Series·Swedish Cyprus Expedition

Soli: the theatre

123 field photographs · 1927

Site: Soli

Soli lay on the bay of Morphou, where the central plain meets the hills below Troodos, close to the island's main copper district. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition worked there from 1927 to 1931, with Alfred Westholm in charge, and published the results in SCE III. The theatre, whose auditorium could be made out in the ground before any digging, was its first excavation at the site.

These 123 field photographs follow that dig from the auditorium before excavation to the cleared rows of stone seats and stairs, with workmen, wheelbarrows, buckets and survey staffs. Westholm's diary dates the work from 4 October to 7 December 1927, beginning on Ibrahim Hassan's land by the cape. SCE III describes a Roman theatre with a semicircular auditorium and orchestra, vaulted side passages and a stage building faced with coloured marble. Earlier sculpture and fragments of a small Doric building had been reused in its walls and fill. Coins in the fill gave a date after AD 66–70, and SCE III placed the building at the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 3rd century AD, in use until the 4th century.

The diary is in the Archive as D II:2a. See also the expedition at Soli, the city and its surroundings and the finds from Soli.

Sources

Gjerstad, E., Lindros, J., Sjöqvist, E. and Westholm, A. 1934. The Swedish Cyprus Expedition: Finds and Results of the Excavations in Cyprus 1927–1931, vol. I. Stockholm, p. XII.
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. 399–400 and 548–582.
Westholm, A. 1936. The Temples of Soli: Studies on Cypriote Art during Hellenistic and Roman Periods. Stockholm, p. 7.