Mersinaki: the Swedish Cyprus Expedition

At Mersinaki, on the coast between Soli and Vouni, the Swedish Cyprus Expedition excavated pits filled with votive sculpture in 1930¹. Alfred Westholm was in charge of the archaeological work for the expedition, whose chief was Einar Gjerstad^1,2. Gjerstad reports that Lazaros Nikolaou alerted the expedition to a large statue-filled pit on 13 June¹.

Gjerstad describes several pits filled indiscriminately with votive sculpture, mostly terracotta but with many stone figures. The pieces ranged from life-size or nearly life-size statues to statuettes averaging about 20 cm. He singled out limestone figures probably representing Apollo, a terracotta group of Athena mounting her war-chariot, and a marble relief of Athena¹. Inscriptions found with the sculptures, he says, attest the worship of Apollo Lykios and Athena. The excavated remains were only a sacred enclosure with an altar in the middle, and only a small fragment of the enclosure wall survived¹. Gjerstad dates the sculptures from about 500 BC to about 50 BC¹.

Gjerstad reports Roman-period house walls above the sanctuary remains and argues that the temenos had been abandoned before that occupation. He interprets the pits as a ritual burial of votive offerings, made after the abandonment and before the houses were built with stones from the demolished enclosure walls. He considered the excavation significant chiefly for its cultural-historical evidence, since the temenos had been almost entirely destroyed and its layout could not be reconstructed in detail¹. The finds of the expedition as a whole were divided between the Cyprus Museum and the excavators, with a considerable number allotted to the expedition².