Chelones-Rani
Chelones-Rani is an archaeological site in eastern Cyprus , about 5 km southeast of the village of Rizokarpaso / Dipkarpaz on the Karpas peninsula. These are the ruins of a small town buried under sand dunes, the name of which has not been passed down. A sanctuary near the coast at the eastern end of the town contained fragments of terracotta figurines that were created between the Cyprus-Archaic and Greco-Roman periods. Apparently the place was abandoned after the first Arab raids around 647 AD.
The inhabitants built a protected fish farm between two or three reefs and a rocky island called Aspronisi; further to the east are crags, the Gynaikopetres, which are probably the archipelago mentioned by Strabo (14,6,3), which gives the distance to Karpasia on the opposite coast as 30 stadia .
The British archaeologist David George Hogarth noticed a ship landing to the west of the town and suspected that the ancient seafarers sometimes pulled their boats across the country to Karpasia to avoid the dreaded Cape Dinaretum (today Cape Apostolos Andreas ).
On the top of the Rani, a hill south of Chelones, the remains of a walled settlement were found, at the northwest end of the hill there was a large underground cistern . Both sites, the coastal settlement as well as this place, which can probably be interpreted as a lookout, are still largely unexplored. Rani is an exception in that it was next to the royal cities between the 8th and 4th centuries BC. BC there are only two fortified places, namely the said hill and Pyla-Vikla between Idalion and Kition.
Web links
- Chelones, Cyprus , in: Richard Stillwell, William L. MacDonald, Marian Holland McAllister, Stillwell, Richard, MacDonald, William L., McAlister, Marian Holland (Eds.): The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites
Remarks
- ^ Claire Balandier: Fortifications and defense in Cyprus from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period ( online ).
Coordinates: 35 ° 38 ′ 11.9 ″ N , 34 ° 32 ′ 7.9 ″ E