Kition-Ayios Georgios: Rescue Excavation of the Ancient Necropolis

Levelling work exposed the Ayios Georghios cemetery at Larnaca, and in March 1979 Sophocles Hadjisavvas directed a rescue excavation there for the Department of Antiquities, which cleared 63 rock-cut tombs¹. The site, also called Agios Georgios and formerly Mnemata, lies in the western necropolis of Kition^1,2. Kourou, reviewing Hadjisavvas's catalogue in 2015, writes that the project was an urgent one undertaken by the Cypriot government to house the population displaced after the 1974 Turkish invasion, that the topsoil and tomb markers were removed before the Archaeological Service was notified, and that material from disturbed or looted tombs was collected while intact tombs were investigated². She describes Agios Georgios as the largest known part of Kition's western necropolis².

The tombs were cut into soft clayey rock beneath hard havara and alluvial soil. They shared rectangular chambers, barrel-shaped roofs, stepped dromoi and entrances blocked with large gypsum slabs; some burials were in sarcophagi and others lay on the chamber floor, and most tombs had been looted in antiquity¹. The annual report lists five stone or marble stelae with Phoenician inscriptions, Phoenician inscriptions on several Canaanite jars, Attic black- and red-figure vessels, terracotta horse-and-rider figurines, a painted chariot model, figurines of pregnant women, hundreds of faience amulets, and bronze bracelets, earrings and necklaces of agate, carnelian, gold and glass beads¹.

Hadjisavvas later wrote that the five Phoenician inscriptions include personal names of three nationalities, Phoenician, Hebrew and Greek, which he argued demonstrate mixed marriages at Kition³. The 63 tombs are presented in the first part of his 2012 catalogue The Phoenician Period Necropolis of Kition, I^1,2.