Rantidi-Lingrin tou Dhigeni: Robert Zahn's excavation for the Berlin Academy

Between 30 August and 7 October 1910 Robert Zahn excavated on the hilltop at Rantidi-Lingrin tou Dhigeni, and the work added 128 syllabic Greek inscriptions and one Phoenician inscription^1,2,3. On 22 August 1910 Hatton Richards had granted Zahn, assistant keeper of the Berlin Museum, a permit to conduct fieldwork on behalf of the Cyprus Committee of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences¹. Ieronymos K. Peristianis was associated with the excavation⁴.

Later accounts describe a series of structures at the area Zahn excavated, called temples, subterranean chambers and tombs; Raptou places his work on the hilltop south of the later excavation area². Zahn reported fragments of terracotta figures, some of double life-size, and thought they suggested a sanctuary of Dionysos⁴. Young proposes that Rantidi was a sanctuary of the male consort deity associated with the goddess worshipped at Palaipaphos⁴. The counts of terracotta fragments differ. A passage attributed to Peristianis and quoted by Young lists 173 fragments of clay statues, statuettes and figurines, while Bazemore reports over 2,000 fragments of terracotta statues from the 1910 excavations^4,5.

Schmid reports that the expected inscription results were extremely poor and that, because finds could not be exported to Berlin, the campaign had no follow-up or preliminary report¹. Young reports that the small finds Zahn removed have since disappeared⁴. Zahn's notebook, photographs and related correspondence were in the Staatliche Museen in East Berlin when Mitford examined them in the winter of 1958³. The inscriptions were published in 1983 by Mitford and Masson as The Syllabic Inscriptions of Rantidi-Paphos⁶.