Tamassos-Frangissa: Ohnefalsch-Richter's excavations for Colonel Warren, 1885

In autumn 1885 a walled sanctuary of Apollo-Reshef was dug at Frangissa, on the east bank of the Argakin tis Asproyis within the Pera field called Phrangissa¹. Max Ohnefalsch-Richter found it on 4 October while exploring on a day off, and the surface was dense with fragments of statuettes². Falkland Warren held a permit for work at Paraskevi, Pera and Acanthou, treated Frangissa as within it, and ordered Ohnefalsch-Richter to dig there for him; a rival application by Watkins was rejected afterwards². Buchholz argues that Ohnefalsch-Richter deserves the credit for discovering and conducting the excavation, although Warren presented it as his own¹. Given sets the excavation and the ensuing trial within the colonial government's struggle to control excavation and its interpretation².

Buchholz dates the main excavation to 17 October to 2 November 1885, eighteen days; Given reports it complete by 7 November^1,2. Ohnefalsch-Richter reports measuring, marking significant stones and statue bases on a plan, and sorting fragments for joins; ground to the north stayed unexcavated for lack of time and money¹. A walled enclosure about fourteen metres long held statue bases and fragments of limestone and terracotta statuettes. An altar outside the entrance was associated with numerous chariot groups, and two monuments carried bilingual inscriptions in Phoenician and Cypriot Syllabic Greek². Buchholz dates one inscription to around 375 BCE¹. Edward Carletti photographed the grouped finds at Warren's house in Nicosia in 1885¹.

Under the division Buchholz describes, about one third of the finds went to the Cyprus Museum, among them the terracotta colossus C.M. 6016, and two thirds to Warren¹. Many of Warren's finds went to Canada, to Ottawa's National Art Gallery, and passed to the Royal Ontario Museum in 1958; Buchholz identified more than 350 associated objects there, among them the Apollo with kithara, 958.61.325^1,3. Buchholz describes the two bilinguals as now in the British Museum¹. Karageorghis notes that the comprehensive excavation publication promised for the sanctuary did not appear, and writes that a study of the dispersed sanctuary sculpture would show Tamassos to have been an important artistic centre in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE³.