Kourion Complex Palace

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The room directly opposite the small bath with a mosaic floor was heated by a hypocaust. The northern section which abutted against the praefurnium has not yet been excavated. The supports of the floor are in two cases preserved to their full height. It is interesting to note the presence of a circular support because such supports were used elsewhere in the Roman Empire. 17 There rested on these supports two layers of large tiles which supported a layer of cement and stones. This type of construction was canonical for a hypocaust and this example was no exception. It has been preserved to show that this example was no exception. enough In excavating this room, there appeared a goodly quantity of what considered local heat resisting cement. Our foreman, who was formerly a mason, considered local heat resisting cement. As when he made this statement, he had no idea this room was going to be a hypocaust, I think he must be right. The use of this type of cement raises the question of the original purpose for which this room was built. There are two possibilities, either a sudatorium or tepidarium. As the tepidarium was originally, also, known as the cella media, and as this room is roughly in the middle between the calidarium and the frigidarium why was the heat resistant cement used here but not in the calidarium where no trace of it was found? Why do some of the joints seem air-tight rather than water-tight?

This room seem to have gone into disuse earlier than the rest of the building for not only was a wall laid directly across the mosaic (plan and photographs 13 and 14), but the entrance to the praefurnium was intentionally blocked up to about the height of the door which leads into the under part. In the praefurnium a water-container was built above the level of the entrance to the under part as is shown by traces of hydraulic cement along the walls and part of the floor which is preserved in the north east corner. However this container may have been built while the hypocaust was still in use and employed for heating water.

The next room to this to the west is, because of its three extensions and its position in the southwest corner of the building, unquestionably a cal- … continues