Ktima-Shyrvallos: the early Christian basilica

A mosaic inscription found by chance in the courtyard of a house at Shyrvallos, on the eastern outskirts of Ktima, led the Department of Antiquities to a brief investigation under A. Papageorghiou, whom the report names Conservateur des monuments antiques¹. The register dates the work to 1963; Metcalf places the rescue excavation in 1962².

The work exposed part of a basilica with three aisles and a salient apse. A house stood over the site and the western part of the church was completely destroyed. A section of the apse pavement survived, with a scale-pattern mosaic¹. North of the basilica lay a chapel-like annex, also with a salient apse, part of whose floor was mosaic. The votive inscription was on this pavement; it records a dedication by a donor whose name was known only to God, made for the donor's family¹. The report took remains of a cruciform font east of the inscription to mean that the annex served as the basilica's baptistery¹. Michail dates the proposed baptistery to the end of the fifth century but doubts the identification: the inscription does not indicate baptism, and modern construction covering the site prevented full study of the annex's relation to the basilica³.

Metcalf reports that opinions on the date of the basilica ranged from the fifth to the seventh century, and cites Michaelides as favouring the second half of the sixth century for the surviving mosaics². The mosaics, the inscription among them, were transported to the Paphos regional museum¹.