Rantidi-Lingrin tou Dhigeni: Department of Antiquities excavation of the sanctuary

At the northern edge of the Department of Antiquities excavation at Lingrin tou Dhigeni, the team found a large rectangular altar with a worked surface and, beside it, a rectangular opening of stone slabs set in natural soil, read by the 2008 report as a place for libations into the earth in fertility rites¹. Eustathios Raptou, Archaeological Officer of the Department of Antiquities, directed the work¹. The excavated area lies about 300 m from the German and American excavation areas². The 2008 report calls the sanctuary "located last year", so investigation began in 2007¹. Raptou says the Department launched a rescue excavation and stronger protection after a road crossing the site was widened without prior consultation, on a spot already hit by looters and metal-detector users².

In 2008 the work continued west and north of the area already investigated, at points looted. The finds included many fragmentary Archaic and Classical figurines, a very large quantity of mostly small-animal bones, taken by the report as blood sacrifice, and pithos and large amphora fragments, in which the water for the sacrifices was most probably stored¹. Raptou presented the sanctuary in a paper at the 27th CAARI Archaeological Workshop in Nicosia in June 2009³. In his 2014 article he describes, for the later phase, a rectangular limestone-lined cavity with no built bottom (a bothros) and no trace of fire, beside a shallow sloping limestone basin; a second similar cavity to the north held smooth river or beach pebbles². The latest campaign widened the northern trench and uncovered a thick ash and charcoal layer with offerings, some burnt, animal bones and pebbles, which Raptou calls the only place showing the character of a sacrificial area².

Raptou says the sanctuary's history does not at present go back beyond the Archaic period and certainly ends in the 4th century BCE, and he sees its abandonment as not unrelated to the abolition of the Cypriot kingdoms and the Ptolemaic regime². From the doubled installations he suggests worship of two deities, one male and one female, and writes that there is no written or divine-image evidence for identifying them². He cautions that the excavation was still in progress, most of the material unprocessed, and his conclusions provisional². He describes the area as damaged by looters and by excessive property development, and the site as divided by modern roads².