Nea Paphos: the University of Colorado underwater survey of the harbour

In 1992 divers at Nea Paphos recorded a submerged wall 199 m long, lying parallel to the east breakwater and about 30 m outside it, together with a mound of building debris that Steel takes to be the end of the breakwater^1,2. Robert L. Hohlfelder of the University of Colorado led the survey with John R. Leonard, in two brief campaigns in 1991 and 1992¹. Herscher reports that plans for a recreational marina made the investigation urgent². The aim was to make a plan of the submerged harbour remains and to plot the topography of the silted part of the ancient harbour¹.

The 1991 survey located the ancient entrance channel west of the modern harbour mouth, possibly defined by two towers. On land the team relocated the Roman eastern sea wall and examined the modern west breakwater for the original construction and for reused ancient material¹. In 1992 the survey examined the submerged remains, the east breakwater and the Moulia Rocks¹. The original Hellenistic east breakwater was of ashlar blocks, and upended sections of rubble in concrete are possibly Roman repair¹. Herscher reports that the present east breakwater follows the alignment of the ancient one, which ran about 600 m, and that the apparent ancient entrance between end towers is 41.4 m wide². Leonard credits the work with documenting previously unknown stretches of ancient breakwater, outside the main east breakwater and partly across the present harbour mouth. He adds that Hohlfelder, assisted by the architects Chris Brandon and Kathryn Barth, produced an overall site plan, and that it apparently shows Roman engineers perforating the original east breakwater to let silt out through protected outflow channels³.

Gatt, using Leonard and Hohlfelder 1993, gives the 199 m wall a width of 5 m and suggests that it might be a later Roman addition after the earthquake of 15 BC⁴. The results were published by Hohlfelder in Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus for 1992, by Leonard and Hohlfelder in the same series for 1993, and in AASOR 51^5,6,7.