This Week in Cypriot Archaeology: 29 December 2025–4 January 2026

A Bichrome drinking cup of the 9th or 8th century BCE was handed back to Cyprus in Paris after the Department of Antiquities found it in an online sale. The Turkish Cypriot co-chair of the bicommunal heritage committee set out its record since 2008 and its work for 2026, and the Ethnological Museum in Nicosia stayed shut for restoration.

Map of Cyprus

This week's places

• Heritage committee, 2025–2026 work
• Museums
• Ground above 200, 500, 1,000 m

N

50 km

Sites on this map

1. 1Panayia Apsinthiotissa (approx.)
2. 2Famagusta, Venetian walls (approx.)
3. 3Limnia (approx.)
4. 4Lefka (approx.)
5. 5Ayios Thomas (approx.)
6. 6Nicosia (approx.)

Heritage crime

On 31 December the Department of Antiquities announced the return of a stemmed bowl, or kylix, which had been handed over at the Republic's embassy in Paris on 19 December 2025. Officers of the Department who track the illegal trade in Cypriot antiquities on the internet spotted it in an online auction, and it came off sale after they contacted the house. The Department thanked the auctioneers, Nabécor Enchères, and the donors for returning it of their own accord.

The cup is of Bichrome III ware and belongs to the Cypro-Geometric III period, 900–750 BCE. It has two opposed loop handles and black-painted decoration: bands inside, and on each side of the outer panel a swastika framed by groups of vertical lines. The numeral comes from Einar Gjerstad's 1948 classification of Iron Age pottery, in which Type III is the third stage of the Cypro-Geometric. The same route, a lot withdrawn from a foreign sale and handed to a Cypriot mission, had brought back two Bichrome vessels from the United States and a Black-on-Red juglet from Britain in November 2025.

Fieldwork

Ali Tuncay, the Turkish Cypriot co-chair of the Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage, told the Turkish Cypriot news agency TAK on 1 January that the committee had completed restoration, emergency, conservation or survey work at more than 180 sites since it was set up in 2008. More than €45 million has been spent since 2010, €35 million of it from the European Union and the rest from the Evkaf foundations administration, the Greek Orthodox Church and other bodies.

Work in hand includes the monasteries of Panayia Apsinthiotissa, between Sychari and Vouno, and Apostolos Andreas near Rizokarpaso, both in the occupied north. For 2026 the committee plans conservation of the mosques at Koilani and Ayios Thomas in Limassol district, tenders for ten more mosques (five each in Paphos and Larnaca districts) and five projects on religious buildings in Kyrenia district. Work on secular buildings will continue at a historic stone house in Limnia, the Diamante bastion of the Venetian walls of Famagusta and the old aqueducts of Lefka. Tuncay said that matching projects in the north and the south is how the committee builds trust between the two communities.

Museums

Restoration works keep Nicosia's Ethnological Museum, housed in the mansion of Hadjigeorgakis Kornesios, shut to visitors until 31 January 2026, the Department of Antiquities announced on 2 January.