Amathous

French Archaeological Mission at Amathous (dir. Anna Cannavò)

Alexandre Rabot

 Engraving  by  Luigi Mayer  (late 18th century) showing the large limestone vase in place at the sanctuary of Aphrodite on the top of the acropolis of Amathous. The vase was acquired for France and transported to the Louvre in 1865; a copy is now in its place. The top of the acropolis looks greener and more wooded than it is today  (ȼ) .

Amathous was one of the Iron Age kingdoms of Cyprus (11th - 4th century BC), and one of the main cities of the island, seat of a bishopric. Established at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC on the southern coast of the island, the settlement developed around an acropolis, about 80 m high. Its urban centre, adorned with several monuments from the Hellenistic period onwards, was filled with basilicas in the Late Antique period, but was definitively abandoned in the 7th century AD.

Many civilisations, with their own languages and writings, have left written evidence in Amathous and its wider area. As early as the 18th century, scholars and amateurs travelled through the region in search of antiquities; in the 20th century, these ventures gave way to systematic and scientific studies.

By means of inscriptions discovered at different places on the site, in a variety of languages and scripts, we propose a journey of the ancient city, its monuments and its history.

1. The first centuries of the town: Phoenicians, (Eteo)cypriots and others

The establishment of Amathous remains poorly known and not precisely dated. The Ancients (Theopompus) attributed the foundation of the town to the Cypriot hero Kinyras, in the aftermath of the Trojan War. According to some of them (Pseudo-Scylax), the inhabitants of Amathous were "autochthonous", while the other towns in Cyprus, were populated by Greeks or Phoenicians.

Modern scholars have christened these autochthonous Eteocypriots (from Greek eteos: true, authentic), and have identified their language, which defies to this day any interpretation; it is written in the local syllabary (used in Cyprus also to transcribe Greek).

According to some scholars, the Phoenicians were responsible for the foundation of Amathous, which was one of their colonies. Called Qarthadasht ("new town", in Phoenician: hence the name of Cartago of Africa, and many other Phoenician colonies), it would be mentioned with this name in the very first historical sources available.

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Further readings

Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum I, 1881,  text  and  illustrations 

2. The kingdom of Amathous

During the Classical period (5th-4th centuries BC), the kings of Amathous, as is the case for Salamis, Kition or Paphos, were subject to the Great King of Persia, but they retained a large degree of autonomy: proof of this is the fact that they were allowed to mint their own coin. In the case of Amathous, the iconography is very stable (protome and head of lions), and the syllabic legends record the names of the kings.

The elites, scarcely visible within the urban space (where the only residential buildings excavated so far belong to the royal palace), have left more traces in the necropolis: built tombs, sumptuous anthropoid sarcophagi, and long inscriptions in Eteocypriot.

The last king of Amathous, Androkles, is known to us for his innovations in the direction of a growing Hellenisation, but also for the safeguarding of the Eteocypriot heritage: in his dedications to the Great Goddess Kypria, honoured in the sanctuary on the top of the acropolis, he uses the Greek alphabet and language alongside the syllabic Eteocypriot, and he assimilates for the first time the goddess to the Greek Aphrodite.

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Further readings

 Anna Cannavò , " Évolution historique des marqueurs et des cultes funéraires amathousiens. Quelques pistes de réflexion ", in  Sandrine Huber  et al., Constituer la tombe, honorer les défunts en Méditerranée hellénistique et romaine, Études alexandrines 46, 2018, pp. 255-277

3. Amathous under the Lagids

The a gora 

With the transition to the Hellenistic period, the kingdoms of Cyprus ceased to exist. The Lagids of Egypt took control of the island after a short Antigonid domination (between the end of the 4th and the first years of the 3rd century). Amathous, which had played a strategically important role for the Antigonids, hosted, during the 3rd century, many mercenaries in the service of the Lagids: their presence is documented by several inscribed and/or painted funerary stelae.

The centre of the urban life moved from the heights of the acropolis (sanctuary, royal palace) to the lower town, where a Greek-style agora was gradually built and embellished. Several dedications, but also exceptional administrative documents (a cadastral inscription) were found in this area. The cult of the Great Goddess Aphrodite continues on the top of the acropolis, through the addition of new divine representations (Arsinoe, Isis) illustrating, as the old ones, the same divine figure.

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Further readings

4. The Roman period and its cults

The  North wall 

Within a vast neighborhood leaning against the northern rampart, several discoveries document the Amathousian cults during the imperial period: a "sanctuary within the steles" was restored in 79/80 by proconsul Lucius Bruttius Maximus, consecrated to Titus and Aphrodite (a beautiful marble head of the goddess, from the Hellenistic period, was discovered nearby); a bronze jug, found into a pit, attests to the existence of a cult of Adonis, closely associated with Aphrodite by literary sources (Pausanias). The sanctuary of the acropolis, where a limestone temple adorned with so-called "Nabataean" capitals was erected at the end of the 1st century, also delivered dedications to the goddess but also to Augustus. Several dedications to Theos Hypsistos, a deity whose nature remains difficult to define, possibly evoke an important Jewish community in the region. Finally, magical texts recall, still in the 3rd century, the persistence and vitality of popular beliefs.

Latin is sporadically used in Cyprus and remains limited to the official context: in Amathous, a rich Roman citizen consecrated a monumentum to Venus Cypria in the 2nd century; several public inscriptions are dedications or consecrations in the agora.

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Further readings

Jean Marcillet-Jaubert, " Venus Cypria ", Cahiers du Centre d'Études Chypriotes 7, 1987, pp. 33-34

 Pierre Aupert , " L'escalier de Kallinikos ", in  Pierre Aupert  (dir.),  Guide d’Amathonte , Sites et monuments 15, 1996, pp. 108-109

5. The town of Saint Tychon

At the end of the 4th century, Amathous was evangelized by Saint Tychon, his second bishop: several miracles are attributed to the saint. A church was built, possibly on his tomb, on the eastern edge of the ancient town: ruined today, it is still frequented by the faithful.

Other churches were built during the last centuries of the town, notably on the acropolis, where a small basilica took the place of the temple of the imperial period. No text allows us to know to whom it was dedicated, but it was certainly a prestigious building because of its location and its rich decoration (opus sectile pavement, champlevé marble slabs, chancel slabs, glass mosaics...).

An imposing wall, very well visible halfway up the acropolis, is the last known monument of civil architecture. Built in the 6th century and rebuilt in the 7th century, it could not stop the Arab raids that in the second half of the 7th century led to the depopulation and abandonment of the town.

Further readings

Eleni Procopiou, " Eglise d'Ayios Tykhonas (Saint-Tykhon) ", in  Pierre Aupert  (dir.),  Guide d'Amathonte , Sites et monuments 15, 1996, pp. 153-160

 Annie Pralong ,  Jean-Michel Saulnier , " La basilique chrétienne du sommet de l’acropole ", in Pierre Aupert (dir.), Guide d’Amathonte, Sites et monuments 15, 1996, pp. 132-145

 Anna Cannavò ,  Mission française d'Amathonte