Amathous (Cyprus)

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The 5th century BC The sarcophagus from Amathous, dating from the 4th century BC, is an extremely rare find in terms of monumentality and state of preservation. Presumably it contained one of the kings of Amathous. On the long sides it shows a procession of wagons escorted by mounted and foot soldiers. The driver of the car is protected by a parasol, the horses are richly equipped. On the narrow sides there are depictions of the bare Astarte who only wears jewelry, as well as Bes figures, depictions of an ancient Egyptian god who exercises his protective function at night. Both Egyptian and Levantine deities were used to protect the calm of the various. ( Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York)

Amathous ( ancient Greek Ἀμαθοῦς ) was one of the oldest royal cities in Cyprus . The site is located on the south coast near Agios Tychonas , almost 40 km west of Larnaka and 10 km east of the city center of Limassol , in the suburb of which the site is located. After the Aphrodite cult of Paphos , this was the most important place of worship for this goddess, but the site is not as well preserved as that of Kourion .

Archaeological excavations

In the second half of the 19th century, Charles-Jean-Melchior de Vogüé (1829–1916), who worked on many sites in the Levant and North Africa, also dug in Amathous. That is why one of the two taller vases discovered at the time is now in the Louvre . Another is in situ , and a third was discovered a few years ago. They are the largest monumental vessels of this type in Cyprus. A few meters away from these vases there was a grotto, typical of the Aphrodite cult, but also that of the Astarte, which found followers in Amathous at least from the 8th to 4th centuries. There the two-colored crater was discovered on which two bulls facing each other are depicted. In the 1870s, Luigi Palma di Cesnola carried out excavations at the Acropolis, but concentrated primarily on the tombs, but this undertaking also enriched the museums of Western Europe and North America in particular.

The British Museum carried out the first scientific excavation from 1893 to 1894. 312 graves were opened and the results published. In 1930 the Swedish Expedition to Cyprus did the same for a further 26 graves. From 1975 onwards, excavation campaigns financed by the French School in Athens dealt with the Acropolis, the Temple of Aphrodite, a residential area and the walls; a basilica and the harbor also came to light, which was examined using underwater archeology. An area north of the former city was also examined. The state authority for antiquities in Cyprus also had excavations carried out, and hundreds of more graves were examined, as well as an area in the lower town and another four early Christian basilicas. These excavations were not yet completed in 2012. The results were published comprehensively in Amathonte and in the volumes La nécropole d'Amathonte .

View from the hill to the Agora of Amathous

  • View from Agora to Nymphaeum

  • before nymphaeum

  • Nymphaeum

history

The oldest traces go back to the earliest Iron Age around 1100 BC. The legendary city founder was Kinyras , who is associated with Adonis and who named the city after his mother Amathous. According to the Ariadne legend at Plutarch , Theseus left Ariadne in Amathous, where she died giving birth to a child and was buried in a grave that was worshiped under the name of Aphrodite Ariadne . Once a year a young man “went through” a ritual birth. Procreation, suffering, death and redemption were probably the focus of the rites, in which water played a special role.

The residents of Amathous were considered to be Pelasgians . In fact, you spoke here Eteokyprisch , a non-Greek language. Inscriptions prove the survival of this language until the 4th century BC. Chr.

In Phoenician times a tofet was created , a place for religious child sacrifices. The story passed down in Ovid's Metamorphoses (10, 220-242), according to which the men of the Kerastai family had horns growing from their foreheads as a punishment for human sacrifice, possibly refers to this time.

Greeks from Euboea delivered crockery to Amathous from the 10th century. In the post-Phoenician era, a palace and a port were built from the 9th century, in the area of ​​which there were evidence of administrative activities such as seals and bronze pens. In the 6th century extensions were built; Finally, a third construction phase followed in the 5th to 3rd century BC. Overall, the building is very similar to the palace of Vouni . Large quantities of grain, wine and oil were also stored there (there was also an olive oil press in the Aphrodite Astarte temple in Amathous), and there were also numerous workshops in Amathous. In both palaces, religious ceremonies could be held in a propylon . Numerous individual finds point to Hathor , such as statuettes that wear a naïskos as headdress , a "little temple". In the propylon there were signs of ceremonies, such as thymiateria adorned with sphinxes , i.e. censer. Probably the visitors to the palace had to cross the sacred complex, protected by the Egyptian god Bes , before entering the rulership. This god, in turn, was later associated with Baal in syncretistic ideas .

Amathous fish, polychrome terracotta, 5th century B.C. Chr.

For the Greeks, a temple of Aphrodite ( Aphrodite Amathusia ) was built on the cliff above the Acropolis together with a bearded Aphroditus . It was one of the three most important cult sites on the island. In the year 22 the Roman Senate even granted him the right of asylum, as Tacitus (Annales 3.62) reports. The oldest parts may have been made - this only suggests stylistic features of the tomb - in the 11th / 10th Century BC A building there was certainly used as a temple from the 8th / 7th. Century used and greatly expanded.

Amathous is identified with the Kartihadasti on the tribute list of the Assyrian King Asarhaddon . (668 BC). In the 6th century BC According to Strabon (340) of his informant, the satirist Hipponax , the city's wealth was based on grain, in addition to sheep and copper mines, of which there are remains to this day.

As a strongly Phoenician city, it opposed the Philhellenic league of Onesilos , son of Chersis and Philokyprus (Herodotus 5, 113) and king of Soloi , who started the revolt against Persian rule from 500 to 494 BC. Crucial drive, Amathous was besieged unsuccessfully and in turn had Onesilos seized and executed. Around 385-380 the Philhellene Evagoras I of Salamis was also fought by Amathous, this time in league with Citium, later Larnaka , and Soli . Even Alexander the Great opposed the city and Seleucus I was held hostage to be on the safe side.

In the temple mainly sheep and goats, and to a lesser extent cattle, were sacrificed, as bone analyzes have shown. Their number increased significantly in the 4th century, as did the number of cattle depictions. In addition, there was a pit in which water, honey, wine and oil, but also flowers, grain, fruits, eggs and cakes were sacrificed. While this type of use began, the grotto was soon no longer used.

References to the Astarte cult, which was combined with that of Aphrodite, are offered by numerous typical depictions, such as female figurines with raised arms, or those who clasp their breasts with their hands holding a fruit or flower, then kouratrophoi , i.e. women with babies on the arms, musicians, riders, boat and wagon models, but also animal masks.

Two sculptures, donated by the last basileus of Amathous, Androkles, date from the 4th century, depicting his two sons Orestheus and Andragoras, the pedestals of which have been preserved. These inscriptions were made in both Eeteocyprian and Greek script and language. One of the inscriptions reads: "The basileus Androkles of the Cypriot Aphrodite Orestheus and Andragoras".

The Hellenistic epoch is represented to a much lesser extent. The decline of Amathous was often gauged by the Ptolemaic gifts in Argos , where around 170–160 BC. Chr. Amathous could only dedicate 40 drachmas , Kition and Salamis, however, 208, Kourion 172 and still Paphos 100. However, this assumption contradicts the archaeologically well-documented building measures, such as a balaneion , a bath, funeral steles, a gymnasium and fortifications of the acropolis including a new tower. However, the port of Nea Paphos largely replaced the port of Amathous in the Ptolemaic period, also an indication that Paphos, as the island's capital, provided fewer drachmas than the other cities, as did Amathous, perhaps for completely different reasons. Although the proportion of bulls sacrificed fell again, the number of victims increased significantly overall. An inscription from the 2nd century BC. BC by a high official who was not named by name, who probably donated a building at the time of King Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II , reads at the beginning: "For Sarapis, Isis, Aphrodite". The Dionysius cult, which was broadly anchored in Alexandria , also came to the island through the Ptolemies . Dionysius, who saved Ariadne, who had been left behind by Theseus on Naxos , and whose cult resembled that of Bes, was also integrated into the island pantheon, as was the cult of Artemis and that of Apollon , as well as finds from a 120 m long Occupy the tunnel. The basileus certainly also played a ritual role, because he is depicted with a bull mask, a figure that was also interpreted as a priest.

In the 1st century BC A Doric portico was built ; a Roman temple was built in the 1st century AD. When this temple was built, the Hellenistic predecessor building was completely leveled, which makes archaeological investigations extremely difficult. Despite the political dependency, the temples remained so important in Roman times that 'Amathusia' was used as a synonym for 'Cypriot'. The city became the seat of one of the island's four administrative units.

In the 4th century Amathous was a bishopric. Bishop Heliodorus participated in the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and Bishop Alexander in the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. Amathous was the birthplace of Anastasius Sinaita , the famous monk of St. Catherine's Monastery . Possibly he left the island after the Arab conquest in 649.

Island kingdoms

At the end of the 12th century, Amathous was almost abandoned, the graves had been plundered and the Spolia had been brought to Limassol . Stone blocks were still being used for the Suez Canal in 1869 . Today there is still an orthodox church ruin there. Further inland there was Agios Tychonas, named after Tychon of Amathous .

In addition to the finds, which were mainly brought to Paris and London, the majority of the finds are in the Cyprus Museum of Nicosia and in the Archaeological Museum of the Limassol district.

literature

  • Amathous, Cyprus ( Memento of April 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ), Richard Stillwell (Ed.): Princeton Encyclopaedia of Classical Sites , 1976, archive.org, April 26, 2008.
  • Αμαθούντα , website of the City of Limassol.
  • Thomas Lehmann: The late antique church buildings of Amathous and the miraculous healings at the grave of Bishop Tychon , in: Sabine Rogge, Marie-Elisabeth Mitsou, Johannes G. Deckers (ed.): Contributions to the cultural history of Cyprus from late antiquity to modern times. Symposium, Munich, 12.-13. July 2002 , Wasmann, 2005, pp. 23-40.

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Walter Burkert : Greek Religion 1985, p. 153 and Hector William Catling: Amathus , Simon Hornblower, Anthony Spawforth (eds.): Oxford Classical Dictionary , Oxford University Press, 1996.
  2. ↑ This and the following from: Giorgos Papantoniou: Religion and Social Transformations in Cyprus. From the Cypriot Basileis to the Hellenistic Strategos , Brill, 2012, p. 208.
  3. ^ Giorgos Papantoniou: Religion and Social Transformations in Cyprus. From the Cypriot Basileis to the Hellenistic Strategos , Brill, 2012, p. 216.
  4. ↑ Murray, Smith, Walters, 1900, pp. 87-126.
  5. ↑ Pierre Aupert: Amathus during the First Iron Age , in: Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 308 (1997) 19-25; Maria Iacovou: Amathous, an early Iron Age polity in Cyprus. The chronology of its foundation , Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus (2002) 101-122.
  6. ↑ Plutarch, Theseus, 20.3-7.
  7. ↑ Anagnostis Agelarakis, A. Kanta, N. Ch. Stampolidis: The Osseous Record in the Western Necropolis of Amathous: an Archaeo-Anthropological Investigation , in: Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus-Dodecanese-Crete 16th-6th c. BC, Proceedings of the International Symposium: The Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus-Dodecanese-Crete 16th-6th c. BC , Rethymno 1998, pp. 217-232.
  8. ↑ A. Agelarakis: The Amathous (tophet) cremations in Cyprus , in: D. Christou: Human Cremations at the Western Necropolis of Amathous , Athens 2001, pp. 201-204.
  9. ^ Giorgos Papantoniou: Religion and Social Transformations in Cyprus. From the Cypriot Basileis to the Hellenistic Strategos , Brill, 2012, p. 278.
  10. ^ Giorgos Papantoniou: Religion and Social Transformations in Cyprus. From the Cypriot Basileis to the Hellenistic Strategos , Brill, 2012, p. 210 (description of the palace on p. 209–214).
  11. ↑ Macrobius, Saturnalia III, 8. Hesychius sv Ἀφρόδιτος. Catullus 68, 51.
  12. ↑ Eugen Oberhummer: The island of Cyprus. A regional studies on a historical basis , I: Quellenkunde , Munich 1902, p. 13 f.
  13. ^ Ovid , Metamorphoses x. 220, 227, 531.
  14. ↑ Herodotus, 5, 105.
  15. ↑ Diodor XIV, 98.
  16. ↑ Diodorus 19, 62.
  17. ^ Giorgos Papantoniou: Religion and Social Transformations in Cyprus. From the Cypriot Basileis to the Hellenistic Strategos , Brill, 2012, p. 221.
  18. ^ André Binggeli: Anastasius of Sinai , in: David Thomas, John Chesworth (Ed.): Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History , Vol. 1: 600-900, Brill, 2009, pp. 193-202.
  19. ↑ Farid Mirbagheri: Historical Dictionary of Cyprus , Scarecrow, 2009, p. 9.

Coordinates: 34 ° 43 '  N , 33 ° 9'  E