Ayia Irini: the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's sanctuary

Almost 2,000 terracotta statues and statuettes, mostly of male types, stood in a semicircle around a limestone altar at Ayia Irini, the smallest figures closest to it; chariot groups, bulls and hybrid figures such as centaurs were among them^1,2,3. Giorgos Bourogiannis writes that the sanctuary became the cornerstone of the typological assessment of Cypriot terracottas^1,2.

The dig began after a village priest brought the head of a terracotta statue from his farm to Nicosia in early November 1929^2,4. Sanne Houby-Nielsen writes that the find needed excavation at once to prevent looting and that the colonial government was interested in "Phoenician" sites⁴. Governor Ronald Storrs issued a permit two days after the priest's visit; Einar Gjerstad says it came through the cooperation of the Cyprus Museum and the British Government of Cyprus^3,4. The priest, Papa Prokopios, had the sanctuary on his field, and Gjerstad credits him with protecting it from looting^2,3.

Rupert Gunnis, inspector of antiquities, dug a first trial trench⁴. Full excavation followed under Erik Sjöqvist for the Swedish Cyprus Expedition and continued through the winter^1,2. By 2 December the Swedes had unearthed thousands of votives, despite heavy rainfall⁴. The architect John Lindros arrived late in December, after the figures had been excavated⁴.

Recording and publication

Sjöqvist measured the level of all the votives, including scarabs, and the work was recorded in drawn sections, plans and photographs. Gjerstad published 18 drawn sections according to Bourogiannis, more than 20 according to Houby-Nielsen; only a few draft sections survive in Stockholm^1,4. Bourogiannis adds that depths were only occasionally measured for pottery sherds and that no diaries survive¹. Gjerstad, who led the expedition and visited the site only briefly, published the sanctuary in 1935^2,4. Bourogiannis considers the publication exemplary but notes that the pottery played a minor role and only whole vessels were discussed^2,5.

The sanctuary and its periods

The temenos was large and roughly triangular, with built structures mainly along its north and east sides, and was enlarged to about 40 x 30 m in period 4 (650–600 BC). The limestone altar (no. 50) was in use from period 3². Gjerstad, as reported by Göransson, describes an oval stone on top of the altar, with the votives arranged round it; Houby-Nielsen argues from the archive that the altar had a white cover and that the river stone belonged on top of it. The stone was published separately as SCE II no. 821^4,6. Houby-Nielsen also reads Lindros's draft plan as showing overlapping circular stone platforms that the published plans omitted or altered, and suggests they served for ritual displays of votives⁴.

Gjerstad identified twelve strata and seven periods, from Late Cypriot III (c. 1200 BC) to the 1st century BC, with an idle phase between the early 5th and the 1st century BC^2,6. The first phase was a building complex around a large open court, with a cult house on the east side flanked by a storehouse to the north. Gjerstad dated period 3 to 800–650 BC, period 4 to 650–600 BC (the peak), period 5 to 600–540 BC and period 6 to 540–510/500 BC, ended by a flood². According to Bourogiannis, Sjöqvist saw two floods where Gjerstad saw four; Houby-Nielsen adds that Sjöqvist treated the votives as one assemblage, where Gjerstad used the floods to divide them into periods^1,4. Houby-Nielsen argues that Gjerstad's four floods may owe something to the Ur "Great Flood" discovery announced weeks earlier⁴. Sabine Fourrier (2007) argued that Iron Age use did not start before c. 800 BC and that the votive sculpture is a single deposition; Bourogiannis reports that study of the unpublished pottery tends to verify this, and himself dates the peak of use to c. 800–600 BC¹. Gjerstad put the end of the cult at c. 510/500 BC, Fourrier at around the middle of Cypro-Archaic II¹.

Base Ring and Plain White are the chief Bronze Age pottery classes in the publication; later periods have White Painted, Bichrome, Black-on-Red, Bichrome Red and Red Slip². Two small clay figures of humans wearing bull masks were found; Sjöqvist interpreted them as priests of the fertility god⁷. Bourogiannis argues from the armed male figures and bulls that a fertility deity, possibly male, was most probably venerated².

Dividing the finds

The expedition's division principle kept tomb groups and deposits whole, but the c. 2,000 Ayia Irini terracottas were split between Cyprus and Sweden, with Sweden receiving about 1,000 figures; the proposal was presented on 27 October 1930⁶. One of the bull-mask figures is in the Cyprus Museum (2170) and the other in the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm (809)⁷. Over 100,000 potsherds were taken to Stockholm and remain largely unpublished². The votives assigned to Sweden were restored in 2003 and are exhibited in the central hall⁴. The Medelhavsmuseet also holds the excavation notebooks, original plans, drawings and around 10,000 photographic negatives, including Lindros's draft plan; the notebooks were scanned in 2012 and put online^4,6.

Bourogiannis reports that the excavated area lies within a military zone in the part of the island occupied by Turkey since the invasion of 1974 and is inaccessible for archaeological research, and that it is exposed to looting^1,2.