The Archaeology and Urban Topography of Classical Kition

Sabine Fourrier presents the results of the French archaeological mission at Kition, alongside rescue excavations by the Department of Antiquities, to reconstruct the urban topography of the city during the Cypro-Classical period. While the fifth and fourth centuries BC are well documented through inscriptions and coins, Fourrier notes that the archaeological record for Cypriot capital cities of this era, such as Salamis, remains uneven. At Kition, coinages bearing the Herakles-Melqart type and Phoenician inscriptions attest to a stable royal dynasty from Baalmilk I to Pumiathon, who expanded the kingdom by annexing Idalion in the mid-fifth century and Tamassos in the mid-fourth century.

Moving from the periphery of the ancient city under modern Larnaca toward its centre, the lecture first examines the cemeteries. While necropoleis such as Mnimata, Pervolia, and Tourapi continued in use from earlier periods without a regular plan, the fourth-century cemetery at Ayios Prodromos was laid out all at once with aligned tombs. In the same period, the royal built tombs shifted northward from their Cypro-Archaic locations at Faneromeni and the Lefkaritis tomb to the Sotiros area immediately southwest of the urban plateau.

Fourrier then addresses the problem of Kition's Classical fortifications. Although historical accounts of Cimon's siege in 449 BC confirm that the Classical city was walled, no excavated rampart dates to this period. The Late Bronze Age wall at Kathari excavated by Vassos Karageorghis was abandoned in the Early Iron Age, the Archaic sandstone tower at Bamboula was cut through by a fourth-century sewage collector, and a 2019 test trench at the Mound in Faneromeni revealed a wall built of reused gypsum over coins of the Alexander type, which Fourrier attributes to Demetrios Poliorketes in the early Hellenistic period.

After reviewing suburban sanctuaries around the Salt Lake and the Classical phases of the Kathari temple, the talk focuses on the complete remodelling of Bamboula in the fourth century BC. The Archaic sanctuary was buried beneath a large terrace supporting an open-air altar and the shipsheds of the royal military harbour to the north. Excavations completed in October 2021 after the removal of modern tennis courts established that the building had seven ramps, forty metres long, with wooden roof pillars set on stone bases, built in three phases beginning under King Milkyaton. To the south, the long casemate-like South Building and a recently excavated pit containing forty Phoenician administrative ostraka written in black ink lead Fourrier to suggest that the Bamboula complex, combining naval arsenal, sanctuary, and archive, formed part of the royal palace quarter of Classical Kition.