Palaepaphos: the Cyprus Exploration Fund at Kouklia

At Kouklia in 1888, over forty inscribed blocks came out of a single pavement near the south-west angle of the northern chambers of the Temple of Aphrodite between 5 and 9 March, and by 6 April more than fifty others had come from the debris¹. The season was run by the Cyprus Exploration Fund at Palaepaphos, with a labour force that reached about 230 men, women and children¹.

The Fund and the plan

Ernest A. Gardner, Director of the British School at Athens, was the formal director; Maier calls D. G. Hogarth, who wrote the day-to-day narrative, the driving spirit of the excavation^1,2. Gardner was away from 14 March to 2 May¹. M. R. James, a Fellow of King's College, left for England on 2 April, and the architect R. Elsey Smith joined on 7 March¹. Gregorio Antoniou was foreman and Reshid Tchaoush camp-guard¹.

The stated main object was the plan of the temple, called the oldest shrine in the island and hoped to throw light on Phoenician temples generally; inscriptions were expected and found, but little sculpture or small votive material¹. Cyprus was chosen as a field under British control, where the work was meant to bring order into the confused results of earlier explorations, and Kouklia was preferred to Lapithos as a famous, clearly bounded site¹. A Berlin excavation at Kouklia had been rumoured for the autumn of 1888; Hogarth records that the Fund went ahead because the rumour seemed vague, and Maier notes that the German plan was later dropped because of the Fund's activity^1,2.

The party dug by contract with each landowner, who let the land for a payment and renounced any claim to what was found. The Commissioner assigned liberal boundaries on 2 February, but about six weeks later the permission was restricted to land already agreed with proprietors¹.

The temple site

Work began on 3 February with fifteen men¹. For lack of baskets and wheelbarrows the first digging was trenching, at all angles across the site to find walls, some sixteen cuts until 22 February; once the silt was found to average little over four feet, the whole deposit was removed and the spoil tipped into a pit south of the site¹. Labour was paid daily and supervised by five overseers who gave orders in Greek or Turkish¹. Maier points out that the excavators cut through the mosaic of the south stoa while trenching, as an example of the methods of the time².

The mosaic pavement of the south stoa was struck on 9 February, and inscribed marble panels and the head of Eros lay under or near it¹. On 18 February a white marble tablet with six lines in Cypriot syllabic script was found in the central chamber close to the east wall¹. Hogarth dates the inscribed blocks from the fourth century BC to the time of Vespasian or later, and thought they were probably laid in the Byzantine period¹. Deposits of red earth below the mosaic level were full of terracotta heads, figurines and fragments of statuary; Hogarth suggests they may be the remains of a made-earth floor laid at the Roman restoration¹. Other finds included a marble hand holding a dove, a statue base of Aphrodite rising from the sea, fragments of colossal statuary and many marble ex voto statuettes, but no silver or gold coins¹. East of the site, in the courtyard of Hussein Hadji Zaim's house, the excavators opened massive foundations and vaults or tanks that Hogarth thought might possibly be the palace of the Kings or High Priests of Paphos¹. The north wall line was established by 19 April, and the temple excavation was finished by about 23 April¹.

The Cyprus Museum catalogue's summary describes an enclosed court entered from the east between two blocks of pre-Roman buildings, with a pre-Roman north portico and a deeper Roman south portico³. The Fund's report states that no positive evidence was found for the use of any chamber, that the age of the pre-Roman work cannot be decided definitely, and it sets aside Cesnola's plan of the temple as not based on thorough exploration⁴.

Hogarth thought the main undertaking successful in fixing the plan of one of the earliest and greatest Phoenician temples, but disappointing for museum-quality finds¹. Maier, writing in 2004, says the excavations seemed to justify Ross's verdict: parts of the buildings were laid bare, but no coherent plan or unambiguous date for the earlier remains could be established⁵. Maier judged in 2001 that the dig was the only nineteenth-century project in Cyprus that was carefully planned, systematically conducted and adequately published, though the full extent of the sanctuary was not recognised⁶.

The tombs

Tombs were opened around the village at the same time. At Argaro, near the Spilaion tis Regainas, the graves around the large royal tomb were very poor and mostly rifled¹. In eighteen days at Xylino the excavators opened a great number of tombs, some already entered, with coarse local pottery, glass, alabaster and bronze vessels and gold jewellery; Hogarth judged the necropolis no earlier than the second century BC. One vaulted tomb reached by steps held trinkets, copper coins and nearly 200 lamps¹. The Camel's Tail tombs were rock-cut, some with a flight of twenty-five steps, and had been pillaged; they still gave a gold frontlet, amethyst earrings, an inscribed ring and glass vases¹.

The tombs beside the path to Orides came last. About thirty of them, opened to the end of April after Antoniou noticed a jar handle, gave local pottery including vases of "Mycenae" type, bronze bowls and gold fibulae, rings and pendants. Hogarth said that ten days' finds exceeded those of the previous two months and described them only as early¹. Maier writes that a number of Late and even Middle Bronze Age finds also came up in 1888, though their importance was not fully recognized at the time⁵. Five Middle Cypriot III vessels now in the Ashmolean Museum are said to come from the area of Evreti, though Georgiou notes that two are of questionable origin⁷.

Dividing the finds

The spoil was divided under Ottoman law, with the Government taking a third; Gardner arranged the division at Nicosia on terms Hogarth called very favourable, and Hogarth returned in August to carry it out. The jewellery from the Camel's Tail tombs fell to the Government's share¹. The 1899 Cyprus Museum catalogue says noteworthy early tombs were allotted to that museum³. The cases were shipped from Larnaca and reached England at the end of September 1888, to be divided among the British Museum, the Ashmolean and the Fitzwilliam Museum^1,8. The British Museum holds a gold-plated bronze pin topped with a pearl, dedicated by Eubola wife of Aratos (GR 1888,11–15.2), and two fragments of an Attic red-figure rhyton by the Sotades Painter (GR 1888,11–15.3–4)⁹. It also holds a marble stele with a royal dedication in the Cypriot syllabary (GR 1888,11–15.18), taken to be the six-line tablet Hogarth saw found on 18 February⁹. The report appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies 9: Hogarth's narrative of the season at pp. 149–174, and the full account, Excavations in Cyprus, 1887–88, by Gardner, Hogarth, James and Smith, at pp. 147–271^1,10. After the Fund's dig the site was neglected until the British Kouklia Expedition of 1950 to 1955².