Amathus: Department excavation of the lower town (Palea Lemesos), 1991–2006

A fragment of a limestone uraeus, a terracotta ankh and a limestone ujat-eye from the lower town of Amathus are among the finds from which Pavlos Flourentzos reads a Hellenistic temple of Arsinoe, later converted into a sanctuary of Isis and Horus Harpocrates¹. They came from a series of excavations run by the Department of Antiquities at Palea Lemesos in the lower city of Amathus, which began in 1991².

The lower town, 1991 to 2006

The series started at Palea Lemesos near the harbour area explored by the French expedition, and Herscher reports that it succeeded the excavations carried out for many years by Michael Loulloupis around the agora. Early results showed a large two-storey building complex². Its aim was to unify the area of the basilica on the hill corner near the sea with the Agora area that Loulloupis had excavated¹. Flourentzos counts 16 campaigns and captions the master plan of the lower town 1991–2006¹. He presents the project as a success that revealed an administrative building, other building complexes and roads¹. He holds that most probably the severe earthquakes of the third and fourth centuries completely destroyed the old pagan town¹.

The public building and the houses

The public building had a grand entrance on the north, which was narrowed after the 4th-century earthquake and finally blocked. A southern court and two passages linked it to smaller buildings and the agora, one passage paved in its earlier phase. Finds included pottery, Byzantine coins, lamps, stone statue heads and sealstones, one showing a standing saint and a sun-disc^1,3. In 1996 a large room on its west side was excavated; in 1997 work uncovered the exterior wall in the north-east and a large open space to the south, probably an external court³. For a later season Herscher reports a large public building complex destroyed in the 7th century, with several complete rooms, hearths in situ, a bathtub, cooking vessels, and an amphora with the incised monogram of Heraclius; sherds bore monograms of Heraclius and Heraclonas⁴.

A small domestic structure was investigated in 1999. It had a central room with two Pi-shaped hearths and a paved room 6.5 x 8 m with benches, a hearth, a large pithos and an amphora³. In 2000 the work uncovered a bench along the east wall of the central room, an arch built over 4th-century earthquake debris, a southern corridor to a square room, and an earlier room below with steps and a paved doorway to the road. Finds included Roman and Byzantine coins and a 7th-century stemmed glass goblet³. Kaldeli, summarising Flourentzos's account, describes a site that probably involves houses of simple rooms, Roman imperial columns, arch bases and frescoes, 4th-century collapses probably from the 365 earthquake, and 7th-century destruction levels dated by coins; Kaldeli regards Palaea Lemesos as important because it offers production, exchange and consumption evidence from an ordinary, non-elite context⁵. Brzozowska-Jawornicka records that the excavation west of the Agora yielded habitation complexes, workshops, cisterns and streets⁶.

The temple near the Forum

In two campaigns in 2002 and 2003 Flourentzos found traces of a temple: architectural and Egyptianising fragments concentrated in an area of about 35 x 15 m near the Forum¹. The finds were limestone column fragments with Doric capitals, an inscribed column, an architrave, a limestone triglyph, a limestone uraeus (A.P-L 946), a terracotta ankh (A-PL 853), a limestone ujat-eye (A-PL 855), the back of a marble sphinx or lion, a marble snake head and the lower part of a terracotta figurine of Horus Harpocrates¹. Flourentzos reads the incised inscription on the column as a dedication to Arsinoe Philadelphos, and the building as devoted to Arsinoe in the Hellenistic period and converted to a sanctuary of Isis and Horus Harpocrates in the Roman period¹.

Flourentzos published the temple finds in 2007 in the Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes, with a summary of the project¹. A corner of a blocked-out capital from the area west of the Agora is stored in the lapidarium of the Archaeological Museum of the Lemesos District⁶.