The History of History Excavations at Idalion and the Changing History of a City-Kingdom Pamela Gaber W hen the antiquarians of the nineteenth century turned their sights on Cyprus, some ancient cities were easier to locate than others. The site of the ancient city-kingdom of Idalion was particularly easy to find, since its name was preserved in its direct descendant, the village of Dhali. The ancient city with its two limestone acropoleis lay on what was a meander in the River Yialias, some twelve miles south of the city-kingdom of Ledra (modern Nicosia). In the Late Roman period, the river changed its course and the meander went out of existence, leaving the site of the ancient city a third of a mile south of the of the present river bed. Melchior de Vogüé, a Frenchman, visited the site in 1862, but he did not preserve an exact record of his work there (Tatton-Brown 2002:243). The first large-scale treasure hunter to root in the fields around Dhali was General Luigi Palma di Cesnola (di Cesnola 1877), the well-known American consul to the Ottoman Empire in Cyprus. The Lycoming College Expedition to Idalion has been excavating in the Lower City of the ancient site, visible here in the foreground, as well as on the East Acropolis, Mouti tou Arvili, visible in the background with the bowl shape formed by the courtyard wall of the Adonis Temenos. Photograph taken from the northwest looking southeast. Photos courtesy of the author unless otherwise indicated. 52 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) Di Cesnola worked at Dhali off and on during the years from 1867 through 1875. He claims to have opened fifteen thousand tombs (di Cesnola 1877:66) and reports that a structure on the summit of the East Acropolis had been exposed when he arrived. He notes that local villagers informed him at the time that they had removed large quantities of bronze finds including fragments of armor, “helmets, swords, spear-heads, etc.” (di Cesnola 1877:98–101). Di Cesnola collected such an enormous quantity of antiquities that his activities attracted the attention of other foreigners on Cyprus. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was founded almost entirely with the contents of his Cypriot collection. The next foreigner to turn his attention to Dhali was R. Hamilton Lang, the British consul based in Larnaca. In 1868 and 1869 Lang commissioned local workers to hunt for antiquities on the East Acropolis of the ancient city, a hill whose modern toponym is Mouti tou Arvili. They found limestone statuary in the summer of 1868 and sent word to Lang in Larnaca at his consulate. He arrived to oversee excavations for two months that year, and again in1869. He published his finds and an account of his activities in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature (1878) and later in Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine (1905). These discoveries all belonged to a shrine, the deity of which was identified as “Reshef-Mikal” in Phoenician inscriptions, and as “Apollo Amyklos” in a Greek inscription from the site. The first to attempt to make a coherent history from finds The limestone statuary, like this “King’s votary” discovered at at Dhali was Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, a journalist and selfMouti tou Arvili, Idalion, all belonged to a shrine, the deity of which was identified as “Reshef-Mikal” in Phoenician inscriptions, taught archaeologist who later became Director of Antiquities. and as “Apollo Amyklos” in a Greek inscription from the site. C154 Ohnefalsch-Richter dug at the site of ancient Idalion in 1883 and British Museum, from Gaber Saletan (1986:19, pl. 27). 1885, and returned to the area numerous times in subsequent years. Aphrodite sanctuary as envisioned by Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, an antiquarian of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries who walked over and mapped many ancient sites, including Idalion. He notes that he found the remains of five sanctuaries, which he identified because of the plethora of sculpture fragments. This is the sanctuary atop the east acropolis, Mouti tou Arvili. From Ohnefalsch-Richter (1893:pl. LVI). NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) 53 He located a number of shrines over the course of his surveys and some systematic excavation. Ohnefalsch-Richter refers to a temenos on the southern end of the East Acropolis as “the great chief sanctuary of the Idalion Aphrodite” (OhnefalschRichter 1893:pl. 5). In general, he, like Lang, assumed a Greek culture for ancient Idalion, although he did see some Near Eastern influence in Cypriot material culture as a whole (hence the somewhat grandiloquent title of his book: Kypros, the Bible, and Homer, 1893). Ohnefalsch-Richter was the last of the nineteenthcentury antiquarians, and the first of the twentieth-century archaeologists to work at Dhali. His interest was born in the antiquarian world, but his Ph.D. was a result of his ultimate understanding that archaeological finds are not just booty, they are the building blocks of history. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition At Idalion, the work of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition led by Einar Gjerstad included a complete excavation of the upper reaches of the West Acropolis (Ambelleri). They posited a Late Cypriot III (1200–1050 BCE) founding for the structures on that summit, and an occupation consisting of a fortified settlement with a shrine. The succeeding Cypro-Geometric I and II periods (1050–850 BCE ) yielded only some sherds of pottery. However, the Swedish excavators felt that the West Acropolis was again fortified in the Cypro-Geometric III period and a new shrine with a court and an altar was built, dedicated to the goddess Anat, identified with Greek Athena. These structures lasted into the early Cypro-Classical period (about 475 BCE; Gjerstad et al. 1935). In addition to these extensive excavations, the Swedes dug soundings on the terrace of Ambelleri and excavated some tombs of the Cypro-Archaic to the Hellenistic period. These tombs were located outside the fortification encircling the Lower City. Gjerstad was convinced that the occupation of Idalion ended in the Cypro-Archaic II period, around 470 BCE. For scholars the immense importance of Gjerstad’s excavations at Idalion includes the stratigraphic sequence that enabled him to construct his ceramic typology with its chronological sequence. This system, with modifications, still forms the basis of the study of ancient Cypriot ceramics. The general outline sketched by the Swedish team from working at Idalion and other sites defined the scholarly dialogue about the history of Cyprus that remains to this day. Implied in Gjerstad’s narrative is an “Eteo-Cypriot” population, developed in true insular fashion on the island from the Neolithic through the third and into the second millennium BCE. It was these native Cypriots who founded Idalion (and presumably the other city-kingdoms) in the Late Cypriot III period (about 1200–1050 BCE). Gjerstad was already toying with his vision of Cyprus as an island polarized between its Greek and Phoenician populations. In later years that vision of tension between ethnic groups became central to Gjerstad’s version of the sequence of events and interrelationships on Cyprus in the first millennium BCE (ef. Maier 1985). It is easy to understand, given the events in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, how Gjerstad’s world view was shaped by the clash of European, post-Enlightenment nation-states thus coloring his vision of ancient history. It has generally come to be understood, however, that notions of ethnicity in the ancient world would have been very different. There is no longer any reason to imagine a clash of ancient city-states along strictly ethnic lines. There were certainly Eteo-Cypriots who spoke a non-Greek local language and continued to live, work, and worship at Idalion from the Late Cypriot through the Hellenistic and probably into the Roman period alongside Greek speakers and during the times when many inscriptions continued to be in Phoenician. At least one non-Greek, Cypro-syllabic inscription has been found among the houses of the Lower City at Idalion in Hellenistic levels (Gaber and Bazemore 1999:237–42). In any case, Gjerstad, having found no later remains on the West Acropolis of Idalion, posited that the city went out of existence as a kingdom in 470 BCE. The Joint American Expedition to Idalion Four kings issued coinage from Idalion between the late-sixth century and the fifth century BCE. All the coins have a sphinx on one side and a lotus or “incuse square” on the other. Photo from Masson (1961:pl. XXXVIII). 54 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) In 1969 G. Ernest Wright of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Harvard University arranged for two of his graduate students, Lawrence E. Stager and Anita Walker, to become co-directors of the excavations at Idalion. In 1971 they arrived to carry out exploratory soundings and surveys. The first major excavation season took place in 1972 and the multi-disciplinary investigations that took place during those two seasons are reported in BASOR Supplement 19 (Stager, Walker, and Wright 1974). From 1972 through 1978 the Joint American Expedition carried out extensive surface survey, excavation, and sitecatchment analysis in the vicinity of Dhali. The specific progress of the project along with a final excavation season in 1980, are chronicled in the single volume of final publication (Stager and Walker 1989). Stager and Walker were convinced that while state-formation processes were underway elsewhere on Cyprus, settlement at Idalion was small scale during the Late Cypriot period (Stager and Walker 1989:461). They agreed with Gjerstad’s team that there was no settlement at “Idalion proper” during the CyproGeometric I and II periods. On the West Acropolis (on the walls beneath the fortification walls) and in the Lower City they found architecture of the Cypro-Geometric III and early Cypro-Archaic periods. “Towards the end of the Cypro-Archaic II (about 550–475 BCE) the fortifications on the West Terrace were radically re-organized and the whole city enclosed with a fortification wall” (Stager and Walker 1989:462). This area, enclosed by the fortifications, was about forty hectares. Stager estimated its population at eight to ten thousand people. Stager and Walker addressed Gjerstad’s contention that settlement on Idalion’s West Acropolis came to an end around 470 BCE. Stager conducted excavations on the terrace of the West Acropolis in 1980 where he exposed an expanse of monumental architecture, which he dubbed “the Palace.” This, he concluded, was founded around 475 and saw a long period of use, thus refuting Gjerstad’s date for the end of Idalion as a city-kingdom. There was, however, a major destruction in that area around 450 BCE, and to understand it Stager and Walker turned to the evidence of the sequence of coins minted at Idalion. The crux of the sequence, the issue that confronts the dispute between Gjerstad, who saw the kingdom of Idalion coming to an end in 470 BCE, and Stager and Walker, who saw the Kitian destruction taking place in 450 BCE, centers, not unnaturally, on the coins of the fifth century BCE. There are four kings who issued coinage from Idalion between the late-sixth century to the fifth century BCE. All of these are inscribed in Cypro-syllabic pa-si-le-u-s(e) Plan of Idalion showing the different areas of excavation. After Gaber and Dever (1996:fig. 2). followed by an abbreviation of the king’s name. All have a sphinx on one side and a lotus or “incuse square” on the other. The first of these is not identifiable (Masson 1961:250–52). The second is King Ki___, and the third is King Ka-ra___. As Miranda Marvin puts it, “The last king to issue independent coinage from Idalion . . . abbreviates his name as Sa___ has been identified with the only king of Idalion known by his full name, one Stasikypros” (Stager, Walker, and Wright 1974:xxii–xxv). Stasikypros is famous because of an inscribed bronze tablet found in 1850–1851 at Idalion, now in the Bibliotheque Nationale (Masson 1961:234). The inscription details a grant of land by King Stasikypros and the city of Idalion, and is significant for a number of reasons. In the first place, in granting the land Stasikypros did not act alone, and scholars posit some form of mixed government—perhaps a council of some sort—working alongside the king. In the second place, the tablet also mentions a grant of land in nearby Alambra given to a physician named Onasilos who, with his brother, worked without fees during an unsuccessful attack on Idalion by “Medes and Kitians,” that is, Phoenicians and the army of Kition. We know that Kition did conquer Idalion some time during the reign of ‘Oziba’al, a king of Kition, who, following the conquest, began to issue coins as “King of Kition and Idalion.” (Soon after, he issued coins as “King of Kition, Idalion, and Tamassos”; Gaber 1995:36). It is the date of ªOzibaªal’s conquest of Idalion that is in dispute. The bronze tablet was found on the West Acropolis of Idalion, Ambelleri. Gjerstad posited that the unsuccessful siege had taken place in 499/498 during the Ionian Revolt because he was certain that the administrative center on the West Acropolis was destroyed in 470 BCE and had immediately ceased to function as an administrative center. (Gjerstad 1935:625– 26). Gjerstad’s dating, however, is problematic because it overlooks the coinage. The trouble arises because King Ka___ of Idalion overstruck some coins originally issued by Baªalmilk I of Kition, who is known to have begun to rule after 480 BCE, meaning King Ka ___ could not have ruled until some point after 480 BCE, at the very earliest, and King Stasikypros is at least the third generation after King Ki___ (Hill 1940:153, pl. V,5). So, unless the kings were dropping like flies, it is hard to imagine four kings in ten years, all of whom were prosperous and energetic enough to issue a substantial coin sequence. The Joint American Expedition to Idalion discovered that occupation on the terrace of Ambelleri, the West Acropolis, continued down to the Hellenistic period. This removed the constraint felt by the Swedes to cram all the known events into the years before 470 BCE. The sequence of known kings of Idalion in the late-sixth and early-fifth centuries BCE is now suggested to be as follows (Stager, Walker, and Wright 1974:xxvi): King (uncertain) King Ki___ overstrikes Coins of Baºlmilk (ca. 475–450) King Ka ra___ King Sa___ ªOzibaªal (ca. 450–425) first king of Kition and Idalion NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) 55 It is attractive, furthermore, to associate the fall of Idalion with the triumph of the Phoenicians and the “disarray of the Greek cities following the collapse of Cimon’s expedition in 449” (Hill 1940:123–25). There can be little doubt that Kition wanted possession of Idalion because of its role in the copper trade. (The same is true for Tamassos.) To control the processing center was to control the copper itself right from the mines to the ports (Gaber 1995:35). Great quantities of slag have been found at Late Bronze Age city sites, although at some time in the following period there was a shift away from smelting in the cities themselves to smelting at mining sites. As demand for copper continued to grow and as the amounts of timber near cities continued to dwindle, it was a natural consequence that smelting would shift to the forest areas near the mines (Stager, Walker, and Wright 1974:177; Stager and Walker 1989). When the primary smelting operations began to be carried out at the mining sites, their product was carried to the nearby city for final processing and production and shipping of ingots of copper to the coast for international trade. Although the exact timing of the shift is unknown, it is clear that by the Cypro-Archaic period primary smelting took place near the mines. The Joint American Expedition also conducted excavations on the terrace of the East Acropolis, Mouti tou Arvili, in an attempt to locate the “Apollo Temple” reported by R. Hamilton Lang in the previous century. What they found included gypsum-faced monumental architecture of the Hellenistic period. It appears that when the Greeks took over Idalion (just before 300 BCE) they founded a new administrative center on Mouti tou Arvili (Stager, Walker, and Wright 1974:63–76). On the terrace of the West Acropolis, Ambelleri, Stager and Walker found a Hellenistic industrial installation overlying the earlier Archaic monumental architecture, which further supports the abandonment of the West Terrace administrative complex just before 300 BCE. It was left for the following American Expedition under my direction, and the Department of Antiquities excavations under Maria Hadjicosti to fill in some of the historical gaps before and after the floruit of the Archaic administrative center on Ambelleri. The University of New Hampshire Excavations On the north side of the street on the West Acropolis, a meter-deep level of destruction debris lay atop the 450 BCE street, twenty-six centimeters under which was found a worn curbstone dating to about 600 BCE. Here the massive ashlar sandstone blocks of the northern structure are evident. 56 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) In 1987 I received a permit from the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus, then directed by Vassos Karageorghis, to excavate Idalion. A single exploratory season under the auspices of the University of New Hampshire unearthed surprising results. Soundings were undertaken on the terrace of the West Acropolis where Stager’s “palace” met the street level under the 450 BCE destruction debris. In the Lower City, a sounding was dug in a room of a building called “Building B” where extensive ash and destruction debris had been uncovered in 1978, but not excavated (Gaber 1992:167–72). The soundings on the terrace of the West Acropolis were placed in one case against the monumental architecture on the south side of the street, and in the other against a buttress at the sandstone face of the architecture on the north side of the street. The two soundings produced widely divergent results. The southern sounding showed that that structure, as Stager had contended, was founded in the first quarter of the fifth century BCE. Indeed, the street level at the time of the destruction was only a few centimeters above the founding levels of this southern building. The northern sounding revealed a completely different history. The street level dating to about 450 BCE was covered with upwards of a meter of massive destruction debris, below which was found a series of street surfaces from a depth of twenty-five centimeters, at which point another curbstone was revealed. This earlier curb was an integral part of the northern structure, at a level of the street dating to about 600 BCE; it was extremely worn and must have been in place for a considerable time at that date. Our sounding in the Lower City revealed a destruction level, but it was a localized fire in Building B, which was used for oliveoil production. Traces of the burned areas can be seen in this photograph, just to the left of and behind the meter stick, on the remains of the mud-plaster floors. The deep sounding in the foreground of this aerial view of Building B in the Lower City reveals a very deep wall that lies just east of the fragmentary field-stone eastern limit of Building B. The northern wall of Building B extends off into the distance, with a cross wall and a well head indicating the courtyard of the building. Clearly, then, the building on the south side of the street, founded around 475 BCE , was not in existence when the northern building was constructed some time before 600 BCE . We did not find the founding levels of that northern building and in 1991 the Department of Antiquities took over excavations of the administrative center on the West Acropolis, Ambelleri, under the direction of Maria Hadjicosti. To date they have not pursued the question of the founding levels of the northern structure. Suffice it to say, however, that because the curbstone associated with the 600 BCE street level was severely worn and clearly continued down below that street level, the foundation date for the northern building was, at latest, in the seventh century BCE, and very possibly earlier. Certainly then, in the Cypro-Geometric period, no later than the seventh century BCE, Idalion commanded sufficient wealth to erect massive monumental buildings of sandstone not native to the immediate vicinity. The sandstone used to construct these massive walls—in some places more than a meter thick—was not the soft, crumbling chalk found nearby. Rather it is hard, compact stone of the sort found to the north in the foothills of the Kyrenia Mountains, or to the south outside Larnaca (ancient Kition). In either case, the vast quantity of stone needed for the construction of such an administrative center had to be transported about thirty kilometers. Add to that the fact that the blocks are often square in section, and expertly dressed, and a picture emerges of wealth and specialized skills that must have taken significant time to develop. In other words, by the time this “North Building” on the terrace of the West Acropolis was constructed, no later than the seventh century BCE, Idalion was a thriving, wealthy city whose population was already highly specialized. How long did such prosperity take to develop? It’s hard to say, but we can state with certainty that the North Building was not built in a day. . . . So much for the early history revealed in the West Acropolis soundings. The huge structures came to a violent end around 450 BCE (Stager and Walker 1989:3, fig. 3, pl. 2a). Immediately atop the destruction debris left behind and with no visible hiatus, structures were erected of a less monumental nature. The Department of Antiquities excavations would soon reveal the nature of those new structures. The Lower City sounding of the 1987 excavations revealed quite the opposite phenomenon. What at first appeared to be destruction debris turned out to be a completely localized fire in one room of Building B used for olive oil production (Gaber 1992:176; Gaber and Dever 1996:92–99). A larger, far more elaborate oil production complex was immediately rebuilt on the same location, while the rest of Building B continued in use without interruption well into the Hellenistic period. The picture that thus emerges is one of Kition conquering Idalion and throwing down the fortifications and administrative center. The domestic and industrial structures in the Lower City at the time were unmolested. NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) 57 Subsequent excavations by the University of Arizona and Lycoming College under my direction from 1992–2005 demonstrated that the industrial activity in the Lower City of Idalion continued without interruption from the Late Cypriot II period (twelfth century BCE) down at least to the Roman period of the second century BCE. The Department of Antiquities Excavations The Department of Antiquities excavations under the direction of Maria Hadjicosti discovered a Phoenician administrative complex immediately above the destroyed Cypriot monumental architecture, founded around 450 BCE (Hadjicosti 1999:33–55). They also found a Late Cypriot and Geometric industrial complex on the lower slopes of Ambelleri that sheds light into what has hitherto been only a dimly perceived period of Cypriot history. In the mid 1990s Hadjicosti oversaw the removal of some huts there and as soon as the topsoil was removed a series of enigmatic, apparently burnt, rings appeared. A fascinating complex was uncovered that may have been for the manufacturing of pithoi. In deep pits lined with pot sherds and fragments of stone, it seems the huge pots were constructed and fired. Immediately atop the Late Cypriot installations there appeared fragmentary Geometric and more substantial CyproArchaic architecture, once again attesting to the continued activity at Idalion at the end of the second and the beginning of the first millennia BCE. The third period to be illuminated by the Department of Antiquities excavations is the Hellenistic period. In 1992 Hadjicosti undertook salvage excavations in connection with the laying of water pipes under the main road through Dhali to Limpia when she uncovered extensive Hellenistic structures, evidently the “Lower City” during the floruit of the gypsum-faced administrative complex on the terrace of the East Acropolis, Mouti tou Arvili. The field-stone altar atop the bothros is on a mud-plaster surface. When we followed that surface toward the vertical section at the east end of the trench, we came upon a burnt offering in a jar, visible here just beside the meter stick, peeking out of the baulk. 58 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) The University of Arizona and Lycoming College Excavations To introduce the most significant find of the early 1990s it is necessary to backtrack a bit. It may be recalled that R. Hamilton Lang reported finding a “Temple of Apollo” on Mouti tou Arvili, the East Acropolis of Idalion. He never located his finds on a map, however, stating only that going South toward Limpia the temple lies to the left of the road (Lang 1878:32). No one appears actually to have seen his excavated trenches after traveler Colonna-Ceccaldi (Colonna-Ceccaldi1882). Max Ohnefalsch-Richter placed a number “6” beside the road on his plan of Idalion (Ohnefalsch-Richter 1893:pl. V), and called it “temple found by Lang.” Later the Swedes reproduced that plan (Gjerstad et al. 1935:plan IV). In 1972 Stager and Walker decided to investigate “Lang’s Temple.” Accordingly, they sank trenches at the location indicated on Ohnefalsch-Richter’s, and Gjerstad’s plans. What they found were the undisturbed remains of a Roman villa; in particular its bath house. They decided that perhaps the location of the road had shifted in the intervening hundred years since Lang’s excavations. This led them to place probe trenches on the western side of the road just under the terrace of the West Acropolis in what is to this day an almond grove. I was privileged as a graduate student to direct the excavation of those soundings, in which we uncovered the Roman road. Clearly, then, “Lang’s Temple” was not here, either. It was soon after that that Stager had an inspiration. He pointed out that geologists all note that the Troodos Massif contains rocks from deep under the Earth’s crust, making it a major magnetic anomaly. Stager reasoned that hand-held compasses at the turn of the last century would not have been able to compensate for the twelve (or so) degrees their readings would have been skewed by the pull of the Troodos’s ultra-basic rocks. From Ohnefalsch-Richter’s “6” making the supposed spot of “Lang’s Temple,” Stager worked out that the This Black-on-Red bowl from the eighth century BCE was found in the bothros. The Lower City Temenos contained religious features more frequently found in the Near East, including stones standing vertically within the sacred space, here shown in situ. twelve degrees would translate into 225 meters on the ground. He sank trenches on the terrace of the East Acropolis 225 meters southeast of the spot marked on Ohnefalsch-Richter’s plan as the site of “Lang’s Temple.” That was how the Joint American Expedition found the Hellenistic administrative center (Doermann 1974:63–75). It was in 1992 that the University of Arizona Expedition, under my direction, found the steps of the complex that had been referred to for 120 years as “Lang’s Temple” (Gaber and Morden 1992:21–30). The 1992 to 2001 excavations on the terrace of Mouti tou Arvili revealed an extensive outdoor sanctuary founded in the late Geometric or early Archaic period. The temenos was in continuous use through the Roman period (Gaber and Dever 1996:99–110; 1998:48). It is apparent that the sanctuary was dedicated to the Wanax, or “Lord” in the Eteo-Cypriot pantheon, consort of the Wanasa, “Lady” (J. Karageorghis 1977). Recently these two deities—at least as they were worshipped in the Mesaoria Plain of Cyprus—have been identified as the Master and Mistress of Animals (Counts 2003:235; 2004:173). It has been demonstrated elsewhere that the Wanax, or “Master of Animals” of the native Cypriot Similar to the standing stones at Idalion are these from the site of Arad in Israel. Here they have been re-erected and their original position is unknown, but the standing stones at Idalion, found in situ, may provide some clues. Photo by permission of the Biblical Archaeology Society. NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) 59 pantheon very likely came to be called “Adonis,” perhaps in the Hellenistic period; certainly by the Roman era (Gaber and Morden 1992; Gaber 1995; Gaber and Dever 1998:48). Mouti tou Arvili, then, appears to have been the first known sanctuary to Adonis. In addition to excavating on the slopes of Mouti tou Arvili in the Adonis Temenos, the University of Arizona Expedition, and then, after 2001, the Lycoming College Expedition to Idalion, both under my direction, dug extensively in the Lower City. The excavations found extensive small-scale industrial installations, including horn working, the well-developed olive-oil pressing operation first hinted at during the 1987 soundings, and a large area that appears to be for levigating clay—perhaps preparatory The fifth-century BCE altar from the Lower City Temenos shows a stone-built structure with a deep ash pit in front of it, visible above the scale. Like the standing stones, the altar-and-ash-pit arrangement at Idalion also finds parallels further east. Here we see the altar and ash pit in the Small Temple at Dan, echoing the seventh-century altar at Idalion. Photo by permission of the Biblical Archaeology Society. 60 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) to ceramic production. These installations seem to have first been used in the Late Cypriot period, in the thirteenth century BCE, and continued in use through the Hellenistic period and into at least the first century CE. At some time in the first century BCE, the largest of the settling tanks (interpreted as clay processing tanks) was reused as a bothros, a depository of sacred vessels and objects consecrated to a deity but no longer in use. The oval pit cut into the virgin marl is four to four and a half meters across and close to three meters deep. It was full (to within twenty-five centimeters of the modern ground level) with pottery and artifacts. At the top was an earthen floor with a stone-built altar. Deposited off to the side was a burnt offering: the distal end of the radius of a sheep or goat (what we might call a lamb shank). This discovery was made in 1995 and took through the 1998 season to excavate the bothros completely. Many of the finds date to the Cypro-Geometric period, but the bulk of them were created in the Cypro-Archaic period. The magnitude of this sacred deposit made it seem extremely likely that there was a sanctuary in the immediate vicinity. Since the bothros was found at the extreme northern edge of the excavated area of the Lower City, I reasoned that the sanctuary whose objects it contained must be nearby. Accordingly, in 1998, I determined that it would be prudent to extend our excavations to the south where we would be likely to find more of the domestic and industrial complex of the Lower City. Not to put too fine a point on it, we had already spent years excavating one temenos, and I had no desire to spend scarce resources investigating another. In fact, we decided to site our new trenches just below the terrace of Ambelleri on which Hadjicosti’s team had found the Late Cypro-Archaic installations, thinking that we were most likely to find more early industrial installations there. Instead we found a sanctuary devoted to a pair of deities, a male and a female. The votive figures dedicated in this shrine during the Cypro-Archaic period were in many cases incorporated into the rebuilt walls of the late Hellenistic/Early Roman period in the first century BCE. This is noteworthy, since we have excavated many walls of the period elsewhere on the site, but only in the sanctuary walls themselves was statuary included among the building stones. Perhaps these figures, once donated as gifts to the deity, could not be used in any other structures. They could, presumably, have been buried with the broken terracottas in the bothros, but that would have been a waste of good building stone, after all. There can be little doubt that the sanctuary of the “Divine Pair” was the source of the objects deposited in this bothros. The founding levels in the western rooms of the temenos in the southern Lower City lie immediately above the limestone bedrock. On that Cypro-Geometric floor (about eighth century BCE) in 2002 we uncovered a sherd of a large krater. A fragment of the same vessel was found in the bothros in 1998. The features of worship discovered in this shrine have more in common with Israelite and Canaanite cult practices than with anything known from the Aegean world. Most striking are the standing stones, which were objects of worship in the shrine, and most resemble miniatures of the pair of standing stones found at Arad in Israel. It must be remembered that the standing stones at Arad were discovered buried (apparently at the end of the eighth century BCE ) and their original position is unknown. It is perfectly plausible to suggest that they originally stood side-by-side like those at Idalion, found in situ. In the same enclosure in the Lower City sanctuary at Idalion were found a pair of stone-built altars, one earlier and one later, each with an ash depository next to it. The earlier one had an ash pit lined with a terracotta vessel, the same arrangement found at the Small Temple at Dan in Israel. Finally, in this same inner enclosure, was found a betyl in a pit, and just such an installation is reported at Beth Shean in the Canaanite levels (Yadin and Geva 1986). What, then, can we suggest about the nature of the cult at Idalion? Not a great deal, in fact. We may only observe that worshippers at the shrine of this “Divine Pair” seem to have observed the rites of their cult in some ways analogous to rites practiced in the Levant. We do not, as yet, know which deities these were, let alone whether they may also have been worshipped in the Levant. This is the next part of the story of the city-kingdom of Idalion to be investigated. It is, as always, impossible to predict how the next chapter of the story will look when the next phase of excavations are completed. For now, we have a fairly coherent picture of the sequence of history in the Yialias River Valley. The final piece (to date) was provided by the work of the Aix en Provence team working at nearby Potamia under the direction of Nolwyn Lecuyer in 2003. Benoit Devillers, a young geomorphologist, was examining the river valley in the region. He commented in 2002 that those who had previously searched for the Bronze Age settlement in the vicinity of nearby Ayios Sozomenos village had been looking in the wrong place. Because hundreds of Bronze Age tombs were found atop the plateau above the valley in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, previous archaeologists had looked there and on the surface below for the settlement associated with the tombs (Overbeck and Swiny 1972:7–31). Devilliers asserted that, given the geological features of the area and the nature of the river, the city settlement must be located under meters of accumulated alluvium in the plain below the plateau. In 2003 he directed deep cutting operations to test this hypothesis and found evidence of an extensive Bronze Age urban center at Kakoskalin near Ayios Sozomenos (Devillers, Gaber, and Lecuyer 2005:85–92). Here was the Bronze Age “parent” of the city-kingdom of Idalion. Just as Salamis had Enkomi, Kition had Hala Sultan Tekke, Paphos had Kouklia, Idalion had Kakoskalin. What other citykingdoms of the first millennium BCE will be shown to have huge Bronze Age urban centers as predecessors? Will we find the antecedents of Amathus? Ledra? Chytroi? And what does it mean that new urban centers were founded at the end of the Late Cypriot period? These questions have been the subject of hot debate for decades in Cypriot archaeology, and every decade our knowledge increases. In Idalion’s case we have now found workshops of some kind involving the use of liquids dating to the thirteenth century BCE. The pottery from Kakoskalin includes a great deal of Middle Cypriot black and red polished wares. There are a few pieces with incised decoration that appear to be from the Late Cypriot I period. In addition there are one or two tantalizing fragments of Proto-Geometric pottery that seem to indicate an overlap with the earliest levels at Idalion. The History of Idalion Today The current picture, then, of city-kingdom history as we see it at Idalion has the following outlines: • During the Middle and Late Cypriot periods (about 1900– 1000 BCE ) a huge urban center was situated across the Yialias River at the location known as Kakoskalin, near Ayios Sozomenos. • Small-scale industrial and administrative installations on and below Ambelleri at Idalion began in the Late Cypriot period (about the thirteenth century BCE). • Industrial installations expanded and sanctuaries were founded in the Lower City of Idalion in the early CyproGeometric period (about eleventh century BCE). • Monumental architecture appeared on the terrace of the West Acropolis, perhaps including fortification, in the Cypro-Geometric III period. This was almost certainly the “Edi-il” of the Stele of Esarhaddon, first among the Cypriot city-kingdoms paying him tribute in about 669 BCE. • During the Cypro-Archaic period (about 700–475 BCE) there was great expansion of monumental architecture on Ambelleri, the terrace of the West Acropolis, and of the domestic and industrial complex in the Lower City. The kings of Idalion began to issue coinage. • A huge fortification wall, ringing the Lower City and the sanctuaries on the acropolis was constructed in about 500 BCE along with a citadel surrounding the administrative center on Ambelleri. • ªOzibaªal of Kition destroyed the administrative center in about 450 BCE, while the domestic and industrial complex in the Lower City enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity. The Kitian administration rebuilt on Ambelleri and continued to operate there until just before 300 BCE. • About 312 BCE, when the Phoenician administrative center was abandoned, a new, gypsum-faced complex was erected across the road on the terrace of the East Acropolis, Mouti tou Arvili, just below the Adonis Temenos. This was the Hellenistic administrative center. • During the next two Hellenistic centuries, the old monumental architecture on the terrace of Ambelleri was covered over and an industrial, copper-working platform was put in place there. The town was organized according to Hippodamean town planning, with insulae and a parallel street grid. • The city of Ledra to the north (currently being excavated by the Department of Antiquities under the direction of NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) 61 Despo Pilides) became the center of trade while Idalion dwindled (Pilides 2004). • In the middle of the first century BCE, the Romans took over. They improved upon the copper industry, making single-process, high-temperature smelting the rule. This highly efficient process was carried out at the mining sites, and no longer produced a “secondary ore” needing to be refined at sites like Idalion and Tamassos (and no doubt others). These way-stations for “secondary processing” were no longer necessary. Furthermore, the primary eastwest highway now went through Ledra, accentuating its importance and further diminishing the need for another urban center so close by. • During the Late Antique and Medieval periods, Idalion shrank to an agricultural village hugging the banks of the Yialias River. • In 1974, after a coup d’etat and an invasion of Cyprus, the then main road from Nicosia to Larnaca was severed. As a result the road between the acropoleis of Idalion, Mouti tou Arvili and Ambelleri, became once again the main route to Kition (modern Larnaca) as it had been in ancient days. The village of Dhali, direct descendant of the city-kingdom of Idalion, immediately doubled in size. Then businesses sprang up along the road over the next ten years. • In the 1980s the highway from Nicosia to Limassol was completed, leaving Dhali in easy commuting distance of the nation’s capital. • In the 1990s Dhali became a full-fledged suburb of Nicosia. Thus the continuing discoveries at the site of the city-kingdom of Idalion build upon one another—not always in a linear fashion. Discovery builds upon discovery, each changing our perception of past events and a distant echo of their motivations. Such continuing work at every site on the island builds our picture of life in ancient Cyprus. As our image of life in ancient Cyprus comes into ever-sharper focus, we see life in the eastern Mediterranean world more clearly. As our own culture is a melding of the culture of the Ancient Near East through biblical traditions, and the world of Greece and Rome via the Enlightenment, so the life of ancient Cyprus is vital to our understanding our cultural roots. It was on Cyprus, more than anywhere else in the ancient world, after all, where East met West. References Colonna-Ceccaldi, G. 1882 Monuments antiques de Chypre, de Syrie et d’Égypte. Paris: Didier. Counts, D. B. 2003 Artemis at Athienou-Malloura. Centre d’études Chypriotes, Cahier 33: 237–51. 2004 Art and Religion in the Cypriote Mesaoria: The View from Athienou Malloura. Centre d’études Chypriotes, Cahier 34: 173–90. Devillers, B.; Gaber, P.; and Lecuyer, N. 2004 Notes on the Agios Sozomenos Bronze Age Settlement 62 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) (Lefkosia district): Recent Palaeoenvironmental and Archaeological Finds. Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 2004: 85–92. di Cesnola, L. P. 1877 Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs and Temples. A Narrative of Researches and Excavations during Ten Years’ Residence as American Consul in that Island. London: Murray. Doermann, R. W. 1974 The Hellenistic Buildings on the East Terrace. Pp. 63–76 in American Expedition to Idalion, Cyprus. First Preliminary Report: Seasons of 1971 and 1972, ed. L. E. Stager, A. Walker, and G. E. Wright. BASOR Supplement 18. Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research. Gaber, P. 1992 The University of New Hampshire Expedition to Idalion, Cyprus: Preliminary Report. Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 1992: 167–78. 1995 The History of Idalion: A history of Interaction. Pp. 32–39 in Visitors, Immigrants, and Invaders in Cyprus, ed. P. W. Wallace. Albany: Institute of Cypriot Studies. SUNY at Albany. Gaber, P., and Bazemore, G. B. 1999 Two Enigmatic Inscriptions from Idalion. Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 1999: 237–42. Gaber, P., and Dever, W. 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Tatton-Brown, V. 2002 The Kingdom of Idalion: Lang’s Excavations in the British Museum. Centre d’études Chypriotes, Cahier 32: 243–56. Yadin, Y., and Geva, S. 1986 Investigations at Beth Shean: The Early Iron Age Strata. Qedem, 23. Jerusalem: Hebrew University ABOUT THE AUTHOR Pamela Gaber has been working at Idalion in Cyprus since 1972 when she went there as a graduate student. She has been directing excavations at the site since 1987. Her training at Harvard was in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. A Professor of Archaeology and Judaic Studies at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, Gaber’s abiding interests include the relationship of the culture of ancient Cyprus to the culture of ancient Israel and the Biblical world. American Schools of Oriental Research 2008 Annual Meeting November 19–22 Westin Waterfront Hotel Boston Massachusetts Supersaver registration deadline is Nov. 3, 2008 For more information: http://www.asor.org/AM/am.html NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 71:1–2 (2008) 63