Idalion: Department of Antiquities tomb rescues, 1963–1967

In 1963 Vassos Karageorghis directed the excavation, for the Department of Antiquities, of three tombs exposed by levelling and bulldozing at Eliouthkia tou Kouzourtou, southwest of the village of Idalion.¹ Tomb 1 was a built rectangular tomb with a corbelled roof and a rock-cut dromos, reconstructed as 3 m wide, 2.13 m long and 2.32 m high; the bulldozer had damaged its upper part, and it had already partly collapsed in antiquity and been partly plundered. Finds included a bronze bowl, a double-axe-shaped bronze fibula and White-Painted IV and Plain White IV amphorae. Karageorghis dated it to Cypro-Archaic I, 700–600 BCE, and wrote that it must have been a royal tomb.¹

Tomb 2, a large rock-cut chamber about 20 m away, had four burial layers and 22 counted skulls. The uppermost burial included two Ptolemaic coins attributed to Ptolemy III. The earliest layer was the richest, with bronze vessels, an ivory knife handle carved with a man fighting a lion, and a necklace of gold and silver beads with a gold pendant; an Attic black-figure lekythos confirmed a burial date around 500 BCE. Tomb 3, a rectangular chamber with three built benches and two burial layers, held five skeletons in the lower burial, one with a large gold diadem decorated with repoussé rosettes alternating with spirals. Karageorghis dated it to the Hellenistic period from its form and contents. The three-tomb group was registered as 1963/X-11/1.¹

Two smaller interventions followed. In 1966 a tomb at Vrontolaktis, near the Ambelliri acropolis, contained Hellenistic I and Roman I burials, with lagynoi, Mat Glazed flasks, clock-type lamps, a bronze spatula and Ptolemaic coins; it was recorded as C.S. 1621. The report says the material from the tombs it describes was kept in the premises of the Archaeological Exploration Section, and names Michael Loulloupis and A. Christodoulou among the section's personnel who excavated them.² In 1967 an intact tomb in the known necropolis at Ambelleri, about 500 m south of the village, yielded chiefly Plain White IV jugs, amphoriskoi, saucer lamps and a torpedo-shaped jar; it was registered as C.S. 1660.³