Golgoi: Cesnola's excavations at Ayios Photios

On the evening of 6 March 1870, peasants from Athienou digging in a field at Ayios Photios began to find limestone sculpture, and Cesnola bought the ground for £20^1,2. Luigi Palma di Cesnola directed the work. He dug near Golgoi in 1867, at Ayios Photios in 1870, and again in 1873^1,3.

1867 and the field bought in 1870

In 1867, Cesnola reports, he excavated for several weeks in the fields near Athienou identified with the ancient city, finding part of the city wall, and then worked farther east in the cemeteries¹. Connelly identifies this as a campaign at Golgoi³. Cesnola worked under an Ottoman firman granted every year since 1867, and he bought the ground in which he dug, so that finds in it became his^1,2.

Cesnola says he went to Athienou in the winter of 1870 to search for the Golgoi necropolis and unexpectedly found the sanctuary⁴. He reports that after the first day's digging by the peasants he bought the ground for £20 and found that the crowd had dug in a field about 200 yards west of the one he had pointed out, separated from it by a little mound. He then had the excavated earth removed and worked systematically with his own men¹. Cesnola describes using water to soften the compacted earth and baskets to remove spoil, and says he housed his diggers in tents lent by the Governor-General and moved finds to Larnaca by ox-cart and camel¹. He says the Caimakam and Great Council opposed the excavations and that he continued until his explorations at Golgoi were entirely completed¹. Andreas Vondiziano supervised the workers at the western findspot, according to Cesnola¹.

One site or two

Cesnola described a building with foundations approximately 60 feet long and 30 feet wide, and reports a row of 72 pedestals and 228 limestone sculptures unearthed in eleven days of work on one line. Connelly gives the building as approximately 9 by 18 metres and records the 72 bases and 228 sculptures^1,2,3. Cesnola called it the Temple of Venus at Golgos and attributed the sanctuary to Aphrodite; he blamed its destruction on foreign invaders or Christian fanaticism, judging the latter more likely, and reported charcoal and a sizeable stratum of ash toward the centre of the temple². Georges Colonna Ceccaldi, who visited with Cesnola in May 1870, gave the principal "temple" as 18.20 x 9.10 m, working from Cesnola's drawing and without seeing a wall himself².

R. H. Lang wrote that he followed the work from the first day and reported two temples: the first finds, including the colossal head and the "priest with dove", came on 6 and 7 March from a first site, and a second site was opened about fifteen days later². Cesnola says that on his 1873 return to the western findspot he removed earth again and bored to virgin soil, finding no foundations of a building; he rejected the claim of two cult buildings¹. Later scholars commonly distinguish the rectangular structure from a western findspot rich in sculpture, whose function remains uncertain^2,3. At the western findspot Cesnola reports 32 mutilated statues, 26 bases and numerous fragments of legs, arms and bodies¹. Hermary and Mertens note that his 1871 report does not mention the western site, from which the most spectacular Archaic sculptures come². Karageorghis writes that Cesnola gave no plans, measurements or other information about the architectural remains⁵.

The sculpture and its god

The sculpture from the sanctuary includes divine figures, reliefs, inscriptions, lamps, kourotrophoi and animal figures, dating from the Cypro-Archaic to the Hellenistic period. Anatomical votive offerings shaped as eyes, ears, noses, faces, lips, thumbs and feet were also attributed to the sanctuary; Cesnola said they were found together as if before an altar of a healing deity, and Masson notes that the deity is not identified^2,6. Hermary and Mertens treat the Ayios Photios finds as one ensemble, and conclude from the surviving evidence that the principal god was male, identified as Apollo by the beginning of the Hellenistic period at the latest; Cesnola's "Temple of Venus" was not supported once the syllabary was deciphered².

Hermary and Mertens put the minimum number of sculptures in the round from the two Ayios Photios sites at a little under 700. Johannes Doell catalogued Cesnola's collection in summer 1870, and his 1873 catalogue lists slightly more than 800 items from them; Hermary and Mertens judge that no exact inventory can be rebuilt^2,3. They argue that Cesnola merged material from several findspots around Golgoi under one broad provenance, which makes individual provenances unreliable in some cases, though they do not think this invalidates all the attributions in his Atlas². Connelly reports that mixing with other material, dispersal, fragmentary condition and undocumented repair have severely complicated reconstruction of the original body of Golgoi sculpture³.

Where the finds went

The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired the Cypriot collection from Cesnola between 1874 and 1876². Almost 400 stone objects were given to the Turkish authorities in 1873, when they would not renew the firman, and Cesnola sent 88 parcels to Istanbul². Anatomical offerings in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford match pieces listed in the Cesnola sale catalogue of May 1871⁶. A Golgoi funerary cippus in the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art was sold in 1928 with other objects from the Cesnola Collection⁷.

Cesnola's account of the excavations appeared in Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples (1878)¹; his Atlas of 1885 lists four Golgoi findspots⁸. A photographic album of 62 plates of objects attributed to the temple of Venus at Golgos, sent in September 1870, is in the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino². The Cyprus Survey found about 100 limestone sculpture fragments at Ayios Photios in 1961, and Hermary and Mertens report that the zone has been inaccessible for further research since 1974 because it lies near the Green Line, the line of division left by the Turkish invasion of that year².