Kourion: the Dumbarton Oaks excavation of the episcopal basilica

In April 1974 the crew at the episcopal basilica of Kourion cleared the narthex and began opening a baptistery of the "processional" type, with a cruciform font, to the north of the church^1,2. On 30 April a gold ingot, cut in two pieces and weighing about 1601 g when restored, was found immured in the south wall of the chrismarion (inventory CB 1663)³. Kenneth Painter, cited by Megaw, thought it possibly a donation made at the time of construction and concealed for safekeeping³.

Six campaigns for Dumbarton Oaks

A. H. S. Megaw had already excavated at the basilica in 1956 and 1959 (the earlier work), after George McFadden's initial excavation of 1934 for the University of Pennsylvania Museum (that expedition)³. The successive directors of the Department of Antiquities urged him to carry the investigation forward as an independent venture, to the point where a full publication would be possible, and sponsorship by Dumbarton Oaks made that possible¹. Dumbarton Oaks extended its sponsorship in 1973, and there were six campaigns from 1974 to 1979^3,4. They ran under the licence of V. Karageorghis as Director of Antiquities³. The aim was to uncover the unexcavated remains of the episcopal precinct, and all of it was uncovered apart from a small area north of the baptistery³.

Richard Anderson, the Dumbarton Oaks architect and photographer, recorded the precinct; his reconstruction is the frontispiece of the final volume^1,3.

The precinct, season by season

The first season ran from 1 April to 6 May 1974; two trial trenches tested the inferred plan of the baptistery at key points to the north¹. The baptistery's main hall measured 16.60 by 12.30 m. The staircase arms of the font were widened in a second state, and its steps were later closed, probably for infant baptism only^1,2. In 1975 the rest of the baptistery came to light, including a wide apse against the east wall; Megaw reports that no altar or barrier was found, so the hall was not used as a church¹. The buildings west of the basilica were completed the same year. The diakonikon had a mosaic floor of three panels, the first with a tabula ansata bearing six lines of Septuagint verses, over an earlier mosaic of large tesserae whose date is uncertain^1,5.

In 1976 the work reached a small paved peristyle atrium annexed to the baptistery, which gave access to both baptistery and basilica^3,6. The northeast chapel, where fragments of figural wall mosaic had been found in situ earlier, was cleared completely, and the hexagonal cistern in the southwest court was emptied, exposing a water-lifting fountain; a gold solidus of Constantine IV (about 670) lay on its floor⁶. The 1977 season cleared the north part of the atrium and its porticoes and found a lime kiln in the west portico and an irrigation cistern against the south wall of the basilica⁷. In spring 1978, then expected to be the last campaign, the team completed the buildings by the north and west porticoes: the north entrance, a large vestibule with a stair, and storerooms with a pithos of ash⁸. A gold tremissis of Justinian II (about 690) came from the north vestibule⁸.

Two seasons in 1979, spring and autumn, completed the inventory and study. John Rosser of Boston College made soundings in the presbytery that clarified the successive arrangements of altar and apse over roughly 250 years⁹. Megaw states that this reinvestigation led to a consensus on liturgical developments³. A pit at the west end, belonging to the vanished upper storey and possibly to the bishop's residence, held domestic pottery, glass and a hoard of bronze coins at its lowest level⁹.

Dating, abandonment and the finds

Beneath the church lay the foundations of a late Roman basilica, datable to the first years of the 4th century by a coin of Diocletian in one of its foundation trenches³. Megaw's 1976 report offered only imprecise indications of the second half of the fourth century for the foundation of the basilica; his 2007 volume places the Christian basilica in the early fifth century over a Tetrarchic civic basilica^1,3. Megaw's volume says that its construction has reasonably been attributed to Bishop Zeno, prominent at the Church Council at Ephesos in 431, and suggests completion perhaps in the third decade of the fifth century³. The dating draws on coins identified by Michael Hendy and on architectural sculpture such as corbels and capitals³.

Megaw writes that the buildings were no doubt abandoned soon after the city was visited in one of the first Arab raids, that of 653/54 if not 648/49; a group of folles of Constans II dated 641 to 651 from the alley floor is a fair indication of the date of last use¹. He concludes that the basilica was systematically demolished to provide material for a successor church less than two miles away; marble from it was reused in the floor of a chapel of the Cornaro manor at Sarayia in Episkopi, and the bishop moved to Episkopi with his flock after the Arab incursions forced the abandonment of the old site^3,8.

Finds from these campaigns carry the inventory prefix CB³. The coins, including a hoard of 81 bronze coins from the latrine pit (CB 4778), are kept at the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia³. The Department of Antiquities lifted and relaid mosaics during and after the campaigns; the later diakonikon floor was taken to the Kourion Museum at Episkopi, where other basilica material is in the stores^3,6. Megaw published the work in 2007 as Kourion: Excavations in the Episcopal Precinct, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 38, with specialist chapters on revetment, furniture, mosaic, inscriptions, coins, the ingot, pottery, lamps, glass and small finds³. A tourist pavilion kept one area out of the excavation; the pavilion has since been demolished, and the area, probably containing a bathhouse, awaits an excavator^1,3.