2020, A. KARNAVA, «Old inscriptions, new readings: a god for the Rantidi sanctuary in South-West Cyprus», Cahiers du Centre d’Études Chypriotes 49 (2019), 19-36. (original) (raw)
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Multiple Identities in Cyprus from the 8th to the 5th century BCE, Suppl. Riv. Studi Fenici 2016
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A tenth-century inscription from Syngrasis, Cyprus
A hitherto unpublished 10th-c. funerary (?) painted inscription from a rather remote middle Byzantine church in rural Cyprus provides unambiguous evidence of the impact of Bardas Skleros' revolt in areas not directly affected by the rebel's activities. It also yields information on the floruit of Epiphanius IV, a little known metropolitan of the island. Finally, and most importantly, it furnishes the earliest and most secure terminus ante quem for any medieval building on Cyprus and for the introduction of the cross-in-square church type and the elaboration of its local variant.
Early Iron Age Cypriots expressed their piety and gratitude to their gods through the dedication of large numbers of votives of various types, sizes, materials and values, the most common being stone and terracotta male and female figurines. The scale and longevity of the production of Cypriot terracottas in particular are astonishing, as are their quality and originality. It comes as no surprise that the high artistic quality and sophisticated technology of these artefacts were highly appreciated not only by Cypriot votaries, but also by those from the Aegean and other areas of the Mediterranean: a large number of Cypro-Archaic terracottas, dating from the middle of the 7 th to the middle of the 6 th century BC has been recovered in many places around the Eastern Mediterranean, from the Levant to the Aegean and as far west as Naukratis. The products of the Cypriot coroplasts of the Archaic period seem to have been greatly esteemed by Eastern Greeks, particularly those who visited the Heraion on Samos and the sanctuary of Athena Lindia on Rhodes.
This book consists of thirteen papers arising from a conference held at Harvard Divinity School in October 2015. The second part of the title of both the book and the conference, "Studies in Religion and Archaeology," best explains the scope of this volume dedicated to Cyprus. The concept goes back to the late Helmut Koester and his project "Archaeological Resources for New Testament Studies" at the Harvard Divinity School in the 1970s, an initiative that aimed to bring together specialists in early Christian literature, material culture, and the study of religion. The two previous volumes born out of this tradition were devoted to the cities of Philippi and Thessaloniki.1 Laura Nasrallah ("Introduction [and an Analysis of Religion by Means of the Annex of Eustolios]"), one of the three editors, starts with a useful bibliographical overview of the literature produced on ancient Cyprus in the last fifteen years. She then reflects on the array of opinions regarding a key piece of evidence on early Christian Cyprus, that is, the early fifth-century mosaic inscriptions of the annex of Eustolios at Kourion, and finishes her paper with summaries of the essays that follow. Next, Charalambos Bakirtzis ("Sea Routes and Cape Drepanon: Excavations at Agios Georgios tis Pegeias, Cyprus") gives a comprehensive report on the early Christian coastal settlement of Agios Georgios tis Pegeias at Cape Drepanon near Paphos. The site has several ecclesiastical buildings, residential quarters, hostelries, and a necropolis; the settlement reached its peak during the sixth century. According to Bakirtzis, the site's quarries exported stone as far as Ptolemaic Alexandria, while in late antiquity, the site's main function was the first stopover for the fiscal shipments of Egyptian wheat travelling between Alexandria and Constantinople. Both theories appear plausible. Other explanations regarding the town's role in late antiquity could be suggested: (1) that it functioned as the regional horrea of western Cyprus (cf. Skarpheia, Boeotia, seg 40, 402) supplying the Roman field armies in the Balkans (i.e., the main function of the quaestura exercitus to which Cyprus belonged), or (2) that it was simply a coastal settlement that grew