Chytroi (Kythrea) and Voni: Ohnefalsch-Richter's sanctuary excavations for the Cyprus Museum (1883)

In 1883 Max Ohnefalsch-Richter excavated the sanctuary of Apollo at Voni, at the west end of the village, for the Cyprus Museum^1,2. The Voni excavation began on 21 May, and Hugh Sinclair is named with Ohnefalsch-Richter as its director^1,3. The same campaign worked at the sanctuary of Aphrodite Paphia at Katsourkas, near Chytroi, and at a second sanctuary on the hill called Skali¹.

At Voni the excavators recorded a plan of the temenos. Connelly describes wall foundations built with reused statues and inscriptions, river pebbles, earth and lime¹. The plan shows a long, narrow building preserved to 16.5 m by 5.35 m, with a northern room she calls the Court of Burnt Offerings, a larger open court, statue bases, two lustral basins, ash and lamps. She reports that the plan marked the places of colossal votive statues and of inscriptions to Artemis and Apollo¹. Three inscribed bases, naming Karys, the son of Karys, and Nikodemos son of Karys, identify the cult as that of Apollo; Connelly notes that the inscriptions give no epithet¹. Connelly reports that Ohnefalsch-Richter associated the cult with Reshef-Apollo, and treats that identification as unproven¹. Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter's 1899 catalogue attributes the wall reconstructions to late Hellenistic times, and describes the Voni sculptures as male stone figures, with one female terracotta and one small female stone figure as exceptions². The catalogue identifies a Chytroi temenos as a sanctuary of the "Paphian Goddess" by inscriptions 5390–5391, and lists stone statuettes and terracottas, among them female tambourine players and ring-dance figures².

Connelly also reports that Ohnefalsch-Richter excavated late Roman and Byzantine tombs west of Voni¹. An over-lifesize male statue she discusses as Apollo is in the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia, as E 511¹. Ohnefalsch-Richter's report on Voni appeared in 1884 as "Mittheilungen aus Cypern. III. Heiligthum des Apollon bei Voni", Mittheilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung 9, pages 127–139⁴.