Series·Swedish Cyprus Expedition

Mersinaki

55 field photographs, 325 object photographs · 1930

Sites: Mersinaki, Vouni, Soli

This series holds 380 photographs from the sanctuary at Mersinaki, on the shore of Morphou Bay between Vouni and Soli, which Alfred Westholm excavated in the summer and autumn of 1930. Westholm found the remains of two buildings and eight pits packed with broken limestone and terracotta sculpture. Two inscriptions showed that the sanctuary belonged to Apollo; Athena is also named, and a terracotta chariot group points to her cult in a later phase. The sanctuary was used from the late Cypro-Archaic period to the first century BC. In the Roman period a house was built on the site and much of the older sculpture was buried in the pits. The results were published in the third volume of the expedition's report.

The 55 field photographs show the pits with their finds in place and their soil sections, labelled by pit number or grid square. The 325 object photographs show the sculpture by Me. number, sorted by the expedition's style groups (Cypro-Greek I with Mersinaki I–II, Cypro-Greek II with Mersinaki III–IV, Hellenistic and Roman). The group portrait of Lindros, Westholm, Sjöqvist and Gjerstad at Mersinaki (C02763) is also here.

Westholm's object list and list of workers for Mersinaki are in the notebook DII:2d. See 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. 340–398.
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, pp. 402, 405–406.
Karageorghis, V. et al. 2003. The Cyprus Collections in the Medelhavsmuseet. Nicosia, pp. 25–26.