Limassol: Department of Antiquities rescues and the Police Station sanctuary (1950s)

The site of the new Police Station at Limassol held an archaic sanctuary. A. H. S. Megaw's report for 1957 describes a small semicircular shrine, covered by a rich deposit of early sixth-century terracottas, vases and limestone statue fragments, with an earlier mudbrick building on masonry footings beneath it and seventh-century pottery on that building's floor¹. Ram vases and a terracotta phallus are mentioned, and the report reads the character of the cult from male figurines and the phallus found in a pit in the shrine floor¹. The sanctuary had been discovered in 1953, and building the Police Station in 1957 gave an opportunity for its further investigation¹.

The Department of Antiquities recorded most of its other finds from building operations. In 1953 these exposed several Roman-period tombs, whose contents included lamps, coins, inscribed cippi, pottery and glass, and foundation trenches for the new Public Works Department store yielded terracottas and the lower part of a life-size limestone statue². In 1955 two Early Cypriot tomb groups, one with bronzes, came from the Ayios Nikolaos quarter; two archaic groups came from Kapsalos, and a third from road-widening near Kolossi³. In 1959 the Department recovered the Katholiki Early Cypriot tomb, which held abundant Red-Polished pottery stacked in three layers and an incised pyxis; Karageorghis calls Katholiki Limassol's second known Early Cypriot cemetery, after Ayios Nikolaos⁴. A tomb found while house foundations were dug in Kimonos Street that year contained Bichrome Red pottery, plain jugs and a white-paste Egyptian scarab, registered as 247–248⁴. Karageorghis prints a fifth-century date for it, while Dikaios describes the Kimon Street tomb excavated in 1959 as sixth-century^4,5. Dikaios also lists an Early Bronze Age tomb in Navarinou Street, a Cypro-Classical I rock-cut tomb at Ayia Zoni and a Cypro-Archaic I-II tomb at Kapsalos⁵.

The reports place the finds in the local museum: the Roman tomb contents, the Ayios Nikolaos groups and the archaic groups from Kapsalos and Kolossi^2,3. The Katholiki finds carry Limassol Regional Museum numbers 235 and 237⁴.