Analysing the External Contacts of Paphos in the Late Cypriot Bronze Age: Imported Objects from the Urban Centre and the Periphery

In this conference paper, given in Greek, Artemis Georgiou of the Archaeological Research Unit at the University of Cyprus presents results from the four-year Marie Curie project ARIEL, coordinated by Maria Iacovou. Drawing on fieldwork by the Palaepaphos Urban Landscape Project at Hadjiabdullah and Laona, the recent publication of two wells at Kouklia-Evreti dug by the German-Swiss mission, and published material from the 1950s British expedition, the German-Swiss mission under Franz Georg Maier, and the Department of Antiquities, she surveys the imported objects and raw materials that reached Palaepaphos and its region during the Late Bronze Age.

Imports appear at the foundation horizon of the settlement at the start of the Late Cypriot period. A Late Minoan IA spiral-decorated cup fragment from an Evreti well, dating to the mid-16th century BC, and three Minoan cup sherds from Teratsoudhia tombs mark the earliest contacts with Crete. From the same horizon come Egyptian imports: a stone vessel fragment bearing the cartouche of Pharaoh Ahmose I from Teratsoudhia and a faience necklace with a carnelian pendant from an Asproyi tomb, which also held a blue glass Hathor pendant with northern Mesopotamian parallels of the 16th and 15th centuries BC.

Mycenaean pottery arrives in the late 15th and early 14th centuries BC, including an Argolid stipple-decorated cup rim, and peaks in the late 14th and 13th centuries, dominated by closed shapes such as stirrup jars, pyxides and jugs alongside kylikes, bowls and kraters. Fine and coarse Minoan oatmeal-fabric vessels, including a stirrup jar handle incised with a Cypro-Minoan sign, also occur. Georgiou argues that earlier scholarship understated eastern trade because undiagnostic body sherds of Canaanite jars were overlooked; in the University of Cyprus excavations these transport amphorae, some marked in Cypro-Minoan, make up 11 percent of the Bronze Age pottery at Laona and 9 percent at Hadjiabdullah, compared with 3 percent for Mycenaean wares. Egyptian alabaster vessels (including one with Bes-shaped handle bases), faience gaming pieces, and 619 worked and unworked pieces of elephant and hippopotamus ivory from the Evreti wells demonstrate local workshop production using imported raw materials.

In the wider Paphos region, rescue excavations at Yeroskipou yielded tombs with gold, ivory and a faience lentoid flask, while the short-lived late 13th-century BC settlement at Maa-Palaeokastro produced the island's second-largest assemblage of Canaanite jars after Hala Sultan Tekke, mostly from the southern Syro-Palestinian coast and Egypt. Georgiou concludes that Palaepaphos functioned from its foundation as a port town comparable to Enkomi, Hala Sultan Tekke and Maroni, and notes that its elite displayed status in tombs such as Evreti Tomb 8 through gold and ivory rather than Mycenaean pictorial kraters, which are nearly absent.