Famagusta harbour: rescue of a Hellenistic-Roman cemetery

Road levelling near the north entrance of the new part of the harbour at Famagusta brought to light a Hellenistic and Roman cemetery, and in 1965 the Antiquities Service excavated two rock-cut chamber tombs and five rock-cut pits there¹. Tomb 1 had a rectangular chamber with three natural benches and a stepped dromos, held successive inhumations, and produced a Hellenistic II Glazed Painted lagynos and coins of Ptolemy X (99–89 BCE)¹. Tomb 2 had been opened and pillaged before the excavation; it still held a Mat-Glazed lamp with two Erotes on the disk, an iron strigil and a bronze coin of Ptolemy X¹. Of the pits, Fosse B held an unguentarium and 42 gold myrtle leaves, and Fosse D, with two layers of inhumations, held two Glazed Painted lagynoi and a Ptolemaic coin too worn to identify more closely¹. V. Karageorghis wrote in the 1966 chronicle that the cemetery may help determine where Hellenistic Arsinoe lay¹. The finds carry inventory numbers 165 to 173, and the lagynoi are captioned Musée de Famagouste¹.