1972–1977

Further excavations at Curium, the first to be resumed by a foreign mission in the Island since the events of last summer, have lately been completed by Mr. A.H.S. Megaw, sometime Director [handwritten: of] Antiquities in Cyprus. This was the second campaign of excavations at this site undertaken by the Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, D.C.) Center for Byzantine Studies, Harvard University. It was concerned with the annexes of the basilica which served as the cathedral of Curium from the fifth to the seventh century.

The church itself had been identified and partly excavated by the late George McFadden, who with the sponsorship of the Pennsylvania University Museum was the first archaeologist to investigate the remains of Curium systematically. Upon his tragic death in a sailing accident his expedition was wound-up and his sponsors assigned the further exploration of the basilica [handwritten: site] to Mr. Megaw. The resources of the Department of Antiquities enabled him to complete the excavation of the basilica itself in 1959. He also established that the buildings adjoining it were of special interest and better preserved than the church, which retains only one of its twenty columns and only fragments of its mosaic floors. The recent excavations have been concerned with these buildings: the baptistery to the north and the residence of the bishop to the west.

The large baptistery, where work started in 1974, has now been completely excavated. Its main hall has the plan of a church with the addition of an apse opening at the mid point of the south wall. In this apse the cruciform font is located and it communicates with subsidiary rooms on either side. As an afterthought, the main hall was provided with a second apse, to the east. This, together with the arrangement of the columns that supported the roof so as to form a cross-shaped space, and the presence of a narthex, or vestibule, to the west, gives the building a plan which foreshadows a type of Byzantine church which was current at a much later date. For, the baptistery, like the basilica it adjoins, was probably erected not later than the beginning of the fifth century.

Floor mosaics have survived in the greater part of this main hall of the baptistery and also in its narthex. They contain geometric and other motifs current in the sixth century and were a replacement for the original mosaic floor. Of this, only the foundation was left when the tesserae were taken-up for re-use in the later floor; it could be seen wherever tests were made in places where the later mosaic has not survived. Below the earlier floor foundation small sections of stone paving have been found at several points over a wide area, and in more than one case it was seen that the walls of the baptistery were constructed directly on this paving. In this region the Early Christian buildings evidently encroached on some public open space of the ancient city.

The excavation of the building immediately to the west of the basilica and its narthex has also been completed. These comprise a paved forecourt with a central hexagonal cistern, once surmounted by a tower-like structure where the water could be drawn, and, to the north of it, a labyrinth of rooms provisionally identified as "The Bishop's Palace". They extend into the area north-west of the narthex which remains unexcavated but for some cursory trenching in the McFadden excavations. The largest is a reception room entered from the church, provided with masonry benches and divided into four bays by transverse arches. These arches and the walls they link were enriched with painted plaster mouldings, of which numerous fragments were recovered. The floor was of mosaic, of which much has survived, and includes among geometric designs a panel with an inscription in Greek, quoting three verses from the Old Testament. Like those in the baptistery, this floor is datable to the sixth century. At points where it is not preserved, excavation to a lower level has exposed sections of an earlier /2