Series·Swedish Cyprus Expedition

Vouni: the Temple of Athena, Paradisotissa and Loures

62 field photographs · 1928–31

Sites: Vouni, Vouni-Paradisotissa, Kouklia-Loures

These 62 field photographs by John Lindros show three excavations around Vouni, on the north-west coast, outside the palace itself. Twenty-seven come from the Temple of Athena on the summit, south of the palace: an altar court with a cella and smaller cult buildings, dated by the excavators to the fifth century BC. In its southern room, used to store offerings, Alfred Westholm found the bronze cow no. 152, photographed here where it lay; fragments of statuettes of Athena were found where they had probably stood, on the terrace in front.

The other 34 are filed as "Paradisotissa Loures". Loures is the north slope of the Vouni hill, where trial trenches, one near the gate towards Soli and one further west on the same terrace, found large houses built like the palace, with cement floors, a store-room and a column base still in place; the work there was not continued. Paradisotissa is a valley about 1.5 km north-west of the summit, open to the sea, where a small temple on a ridge between two streams was cleared in a few days in June 1930. Its sculptures run from the palace period to the mid-fourth century BC. One photograph shows Einar Gjerstad at Loures. See the excavation and the Korakas tombs nearby.

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. 85–110, 291–298.
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. 399–421 (p. 408).