Ktima: the French Mission at the Iskender cemetery

At the Iskender cemetery on the outskirts of Ktima, the French Mission dug Geometric tombs whose pottery and metal finds the annual report for 1953 described as the earliest then known from the region of Nea Paphos¹. Jean Bérard directed the work for the French Mission in Ktima, assisted by Jean Deshayes². In October 1952 the Director of Antiquities, A. H. S. Megaw, welcomed Bérard's proposal to seek a permit in his own name for the cemetery, while the formalities of the Antiquities Law remained to be completed³. In correspondence Bérard regarded the Ktima tombs as a way to learn about the Paphian region before the Classical period and the settlement between Old and New Paphos³.

The 1953 season, which Maier dates to 1–26 June, uncovered tombs dated from the eleventh to eighth centuries, with large stepped dromoi and small chambers^1,2. One tomb had lateral chambers and one chamber held as many as eleven successive burials. Two tombs were of the fourth century and yielded plain wine-jars and a little jewellery¹. In 1954 Bérard excavated three more of the very large Geometric dromoi with their chambers, niches cut into the dromoi, and small graves of children; the scant grave goods included a terracotta horse⁴. Maier says Bérard began to dig only in September in both 1954 and 1955². The 1955 work was supplementary, with trenches to establish the limits of the cemetery^2,5. B. C. S. Wilson worked with Bérard and Deshayes in 1954 and 1955². Bérard's preliminary account also described Hellenistic tombs, whose amphora stamps were later studied and indicated a date extending into the second century B.C.⁴.

Deshayes was the author of the final publication, La nécropole de Ktima (mission Jean Bérard 1953–55) (1963), written with Wilson's collaboration⁶. Caubet says objects from the mission were the last to reach a French museum before the law on sharing antiquities was abrogated⁷. Bérard's Cyprus files, with a tomb inventory, plans, accounts and correspondence, were transferred to the École française de Rome by his children⁶.