Amathus - in Modern Times

In Modern Times

A new settlement close to Amathus but further inland, Agios Tychonas, is named after the bishop Saint Tychon of Amathus. The site of the ruins is within the borders of this village, though the expansion of the Limassol tourist area has threatened the ruins: it is speculated that some of the hotels are on top of the Amathus necropolis.

The city had vanished, except fragments of wall and of a great stone cistern on the acropolis. A similar vessel was transported to the Musée du Louvre in 1867, a limestone dim, used for storing the must from the grapes, which dates to the sixth century BC. It is 1.85 m (6 ft 1 in) high and weighs 14 tons. It was made from a single stone and has four curved handles bearing the head of a bull. In the 1870s Luigi Palma di Cesnola carried out excavations in the necropolis of Amathus, as elsewhere in Cyprus, enriching the early collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; some objects went to the British Museum. More modern archaeological joint Cypriote-French excavations started in 1980 and continue. The Acropolis, the Temple of Aphrodite, the market, the city’s walls, the basilica and the port have all been excavated.

Further archaeological objects found during the excavations are conserved at the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia, as well as at the Limassol District Archaeological Museum.

In the market marble columns are decorated with spiral ornaments; there are huge paved precincts. At the coastal side of the city there are indications of an Early Christian basilica with mosaic floors decorated with semi-precious stones. Farther, near the terraced road leading to the Temple, situated on the top of the cliff, several houses built in a row dating to the Hellenistic period have been discovered. In the east and west extremes of the city the two acropoleis are situated, where a number of tombs have been found, many of which are intact.

Two small sanctuaries, with terracotta votive offerings of Graeco-Phoenician age, lie not far off, but the location of the great shrines of Adonis and Aphrodite have not been identified (M. Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, i. ch.1).