Katydhata-Linou: Ohnefalsch-Richter's excavations

In 1883 Max Ohnefalsch-Richter excavated a sanctuary of a female deity, perhaps Aphrodite, between Katydhata and Linou for the Cyprus Museum, and worked in the necropolis there¹. The 1899 Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum lists ring-dancers and flute-players among the offerings, with an early silver plate with floral ornament and a fragmentary bronze plaque embossed with a Gigantomachia. The plaque is in the Cyprus Museum as no. 3870¹.

He returned in May and June 1885 and continued in the second necropolis at Katydata-Linou on his own account². Buchholz identifies the banker C. Watkins in Larnaka as a contributor to the costs, and the catalogue associates this season with the Berlin Museum without saying which objects went there^1,2.

Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter distinguish a Bronze Age necropolis, east of the villages and including very late transitional tombs toward the Graeco-Phoenician period, from its reuse in Hellenistic and Roman times¹. They describe a separate, extensive Hellenistic necropolis between Katydata, Linou and the monastery of Panagia Skourgiótissa, with a later glass-bearing group extending into late Roman times¹. Panayides and Jacobs write that Ohnefalsch-Richter discovered an extensive Hellenistic to late antique necropolis between the monastery and the villages of Katydata and Linou³.