Vouni: the Swedish Cyprus Expedition (1928–1929)

Under a staircase of the palace at Vouni, a clay jar in a cubbyhole held three silver bowls, four gold bracelets, 15 silver bracelets, 248 silver coins, four gold darics and smaller jewellery; the jar was covered by a heavy layer of charcoal and ash, which showed that this part of the palace had been destroyed by fire¹. The workman Kristos struck the jar with his axe¹. It came to light near the end of an excavation by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition that ran from spring 1928 to autumn 1929^1,2.

Finding Vouni

Vouni was found by chance during the dig at Soli. A worker, Prodromos, reported a stone statue built into a dry-stone wall on the mountain, and the team went there with him¹. The authorities of Cyprus granted permission for the work³. Einar Gjerstad was chief of the expedition and directed the whole of the excavations; Alfred Westholm was in charge in the field^2,3. The Crown Prince of Sweden was the funder⁴.

The excavators decided to excavate the entire palace, a task they expected would keep them occupied for two whole years¹. They first lived in tents¹. Westholm's notebooks record work at Vouni I from 18 April to 20 June 1928, at Korakas from 26 June to 26 July, and on the palace from 4 September². A contemporary notice says that a palace of 10,000 square metres or more was partly cleared that year⁵. In 1929 the palace was laid bare room by room, and the excavation ended in autumn^1,2.

The workforce included about fifty men and women from the neighbouring villages of Loutro and Gallini each morning, besides the camp staff, and dump cars on rails carried the earth away¹. Lazaros Nikolaou was foreman of the workmen, and John Lindros came to make the drawings of the main architectural plan¹. Gjerstad calls Livia Gjerstad the "mascot of Vouni"¹. Finds were entered in a site ledger with brief descriptions, then cleaned, studied and catalogued in Nicosia; the layers of earth were preserved in profile drawings, while the earth itself was dumped down the slopes¹.

The palace and the hill

The excavators distinguished four building periods in two palaces: Vouni I (periods 1 and 2, c. 500 to 450/440 BC) and Vouni II (periods 3 and 4, c. 450/440 to c. 380 BC)². The second period added storerooms and a hot bath; the third added a new main entrance with a vestibule and a stairway, and changed the state apartments¹. Gjerstad dated the Hathor-type capital, with a head on each side, to c. 450 to 440 BC¹. The relief sculpture found on the central courtyard floor included one unfinished block¹.

At the highest point of the hill the excavators dug a small temple with three rooms, an open yard and storehouses. It produced bronze reliefs of lions attacking a bull, a bronze cow and four Athena heads, and Gjerstad called it the first Athena temple in Cyprus^1,2. Stone and terracotta statues of the end of the Archaic and the start of the Classical period were found¹. A notice of 1929 reports bases for statues in situ on either side of a monumental gateway⁵. The hill was fortified by a wall, and parts of two houses were excavated². The rock-cut tombs between palace and houses have never been reported on, and Hellström assumes they belong with Vouni I².

The fire and the date

Fire destroyed the palace and it was not rebuilt. The excavators put the destruction at c. 380 BC, and Gjerstad says the palace was abandoned in the early fourth century^1,2. Hellström points out that the c. 380 BC date rested chiefly on 18 coins of Demonikos, taken as king of Kition, which are now attributed to Demonikos II of Lapethos, c. 390 to 360 BC; he argues that the destruction may equally well have occurred c. 390 BC². Of the hoard coins, 127 of 250 in Gjerstad's 1933 count are from Marion and 58 from Kition, with Paphos and others; Gjerstad took the lack of Soli coins to mean that Soli had lost its independence⁶.

Gjerstad read the first palace as Persophile and Oriental in plan, and the second as Hellenized under a dynasty at Marion installed by Kimon; he saw the destruction as an act by Soli c. 380 BC². Hellström argues instead that Vouni may have been a Persian garrison fort or naval base, and that Gjerstad's story of national conflict rests on a hypothesis².

The finds today

The expedition's report on Vouni is in The Swedish Cyprus Expedition III (1937), pp. 76 to 339, with the palace on pp. 111 to 290⁷. The hoard is SCE III no. 292, and two silver bowls are listed in the guide to the Cyprus Museum as from the Vouni palace hoard^2,8. Gunnis reported in 1936 that the hoard could be seen there and that the palace and temple sites were well tended and open to visitors, with a resident custodian⁴. A limestone fragment of a winged sun-disc from the palace courtyard (SCE III no. 291) is in the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm as V. 291². Westholm's three unpublished excavation notebooks are in the same museum².