Amathus

Not to be confused with Amathus, Palestine
5th century BC sarcophagus found in Amathus integrates Greek, Cypriot, and Oriental features

Amathus (Ancient Greek: Ἀμαθοῦς) was one of the most ancient royal cities of Cyprus, on the southern coast in front of Agios Tychonas, about 24 miles west of Larnaca and 6 miles east of Limassol. Its ancient cult of Aphrodite was the most important, after Paphos, in Cyprus, her homeland, though the ruins of Amathus are less well-preserved than neighboring Kourion.[1][2]

Pre-history and ancient era

The pre-history of Amathus mixes myth and archaeology.[3] Though there was no Bronze Age city on the site, archaeology has detected human activity that is evident from the earliest Iron Age, c. 1100 BC.[2][4] The city's legendary founder was Cinyras, linked with the birth of Adonis, who called the city after his mother Amathous. According to a version of the Ariadne legend noted by Plutarch,[5] Theseus abandoned Ariadne at Amathousa, where she died giving birth to her child and was buried in a sacred tomb. According to Plutarch's source, Amathousians called the sacred grove where her shrine was situated the Wood of Aphrodite Ariadne. More purely Hellenic myth would have Amathus settled instead by one of the sons of Heracles, thus accounting for the fact that he was worshiped there.

It was said in antiquity that the people of Amathus were autochthonous, or "Pelasgian".[2] Their non-Greek language is confirmed on the site by Eteocypriot inscriptions in the Cypriot syllabary which alone in the Aegean world survived the Bronze Age collapse and continued to be used down to the 4th century BC.

Amathus was built on the coastal cliffs with a natural harbor and flourished at an early date, soon requiring several cemeteries. Greeks from Euboea left their pottery at Amathus from the 10th century BC. During the post-Phoenician era of the 8th century BC, a palace was erected and a port was also constructed, which served the trade with the Greeks and the Levantines. A special burial ground for infants, a tophet[6][7] served the culture of the Phoenicians. For the Hellenes, high on the cliff a temple was built, which became a worship site devoted to Aphrodite, in her particular local presence as Aphrodite Amathusia along with a bearded male Aphrodite called Aphroditos.[8] The excavators discovered the final stage of the Temple of Aphrodite, also known as Aphrodisias, which dates approximately to the 1st century BC. According to the legend, it was where festive Adonia took place, in which athletes competed in hunting wild boars during sport competitions; they also competed in dancing and singing, all to the honour of Adonis.

Fish, polychromic terracotta, 5th century BCE, found in Amathus
Apollo Temple at Amathus-Limassol

The earliest remains hitherto found on the site are tombs of the early Iron Age period of Graeco-Phoenician influences (1000-600 BC). Amathus is identified[9] with Kartihadasti (Phoenician "New-Town") in the Cypriote tribute-list of Esarhaddon of Assyria (668 BC).[10] It certainly maintained strong Phoenician sympathies, for it was its refusal to join the philhellene league of Onesilos of Salamis which provoked the revolt of Cyprus from Achaemenid Persia in 500-494 BC,[11] when Amathus was besieged unsuccessfully and avenged itself by the capture and execution of Onesilos. Herodotus reports

"Because he had besieged them, the Amathusians cut off Onesilos’ head and brought it to Amathous, where they hung it above the gates. As it hung there empty, a swarm of bees entered it and filled it with honeycomb.[12] When they sought advice about this event, an oracle told them to take the head down and bury it, and to make annual sacrifice to Onesilos as a hero, saying that it would be better for them if they did this. The Amathusians did as they were told and still perform these rites in my day." (Histories 5.114)

About 385-380 BC, the philhellene Evagoras of Salamis was similarly opposed by Amathus, in conjunction with Citium and Soli;[13] and even after Alexander the city resisted annexation, and was bound over to give hostages to Seleucus.[14] Its political importance now ended, but its temple of Adonis and Aphrodite Amathusia remained famous in Roman times. The epithet Amathusia in Roman poetry often means little more than "Cypriote," attesting to the fame of the city.

The wealth of Amathus was derived partly from its grain[15] partly from its sheep and copper mines,[16] of which traces can be seen inland.[17]

Amathus was a rich and densely populated kingdom with a flourishing agriculture and mines situated very close to the northeast Kalavasos. In the Roman era it became the capital of one of the four administrative regions of Cyprus.

In Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Later, in the 4th century AD, Amasus became the see of a Christian bishop and continued to flourish until the Byzantine period. Of its bishops, Heliodorus was at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 and Alexander at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. In the late 6th century, Saint Ioannis Eleimonas (John the Charitable), protector of the Knights of St. John, was born in Amathus and after 614 sent Theodorus, bishop of Amathus, to Jerusalem to ransom some slaves.[18][19]

Today, Amathus is a see of the Church of Cyprus and is also listed (under the name "Amathus in Cypro", to distinguish it from "Amathus in Palaestina") as a titular see by the Catholic Church, which however, in line with the practice adopted after the Second Vatican Council, has made no appointments to the bishopric since the death of the last Latin titular bishop in 1984.[20]

Anastasius Sinaita, the famous 7th-century prolific monk of Saint Catherine's Monastery, was born here. It is thought that he left Cyprus after the 649 Arab conquest of the island, setting out for the Holy Land, and eventually becoming a monk on Sinai.[21]

Ancient city kingdoms of Cyprus

Anathus declined and was already almost deserted when Richard Plantagenet won Cyprus by a victory there over Isaac Comnenus in 1191. The tombs were plundered and the stones from the beautiful edifices were brought to Limassol to be used for new constructions. Much later, in 1869, a great number of blocks of stone from Amathus were used for the construction of the Suez Canal. A ruined Byzantine church marks its site.

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 6th 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).

Notes

  1. ↑ Walter Burkert, Greek Religion 1985, p. 153; J. Karageorghis, La grande déesse de Chypre et son culte, 1977.
  2. 1 2 3 Catling, Hector William (1996). "Amathus". In Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth, Anthony. Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-521693-8.
  3. ↑ T. Petit, "Eteocypriot myth and Amathousian reality," JMA 12 (1999:108-20
  4. ↑ Aupert, Pierre (November 1997). "Amathus during the First Iron Age". Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 308 (308): 19–25. doi:10.2307/1357406. JSTOR 1357406.; M. Iacovou, "Amathous, an early Iron Age polity in Cyprus: the chronology of its foundation", Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus (2002) pp 101-22.
  5. ↑ Plutarch, vita of Theseus (20.3-.5), citing the lost text of an obscure Amathusan mythographer, Paeon.
  6. ↑ Agelarakis A., Kanta A., and N. Ch. Stampolidis, “The Osseous Record in the Western Necropolis of Amathous: an Archaeo-Anthropological Investigation”, Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus-Dodecanese-Crete 16th-6th c. B.C., Proceedings of the International Symposium: The Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus-Dodecanese-Crete 16th-6th c. B.C., Rethymnon, Crete, 1998: 217-232
  7. ↑ Agelarakis A., “The Amathous (tophet) cremations in Cyprus”, In D. Christou on “Human Cremations at the Western Necropolis of Amathous” <Cremations in Bronze and Early Iron Age>, Proceedings of Int. Symposium. Ministries of the Aegean and of Culture, Greece, 2001: 201-204
  8. ↑ Macrobius, Saturnalia III, 8. Hesychius s.v Ἀφρόδιτος. Catullus 68, 51, calling the Amathusian Aphrodite duplex, confirms the attribution to Amathus.
  9. ↑ For example by E. Oberhummer, Die Insel Cypern, i., 1902, pp. 13-14.
  10. ↑ But see Citium.
  11. ↑ Herodotus, v. 105
  12. ↑ The mytheme of bees in the carcase, familiar from the legend of Samson ( Judges 14:8, a lion's carcase) and the Greek myth of Aristaeus (a bullock carcase), and in Virgil's Georgics, is examined by Othniel Margalith, "Samson's Riddle and Samson's Magic Locks" Vetus Testamentum, 36.2 (1986:.
  13. ↑ Diodorus Siculus xiv. 98.
  14. ↑ Diodorus Siculus xix. 62.
  15. ↑ Strabo 340, quoting the mid-6th century writer Hipponax.
  16. ↑ See Ovid, Metamorphoses x. 220, 227. 531.
  17. ↑ G. Mariti, i. 187; L. Ross, Inselreise, iv. 195; W. H. Engel, Kypros, i. 111 ff.
  18. ↑ Michel Lequien, Oriens christianus in quatuor Patriarchatus digestus, Paris 1740, Vol. II, coll. 1063-1066
  19. ↑ Siméon Vailhé, v. 1. Amathus, in Dictionnaire d'Histoire et de Géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. II, Paris 1914, coll. 982-983
  20. ↑ Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2013 ISBN 978-88-209-9070-1), p. 830
  21. ↑ A. Binggeli, 'Anastasius of Sinai' in D. Thomas (ed.) et al., Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 1 (600-900). Brill 2009, pp. 193-202; K.H. Uthemann, 'Anastasius the Sinaite' in A. Di Berardino, Patrology: the Eastern fathers from the Council of Chalcedon (451) to John of Damascus (+750). Cambridge 2006, 313-331

References

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Coordinates: 34°42′45″N 33°08′31″E / 34.7125°N 33.1419°E / 34.7125; 33.1419

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