Tamassos: Ohnefalsch-Richter's excavations for the Berlin Museums, 1889 and 1894

In 1889 Max Ohnefalsch-Richter discovered the Chomazoudia cemetery at Politiko-Tamassos, 24 Cypro-Archaic tombs of which Matthäus identifies four as prominent: Tombs 4, 5, 11 and 12^1,2. Tomb 4 had a long dromos with a horse-and-chariot burial; Tombs 5 and 12 were decorated ashlar-built chamber tombs; Tomb 11 was also built of ashlar and was later demolished^1,2. Tomb 12, found on 8 July 1889, had a stepped dromos, Proto-Aeolic pilasters and a stone sarcophagus, and held a bronze mace head, a silver bowl, a bronze helmet and an iron sword; Matthäus dates the context to Cypro-Archaic II¹. Ohnefalsch-Richter identified these four tombs as those of Tamassos's city-kings, while Matthäus reads Tombs 5 and 12 more cautiously, as the burials of powerful, wealthy warriors of high, possibly royal, rank¹.

The 1889 campaign was organized under the aegis of the Royal Museums, Berlin, and financed by private sponsors, according to Matthäus¹. It also worked in the Lambertis, Alakati and Bamboulari necropoleis, and in the Apollo sanctuary in the Pediaios river bed, where work began on 3 October³. The catalogue lists a sanctuary of the Mother of the Gods within the town, identified by inscriptions, and the sanctuary of Apollo outside it, discovered in 1889⁴. Graves 1 to 31 at Lambertis were opened that year⁴. Given reports that Sophokles Stavrinides, the Government Superintendent, said the digging in the river bed lay outside the area of government permission and without a contract from the landowner^5,6. In 1894 Ohnefalsch-Richter returned to Lambertis with funding from the Rudolph Virchow Fund and opened Graves 32 to 50^4,7.

The finds were divided under Ottoman law into government, museum and landowner shares, and Recke reports that about 800 objects from the 1889 excavations reached Berlin^6,7. Material from the 1894 Lambertis excavation is now held in the Antikensammlung, Berlin, in Bonn, in Nicosia and in Cambridge⁷. The planned final report, Tamassos und Idalion, was never published, and Matthäus states that the Chomazoudia investigations had never been published^1,2.