Series·Swedish Cyprus Expedition

Kition

99 field photographs, 295 object photographs · 1929–30

Sites: Kition, Kition-Bamboula, Kormakiti-Panagia, Kythrea, Larnaca-Salines

This series holds 394 photographs from the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's work on the Bamboula mound at Kition, in modern Larnaca, which Alfred Westholm excavated from October 1929 to April 1930. Westholm set out to examine the stratigraphy of the mound in order to date the Phoenician colonisation of Kition. After three days he struck a large deposit of votive sculpture and extended the excavation. No inscription named its god, but several statues show Herakles-Melqart. The work was published in the third volume of the expedition's report.

The 99 field photographs record the dig: walls by number, soil profiles in the cult room, the masses of statues found together in its south-west corner, and the mound after excavation. The 295 object photographs are mostly limestone sculpture, heads and statues, with K. numbers (K. = Kition) and the style names under which the expedition sorted Cypriot sculpture, such as Cypro-Greek I and Neo-Cypriote. A few prints are credited to the photographer A. Holmström.

Westholm's field diary for the season, with its Kition entries from 30 September 1929, is in the Archive as DII:2e. See also the excavation page.

Sources

Gjerstad, E., Lindros, J., Sjöqvist, E. and Westholm, A. 1937. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition: Finds and Results of the Excavations in Cyprus 1927–1931, vol. III. Stockholm, pp. 1–75.
Göransson, K. 2012. 'The Swedish Cyprus Expedition, the Cyprus collections in Stockholm and the Swedish excavations after the SCE'. Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes 42, p. 404.
Karageorghis, V. et al. 2003. The Cyprus Collections in the Medelhavsmuseet. Nicosia, pp. 24–26.