stele bearing the image of Sargon II that was found in ancient Kition (modern Larnaca) and a Phoenician scarab found at Marion that bore the greek myth of Heracles and Nessus which was carved in an Egyptian style. Cyprus was a crossroads of culture and its art reflects the many people who made the island their home. However, the native Cypriots maintained their own unique style never fully adopting the art forms of the incomers and leaving us with the remains of a truly unique society.