Series·Swedish Cyprus Expedition

Idalion: bronze, iron and other metalwork

247 object photographs

Idalion, the ancient city-kingdom by the village of Dali on the Yalias river, had two acropoleis and a lower town. In 1928 the Swedish Cyprus Expedition excavated the western acropolis, Ambelleri, in two campaigns, from 21 May to 18 July and from 4 September to 4 October, with Erik Sjöqvist in charge, and opened three tombs. SCE II found a fortified settlement of Late Cypriote III on the hill, followed from Cypro-Geometric III by a walled temenos of a goddess whom the Greeks called Athena and the Phoenicians Anat.

These 247 object photographs show the metalwork, most of it from that sanctuary. SCE II lists the offerings as mainly weapons and tools (swords, daggers, spears, arrows, shields, armour, helmets, knives, axes) and personal ornaments such as pins, fibulae, earrings, finger-rings and bracelets, many of them once hung on the walls of the temenos. The prints follow the record's classes: bronze weapons, tools, utensils, horse-trappings, toilet articles, mountings and fragments; iron tools and weapons; and objects of silver, lead and gold. About 100 of them are drawings. Labels give the expedition's find numbers (J.775, i.794).

The pottery and small finds are in a separate series, the excavation in Idalion fieldwork, and the field notes in diaries D II:1c and D II:1d. See also Idalion.

Sources

Gjerstad, E., Lindros, J., Sjöqvist, E. and Westholm, A. 1935. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition: Finds and Results of the Excavations in Cyprus 1927–1931, vol. II. Stockholm, pp. 460–461 and 626–628.