Kouklia-Marchello: the University of Athens excavations at the Palaepaphos city wall

Konstantinos Kopanias of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens began a stratigraphic study of the monumental wall at Palaepaphos-Marchello in September 2021, in coordination with the University of Cyprus team led by Maria Iacovou^1,2. The University of Cyprus had found in 2006–2008 that the wall continued west into two neighbouring plots; the new aims were to uncover the rest of it and confirm its chronology and the nature of its remains¹. The Department of Antiquities was the permit authority^1,2. The Community of Kouklia hosted the team^2,3.

The first season announced a preliminary result: the wall's earliest phase was more likely Late Cypriot II (14th-13th century BC) than Cypro-Archaic, pending study of the pottery¹. In 2022, with 25 students, the team found a double burial of a man of about 30 and a woman of about 25 in a pit-cave tomb niche, dated to the early 12th century BC, and a pit with a dismembered horse, probably Cypro-Geometric⁴. In 2023, with 17 students, a small section of the interior north-west wall was excavated and its foundation layer documented for the first time. Preliminary pottery study put the earliest phase in Late Cypriot IIC (13th century BC); its upper stones were later reused for a crude enclosure wall a few metres north^2,3. A north-south tunnel lay beneath the wall section, dug by the late 6th or early 5th century BC. Maier and others had linked tunnels through the wall to the Persian siege of 499/498 BC; the excavators report that their results do not support that link for this tunnel^2,3.

North of the wall was a Pi-shaped structure facing the sea, with three building phases, founded probably in Late Cypriot III (12th-11th century BC), abandoned in the Cypro-Geometric period and repaired in the 6th century BC. Two stones of its outer wall carry schematic ships like those at Kition^2,3. In 2024, with 12 students, the tunnel was excavated to 2.3 m and the structure tested; it proved unconnected to the wall, so probably not a defensive tower, and the excavators think it likely had a cultic function. A third, unfinished ship and a small fragmentary inscription in the Cypriot syllabary, reused in a Cypro-Archaic wall, were found; its study was pending^2,5. The excavators say new evidence supports Maier's view that the wall was repaired in the Cypro-Archaic and again in the Cypro-Classical period^2,3. A fifth annual mission was scheduled for 2025².