New Aegean Relations With Cyprus - The Minoan and Mycenean Pottery From Toumba Tou Skourou, Morphou

8/3/2019 New Aegean Relations With Cyprus - The Minoan and Mycenean Pottery From Toumba Tou Skourou, Morphou

1/25

New Aegean Relations with Cyprus: The Minoan and Mycenaean Pottery from Toumba Tou

Skourou, MorphouAuthor(s): Emily Vermeule and Florence WolskySource: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 122, No. 5 (Oct. 19, 1978), pp.294-317Published by: American Philosophical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/986685 .

Accessed: 08/10/2011 08:20

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

American Philosophical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ampshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/986685?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/986685?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=amps


2/25

NEW AEGEANRELATIONSWITH CYPRUS: THE MINOAN AND MYCENAEANPOTTERY FROM TOUMBA TOU SKOUROU, MORPHOU*

EMILY VERMEULEZemurrayStone-RadcliffeProfessor,HarvardUniversity

andFLORENCE WOLSKY

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston(ReadApril 20, 1974)

Unless otherwise indicated in the figure legends, the pot-tery illustratedis from Toumba tou Skourou,and the draw-ings are by the authors.THE ISLAND OF Cyprus in the eastern Mediter-ranean has always been valued by historians andarchaeologists as a perfect example of a natural andcultural bridge where east and west could cross andmeet. In the Bronze Age, especially after 1600 B.C.,the arts and the ideas of the Levantine and theAegean worlds met there and made creative ex-changes. A bridge may not be the best image forCyprus, since it implies a single structure; in the

* This article has been much delayed in publicationfromthe time of its presentationto the American PhilosophicalSociety on April 20, 1974. We had hoped to complete themending of the Aegean pottery, with consequently betterillustrationsand measurements, n the next season of excava-tions. However, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July,1974,made it impossibleto resume work. Morphouwas cap-tured in mid-August, 1974. All the pottery which was in-completelymendedwas in Morphouat that time in the careof a year-roundpotmenderand foreman,Mr. George Markouof Karpashia. It was kept in the disused army barracks,and the Turkish army, wanting the space, discardedthe ex-cavation finds on the ground outside; they were collectedagain toward the end of September when officials ofUNESCO and of the Turkish Antiquities Service begantouring the region, but some two hundred and fifty pieceswere lost or destroyed. This unfortunatelyincluded a notinconsiderablepercentageof the imported pottery, both Mi-noan and Tell el-Yahudiyeh. Emily Vermeule was able tovisit the collection in November, 1974,and Florence Wolsky(with Dr. Leonard Wolsky and Mrs. Stella Lubsen-Admiraal) in October, 1975; both visits were devoted tochecking the inventory and determiningwhat was lost. Ona further visit in April, 1976, it was not possible to crossthe Turkish military lines. In the meantime, the Americanambassadorto Cyprus, the Hon. William R. Crawford,haddiscovered that all the stratified sherds of the excavation,stored in the Old Clinic of the Cyprus Mines CorporationatSkouriotissa, had been lost. The Clinic was less than onehundred meters from No-Man's Land between the Greekand Turkish forces, and apparentlyit had seemed desirableto the soldiers to empty out the eighteen hundredsherd bagsto fill them with sand for defense. The boxes containingbones and samples were used for fuel. It is therefore notpossibleto presentthe results of the excavation in as finishedor professionala form as we could have wished, but thereseems no chance of improvementin the immediate future.Perhaps a report with defects is better than no report at all.

Late Bronze Age, although Cyprus was generallypeaceful, there is no evidence that it was a singlepolitical entity. The record of excavation at sites thatflourished between 1600 and 1200 B.C.suggests ratherthat Cyprus was divided into provincial districts gov-erned from principal towns, perhaps each with itsown "king," and that these districts had differentdegrees of experience with foreigners and overseastrade.The main ancient towns were situated at the edgesof plains which had easy access to coastal harbors andriver estuaries, or in inland valleys with good com-munications both to the coast and to the forestedmountains of the copper zones in the southwest centerof the island. On the east and south coasts the bigsites like Enkomi, Hala Sultan Tekke, and Kitionwere in active mercantile contact with the tradingcenters of the Near East and Egypt. The goods ex-changed included copper, timber, ivory, gold, opium,pottery, probably cattle, textiles, farm produce, andpolitical prisoners. The trade with the Syrian andPalestinian coasts was particularly brisk. For thesecommercial exchanges, records and bills of ladingmust have existed to some degree; and one wouldhave expected, simply from geographical propinquity(map 1) that the island would have benefited bothdiplomatically and economically by writing someform of the cuneiform script which was current allthrough the east.'

1The position of Cyprus in relation to her Bronze Ageneighbors is reviewed in such standard and recent articlesas H. W. Catling, "Patterns of Settlement in Bronze AgeCyprus," Opuscula Atheniensia 4 (1962): pp. 129-169 andCambridge Ancient History 2, 2 (1975): pp. 188-216; J.Nougayrol, Ugaritica 5 (1968): pp. 79-89; H. G. Giiterbock,"The Hittite Conquestof Cyprus Reconsidered,"Jour. NearEastern Studies 26 (1967): pp. 73-81; E. D. Oren, "Cyp-riot Imports in the Palestinian LB I Context," OpusculaAtheniensia 9 (1969): pp. 127-150; several papers in theProc. First International Cyprological Congress [1969](1972): G. Cadogan, "Cypriot Objects in the Bronze AgeAegean and their Importance," pp. 5-13; J.-C. Courtois,"Chypre et l'Europe Prehistorique a la fin de l'Age duBronze," pp. 23-32; M. Dothan, "Relations between Cyprusand the Philistine Coast in the Late Bronze Age," pp. 51-55;PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, VOL. 122, NO. 5, OCTOBER 1978

294


3/25

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUSIt has consequently always been a historical mys-tery that Cyprus, whose people were not Aegean intradition, chose to avoid cuneiform and to developa script which is almost certainly modeled on andclosely related to the linear scripts of the Aegeanworld, particularly the Linear A script of Minoan

Crete.2 Not much of this script is known yet, andit has not been deciphered; yet it occurs on five tab-lets from Enkomi and one large clay cylinder withone hundred and eighty-six signs; on four tabletsfrom Ugarit (Ras Shamra) which was Enkomi's"sister" city some sixty miles across the water inSyria, one of the most important of all Bronze Agetowns; and on a variety of clay balls, ingots, coppertools, vases and other simple artifacts, enough toassure that most towns in Cyprus were using thesame script, wherever it was originally developed.The script has an earlier and a later form; the earlier,represented by a single three-line tablet from En-komi (fig. 1), is closest to the Cretan script, whilelater forms have been somehow influenced by thescribal habits of the Near East, in the shapes of thetablets and the forms of the syllabary, although pri-vate writing on vases and other objects stays closerto the Aegean styles. While some scholars wouldlike to see Hurrian or Anatolian elements in thelanguage of the later tablets from Enkomi, such dis-cussions are probably premature, and to some degreerun counter to the archaeological record.The early text is particularly hard to account forbecause of the absence of any visible Minoan activityin the island at the beginning of the Late BronzeR. S. Merrillees, "Alasia," pp. 111-119; J. D. Muhly, "TheLand of Alashiya: References to Alashiya in the Texts ofthe Second Millennium B.C. and the History of Cyprus inthe Late Bronze Age," pp. 201-219; I. Tzedakis, "CypriotPottery in Western Crete," pp. 163-166; R. S. Merrillees,Trade and Transcendencen the Bronze Age Levant, Studiesin Mediterranean rchaeology 9 (1974); H. W. Catling,V. Karageorghis,Minoikan Cyprus," apersof theBritishSchool at Athens 55 (1960): pp. 109-127and M. Popham,"TwoCypriotSherds romCrete,"bid. 58 (1963): pp.89-93. The Aegeanworldapparently articularlydmiredCyp-riote White Slip I (and II) milk bowls,whichhave beenreported t Trianda n Rhodes,Phylakopi n Melos, Thera,Kea (add to Merrilleesreferencesabove, J. L. Caskey,Hesperia 41 (1972): pl. 96, J 12-13), Aigina, Athens,Knossos,Katsamba, akroandChania.2Among many discussionsof the Cypriote cript, J. F.Daniel,"Prolegomenao the Cypro-Minoancript,"Amer.Jour.Archaeology 5 (1941): pp. 249-282;M. Ventris,J.Chadwick,Documents n MycenaeanGreek(1956), pp. 60-66; J. V. Karageorghis,"Originedu syllabaireChypro-Minoen,"RevueArcheologique958:pp. 1-19; 0. Masson,Les inscriptionshypriotesyllabiques1961), pp.30-38 andArchaeologia iva2 (1969): pp. 149-152;E. Masson,Vingt-six boulesd'argiles nscrites,Studies n Mediterraneanr-chaeology 1, 1 (1971) andCyprominoica,bid.31,2 (1974),Minos10, 1 (1969): pp. 64-77; P. Meriggi,"I nuovitesticiprominoici," inos 13 (1972): pp. 199-258;J. C. Billig-meier,"Towarda Deciphermentf Cypro-Minoan,"mer.Jour.Archaeology 0 (1976): pp. 295-300.

FIG.1. Fragment f a clay tablet nscribedwith the Cypro-Minoan script, from Enkomi, ca. 1500 B.c. (From V.Karageorghis, The Civilization of Prehistoric Cyprus,fig. 153.)Age, which is Late Cypriote I A and Late MinoanI A. Later on, after 1400 B.C. there are sharply in-creasing contacts between the Cypriotes and the My-cenaeans of mainland Greece, who had themselvesadapted the Cretan script to the Greek language.There is so much Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus, bothexported from the Argolid and made locally by My-cenaean potters in Cyprus, that it is obvious thedegree of trade relations was very strong. AlthoughCyprus would not be truly colonized by MycenaeanGreeks until the end of the Late Bronze Age,3 theremust have been a number of bilingual persons on theisland who would find it convenient to write Cyp-riote and old Greek in a script nearly familiar tovisitors from the west. By the end of the BronzeAge, Greek was implanted on the island, and per-sisted until the fourth century B.C.to be written ina classical form of the old Cypriote syllabary.That Cyprus was the homeland of a very literatepeople is not in doubt in spite of the few survivingtexts, for the Enkomi tablets are quite long, and thetexts continuous unlike the staccato lists and recordsof the Aegean world, and the Cypriote texts fromUgarit are also fairly elaborate.4 In such an islandthere might well have been more than one form ofscript current, as at Ugarit; and certainly whenCyprus appears in international diplomatic corre-spondence (if Cyprus is "Alashiya" as many scholarsbelieve) its activities are recorded in cuneiform, asin the Amarna archives of central Egypt.5 However,

3The issue of Mycenaeancolonists in Cyprus is discussedby several speakers in the Acts of the InternationalArchaeo-logical Symposium: The Mycenaeans n the Eastern Mediter-ranean (1973), summedup by H. W. Catling, "The AchaeanSettlementof Cyprus,"pp. 34-39.4E. Masson, Cyprominoica (1974); cf. C. Schaeffer,"Dernieres Decouvertes Archeologiques 'a Enkomi-Alasia,"Acts of the First InternationalCyprologicalCongress (1972),pp. 157-162.5See J. D. Muhly, op. cit., note 1 above.

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978] 295


4/25

E. D. T. VERMEULE, FLORENCE WOLSKY [PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

"-.E0:-

a 0. Ceos

C-ta

I

00

.4,

1-4

296

C/) g_ O2?Q-*.0X_

.

11

o'f.

t-

: =

e. 2

I 0

0;

1,

-I V s

x 1C:t "'A

'-c IWIz

L


5/25

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUSno example of cuneiform has been found in Cyprusitself, and at least two of the biggest towns, Enkomiand Kition, have been so thoroughly excavated thatif cuneiform was in any way popular it should havebeen seen by now.6 One problem may be that theorganization of society in Cyprus apparently did notdemand the construction of centralized palaces whichwould keep official archives, a fact which clearly dif-ferentiates the script situation from that in Greeceand the Near East. Still, the literacy of Cyprusfrom an early period is unquestioned, and the earlytablet from Enkomi with its strongly Minoan aspectwas found in a context datable close to 1500 B.C.7It is too early to have been affected by the Mycenaeancontacts of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries,and too close to Linear A for there to be muchdoubt of its derivation.There has been a very clear imbalance, then, be-tween Cyprus's energetic trade with Syria, Palestine,and Egypt while not writing their script, and herinvisible contact with Minoan Crete while using aCretan script as a model. Although one isolated andbroken tablet is a small foundation for large historicalinterpretations, there is no doubt that Cyprus begana westward cultural orientation around 1500 B.C., ofwhich the script is a sign, and which has been diffi-cult to understand. As one sagacious commentatoron the history and origin of the script has remarked,"une ecriture ne s'implante pas tres aisement dans unpays nouveau";8 at some point Minoans must havebeen on Cyprus, or Cypriotes in Crete. This is atrip of nearly four hundred miles, which could at thewestern end be broken among the Greek islands butwith rough open water east of Rhodes for the lastrun. Such a trip would probably not have beenundertaken without trade goods, and if the Minoanshad come from Crete at the beginning of the LateBronze Age, for copper or any other purpose, it wasodd that they should have left nothing behind at all.9There were two Middle Minoan vases, too early tohave affected the script as we know it, and thennothing until Late Minoan III A, just after 1400 B.C.and the collapse of the palace system in Crete.10

6 Enkomi: C. Schaeffer,Enkomi-Alasia1952), Alasia 1(1971); P. Dikaios, Enkomi 1948-19581 (1969); Kition: V.Karageorghis,Kition (1976).7The Enkomi ablet s CyprusMuseum1885;P. Dikaios,"TheContextof the EnkomiTablets,"Kadmos2 (1963):pp. 39-52; Antiquity 30 (1956): pp. 40-42 with M. Ventris;Enkomi 1948-1958 2 (1971): pp. 882-884.8J. Karageorghis,p. cit., note 2 above,p. 11.9 See E. J. Forsdyke, "Minoan Pottery from Cyprus,"Jour. Hellenic Studies 31 (1911): pp. 110-113; H. W. Cat-ling, V. Karageorghis, "Minoika in Cyprus,"Papers BritishSchool at Athens 55 (1960) : pp. 109-127.10V. Grace, "A Cypriote Tomb and Minoan Evidence forits Date," Amer. Jour. Archaeology 44 (1940): pp. 10-52;J. Stewart, "The Tomb of the Seafarerat Karmi in Cyprus,"OpusculaAtheniensia4 (1962): pp. 197-206; H. W. Catling,V. Karageorghis,op. cit., note 9 above, pp. 109-110.

It was the fortune of Harvard University and theMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston, to have been granteda permit by the Department of Antiquities of the Re-public of Cyprus to explore a Bronze Age moundin northwest Cyprus, and to begin partially to correctthe impression scholars had had about the lack ofMinoan objects in Cyprus in the crucial period. Themound has the modern name of Toumba tou Skou-rou," the Mound of Skouros or the Mound of Dark-ness.12 It lies close to the present north bank of theOvghos River, just north of the modern city of Mor-phou. It is some four miles from the sea, but wasmuch closer to it in the Bronze Age, on an estuaryor lagoon. The plain behind was extremely fertile,where the two rivers Ovghos and Seirakhis run westto the sea; the copper deposits in the hills are onlyten miles to the south. But the waters were shallowwith bad cross-currents and undertows near thesandy shore, and it was presumably the shelter ofthe estuary of the Ovghos which allowed any mari-time trade at all. The situation is not unlike that ofEnkomi on the east coast, on the Pediaeus river.Toumba tou Skourou was first explored in 1936,by Dr. Porphyrios Dikaios who later excavated atEnkomi.13 It was examined archaeologically againin the 1950's by Dr. Hector Catling and the CyprusSurvey; Catling expressed the opinion that Toumbatou Skourou might prove to be the Enkomi of thewest coast, but noted serious agricultural depreda-tions.14 What this meant was all too clear, when thegovernment was finally able to buy a plot of land

11Local Cypriotesunderstandhis nameas a relic of aninfamousKing Skouroswho foughta worse King Minoasmany years ago; others have suggested t may be Romanobscurus,Venetian oscuro, or Greek skouria, rust and slag,as in the churchof the PanaghiaSkouriotissa,t the coppermines at Skouriotissa12 Previouspublicationsf the site includeP. Dikaios,Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus 1936:p. 115; H. Catling,"Patterns f Settlementn BronzeAgeCyprus," Opuscula Athenicisia 4 (1963) : pp. 142-144, p.167, no. 188 and CambridgeAncient History 2 (1966), p. 51,Cambridge Ancient History 3, 2, 2 (1975) : p. 192;V. Karageorghis, Bulletin de CorrespoudanceHellenique 83(1959): p. 339,88 (1964): p. 313,96 (1972): pp.1051-1054;97 (1973): pp. 641-645;98 (1974) pp.861-864,The Civili-

sation of Prehistoric Cyprus (1976), pp. 150, 155, 158; E.Porada,F. Maier,Archaeology 5 (1972): p. 298; K. Nico-laou, "Archaeologicalews from Cyprus,"Amer. Jour.Ar-chaeology 7 (1973) pp. 54-55;C. C. Vermeule, The RamCultsof Cyprus;Pastoral o Paphianat Morphou," eportof the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus 1974: pp. 151-156; E. Vermeule,"Excavations t Toumba ou Skourou,Morphou,"The Mycenacaus in the Eastern Mediterranean(1973), pp. 25-33, Toumba tou Skourou, The Mound ofDarkness(1974); E. Vermeule nd F. Wolsky,"Pot-MarksandGraffiitiromToumbaou Skourou,"Kadmos15 (1976):pp. 61-76, and "The Bone and Ivory from Toumba touSkourou,"Report of the Departmentof Antiquitiesof Cyprus1977: pp. 80-96.13See note 12 above.14See note 12 above.

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978] 297


6/25

E. D. T. VERMEULE, FLORENCE WOLSKY

FIG. 2. CupsfromAyia Irini,decoratedwith doubleaxes,sixteenthto early fifteenthcenturiesB.C. (From P.Pecorella, The Mycenaeans in the Eastern Mediter-ranean, pI. V.)there in 1970, and the Harvard expedition beganwork in 1971. Most of the ancient town was gone,bulldozed away and buried under sand imported tohelp plant orange trees. The small surviving frag-ment had also been thoroughly bulldozed-the tracksof the machine were clear even in the bedrock-andwhat survived was a piece of an artificial mudbrickplatform, some major retaining walls, parts of threehouses along the south flank of the mound, andtwelve chambers belonging to six tombs partly underthose houses. What had been a huge place "to theheight of a telephone pole" (according to the bull-dozer driver who worked there for a month in theearly 1950's) had been reduced to a flat space wherethe modern surface was already of the thirteenthcentury B.C. The history and nature of the site aretoo complex to be described here, but a few basicfacts became clear in the course of three years of ex-cavation, in spite of the way in which the bulldozerhad, starting at the top of the mound and spreadingmaterial to the sides, effectively turned the ancientstrata upside down.Toumba tou Skourou was, like many sites in Cy-prus, a new foundation in the increasingly prosperousclosing years of the Middle Bronze Age, in the earlysixteenth century B.C. Its most flourishing epoch,according to the remains, was the early part of the

Late Bronze Age, Late Cypriote I A. Althoughmuch of its later history was gone, it was clear thatit had been inhabited without obvious breaks downto the decades just before 1200 B.C.;there was verysparse indication of Dark Age habitation, only a fewsherds, but in the early Iron Age it had again atleast a great deal of pottery, which was scattered bythe bulldozer or found in wells near the old BronzeAge houses. It has, therefore, a typical Cypriotehistory, and must have been a favored place to attractinhabitants for some nine hundred years, 1600 to700 B.C. Perhaps the river was silting up by then,and the commercial center shifted down to Soloi onthe south shore of Morphou Bay, just as Enkomigave way to Salamis in the east.Almost from the beginning Toumba tou Skourouwas in contact with the east, or at least eastern goodscame into the town, Syrian ostrich eggs, ivory andthe so-called Tell el-Yahudiyeh and "Palestinian Bi-chrome" wares,15 which were imitated on the spotin local fabrics as well. Toumba tou Skourou seemsto have been one of the great pottery centers of theisland, and with its neighbor Ayia Irini on the coastsome eight miles north provides a clear picture of theceramic transitions from the Middle to the LateBronze Ages. At Toumba tou Skourou there isquite abundant slag, which proved not to be thecopper slag one might expect in a place so close tothe Skouriotissa and Mavrovouni copper mines inthe foothills of the Troodos mountains ten miles tothe south; it was ceramic slag which, along withwaste pieces and misfirings, assured that the townhad made its own pottery on a generous scale.At nearly the same time, the Italian excavators ofAyia Irini and the 1971 discoveries at Toumba touSkourou began to change the impression that tradewith the Aegean had been late developing in Cyprus.Three very elegant Aegean cups from tombs at AyiaIrini were demonstrated by Dr. Paolo Pecorella tobelong to the period of the Shaft Graves at Mycenaeand the rich associated tombs of the Argolid in thesixteenth and early fifteenth centuries B.C. (fig. 2).16Another comparable cup with double axes and lilieswas known in a private collection in Cyprus (fig.3).17 Pecorella was quite certain that the Ayia Irini15For the Tell el-Yahudiyehware at Morphou nd onCyprus n general,0. Negbi, "Cypriote mitations f Tellel-YahudiyehWarefromToumbaou Skourou," mer.Jour.Archaeology2 (1978):pp.137-149;orPalestinian ichrome,M. Artzy,F. Asaro,I. Perlman,"TheOriginof the 'Pales-tinian'BichromeWare," our.Amer.Oriental oc.93 (1973):pp.446-461;C. Epstein,PalestinianBichromeWare(1966).16P. Pecorella,"Mycenaean ottery from Ayia Irini,"The Mycenacansin the EasternMediterranean1973), pp.19-24,pl. V, anddiscussion . 305f.; StudiCiprioti Rap-portidi Scavo1 (1971) pp.57-59,2 (1976) p. 125, ig.46.17Cupin the collectionof P. Kolokassides, . Karageor-ghis, CorpusVasorumAntiquorum, yprus2: pl. 29, 1-3,no. 1610,pp. 19-20,fig. 2.

298 [PROC.AMER. PHIL. SOC.


7/25

THE AEGEAN AND -CYPRUS

FIG. 3. Cup from the collection of P. Kolokassides, deco-rated with double axes and lilies, sixteenth to fifteenthcenturies B.c. (From V. Karageorghis,Corpus VasorumAntiquorum,Cyprus 2: pl. 29.1, no. 1610.)cups were manufactured in mainland Greece, al-though their design of double axes was also obvi-ously taken from a Minoan model. At least it wasclear that ships from the Aegean had been comingto Cyprus at about the time the script was develop-ing; and since, in all the years of excavation at En-komi since the 1890's, only two possible sherds hadbeen unearthed which might with good will be takenas belonging to this early horizon,18it seemed alsoclear that these ships were, naturally, reaching thewest coast first. The settlements around MorphouBay, badly destroyed as they were, perhaps mighthave held the key to Cyprus's Aegean connections,which have lasted until the present day, had theybeen explored before the citrus boom after WorldWar II.19At Toumba tou Skourou, in contrast to Ayia Irini,there was a small quantity of broken vases in themajor tomb of the site, Tomb I, which seemed clearlyMinoan imported from Crete before 1500 B.C. TombI ihad a curious construction, a round central holelike a chimney into the faces of which were exca-vated small niches for infant burials, a rectangularpiece of bedrock at the bottom of the chimney, andthree chambers opening downward off it. It is pos-sible that the bedrock area was used as a primaryresting place for dead bodies which were later sweptdown into the chambers with their possessions; atleast pottery joins together from chambers 1 and 3,and sometimes from 2 as well. This procedure wouldhelp to account, partly, for the very broken and worncondition of the Minoan pottery in the tomb; there

18P. Dikaios, Enkomi, Excavations 1948-1958 (1969-1971)1: colorfrontispiece,p. 229-230;2: pp. 478-480;3 a: pl.58.26-28; the context seems Late Cypriote I A, the sherdswere thought to be Mycenaeanrather than Minoan.1"A mound some two miles closer to the sea, Toumba touTillirou, with very promisingsurface finds of Late CyprioteI A, large stone walls, pithoi, and stone grinders, was un-fortunatelyleveled in 1973.

FIG. 4. Tall jug, T. 1.485,P 375, Late MinoanI A.was also rising and falling groundwater which dis-solved the skeletons and took the paint off the im-ported pots while the local ones, by some affinity,generally resisted. The range of offerings in thetomb runs in ceramic terms from the late MiddleBronze Age to fully developed Late Cypriote I, withthe emphasis on the early side. The Minoan potteryhelps confirm this, since it seems to be all Late Mi-noan I A. The precise end of this pottery in absolutechronological terms in Crete cannot be fixed accu-rately; somewhere between 1500 and 1475, perhaps.Some of the Minoan pieces have good parallels in theCycladic town buried under ash in the eruption ofThera/Santorini, and this volcanic spasm also seemsto have occurred around 1500 B.C.A brief catalog of the pieces and notes on parallelsin the Aegean may clarify the archaeological andhistorical situation.1. Late Minoan I A jug, from chamber1. Tomb 1.485,P 375 (figs. 4 and 5). Height 0.215m, diameter0.13 m.

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978] 299


8/25


FIG. 6. Fragments of a large vase decorated with lilies,T. 1.340, P 268, Late Minoan I A.

FIG.5. Jug, T.I.485,P 375, drawingby Elias Markou.Mended from many pieces.20 Coarse pink clay with blackgrits and pocked surface, pale buff slip, matt black paint.Round mouth with a spreading rim tilted slightly up infront, beveled toward the outside; low concave neck;modeled ridge at the junction of neck and shoulder;broad sloping shoulder, long narrow body flaring towarda raised foot; grooved strap handle from rim to shoulderwith a clay rivet on top. The rim and handle are pain.tedsolid; a band and a solid scallop pattern on the shoulder,three bands in a group on the body and one lower down;.the lower body and foot painted solid with a band above;three concentric rings under the foot.E. Vermeule, The Mycenaeansin the Eastern Mediterranean(1973), pi. VI.1; K. Nicolaou, ibid., pl. XII.6; E. Porada,F. Maier, Archaeology 25 (1972): p. 299; K. Nicolaou,Amer. Jour. Archaeology 77 (1973): p. 54, pl. 8, fig. 23;E. Vermeule, The Mound of Darkness (1974), fig. 20.2. Fragment of a Late Minoan I A jug. Tomb 1.496,P 386 (fig. 28, top, left). This comes from the shoulderof an identical jug, with scalloped wave pattern andbands; two other pieces may belong.This is not a common shape. It may copy stone or

20The fragments were recognized in a number of sherdtrays by Dr. V. Karageorghis, the Director of Antiquities,in the winter of 1971; we are grateful in this and many otherinstances for the Department's laboratory facilities and thedrawings by Mr. Elias Markou.

metal vases,21 and is intermediate between those pala-tial vases and the finer ceramic development of theshape into the famous ewers of the Marine Style ofLate Minoan I B, like the Marseilles or Zakrosewers.22 There is a finer version of the shape in theShaft Graves at Mycenae,28 and a clumsier versionfrom the buried city on Thera,24 an island imitationof the Minoan model.3. Fragments of a flower-vase painted with lilies, LateMinoan I A. Tomb 1.340, P 268 (figs. 6 and 7). Atleast seven to nine non-joining fragments, chambers 1and 3. The two largest fragments have: height 0.175 m,diameter 0.132 m; height 0.045 m, diameter 0.036 m.Red-buff clay with grit and mica, no slip, worn redpaint. Tall cylindrical vase bulging slightly toward thebottom; a small ledge rim with part of a miniature loophandle, perhaps a string-hole rather than a handle. Partsof at least two displays of the Lilium candidum L., prob-ably one on each side of the vase, the central stalk ridgedwith sharp alternating leaves, the unfolded blossoms onlong bending stems in staggered pairs. Some blossomspainted solid, others with a reserved center and arcacross the top; the top blossom on fragment B was poly-21 The shape is ultimately related to the famous braidedstone vase of A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 1 (1921): p.412, fig. 296, with a more profiled shoulderand high-swunghandle, and contemporarybronze and silver jugs.22E.g., A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 4 (1935), p. 277,fig. 210; N. Platon, Zakros (1971), p. 106.23 G. Karo, Die Schachtgrdbervon Mykenai (1930-1933),Grave VI no. 945, pl. CLXXV. The Mycenaeanversion ofthe shape is A. Furumark,The MycenaeanPottery (1950),shape 117 (hereafter FS).24 S. Marinatos, Thera VI (1974), pl. 74 b; there aresimilar necks from the older excavations, L. Renaudin,"Vases de Thera," Bulletin de CorrespondanceHellenique46 (1922): p. 129, figs. 18a,e.

300 [PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.


9/25

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS

FIG. 7. Artist's reconstructionof the lily vase,T. 1.340, P 268.chrome, with dark red and pale orange paint picked outwith a series of applied white dots along the outlines.V. Karageorghis, Bulletin de CorrespondanceHellenique 96(1972): p. 1053, fig. 67; E. Porada, F. Maier, Archaeology25 (1972): p. 299; E. Vermeule, The Mycenaeans in theEastern Mediterranean (1973), pl. VIII.l1; K. Nicolaou,Amer. Jour. Archaeology 77 (1973): pl. 8, fig. 22; E. Ver-meule, The Mound of Darkness (1974), fig. 23.

Although there can be no doubt of the essentiallyMinoan character of the vase, the shape and fabricare not precisely paralleled.25 Lilies were painted onvases in Crete from the Middle Minoan period on-ward, either as isolated decorative blossoms or, es-pecially in Middle Minoan III, as fully organizedplants very close in manner to those in wall-painting.There are the famous vases found in the Magazineof the Lily Vases at Knossos, dated to late Middle Mi-noan III,26 which are closely related to the frescoes atKnossos in the House of the Frescoes or the South-

25 M. S. F. Hood, The Mycenaeansin the Eastern Medi-terranean (1973), p. 307; the Cretan archaeologistsassem-bled at the congress in Nicosia, 1972,agreed that the Toumbatou Skourou material was Minoan, contrary to previous ex-pectation.26A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 1 (1921): pp. 576-578,figs. 420, 421; p. 604, fig. 443; 2 (1928): p. 473; for the lilymotif in ceramics, A. Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery(1950): pp. 136, 141, 155, 188, 257; the botanical connectionsof Cretan painting, M. Mobius, "Pflanzenbilderder minoi-schen Kunst in botanischer Betrachtung," Jahrbuch desdeutschenarchaologischen nstituts 48 (1933): pp. If., lilies;p. 3, fig. 1; p. 5, fig. 2.

FIG. 8. Lily vase from Knossos, Middle Minoan III; cf.A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 1 (1921): p. 603, fig.443.

East House, the fragments from Haghia Triada, or thelily garden at Amnisos (figs. 8-10).27 The Cycladicislands also played with the theme, possibly for itssacral associations as well as its picturesque values;there are comparable lily scenes from Phylakopi onMelos, from the old and new excavations on Thera,and from Trianda on Rhodes (fig. 11).28 Often theblossoms spring directly from the stalk, but one ortwo of the frescoes show the long bending stem as

27House of the Frescoes, A. Evans, The Palace of Minos2 (1928): fig. 266 c; the South-East House, ibid. 1 (1921):p. 537, color plate VI; Haghia Triada, ibid., p. 604, fig. 444(the stems not spiked); Amnisos, S. Marinatos,Archdolog-ischer Anzeiger 1933: p. 291, fig. 2; A. Evans, The Palaceof Minos 4 (1935), supplementaryplate LXVII a,b; S.Marinatos, M. Hirmer, Kreta, Thera und das mykenischeHellas (1976), pl. XXIII.28 Phylakopi, R. Bosanquet, Excavations at Phylakopi(1904), pp. 75-76, fig. 64; Thera, G. Perrot, C. Chipiez,Histoire de I'Art 6 (1894): p. 537, fig. 211; p. 538, fig. 212;S. Marinatos,Athens Annals of Archaeology4 (1971): pp.66-67, figs. 13-15, Thera IV (1971), color plates A-C,Kreta, Thera und das mykenische Hellas (1976), pls.XXXVI-XXXVII; Trianda, G. Monaco,"Scavi nella zonamicenea di Jaliso," Clara Rhodos 10 (1941-1949): p. 128,color plate XI.

301OL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]


10/25


FIG. 9. Fresco with lilies from the Little Palace of HaghiaTriada, Middle Minoan III. (From A. Evans, ThePalace of Minos 1: fig. 444.)on the Toumba tou Skourou vase. By the beginningof Late Minoan I A the lily stalk became a familiarelement in vase design, both white on a dark ground(at Knossos and Thera) to suggest the naturalcolor,29 and dark-on-light in the new prevailing colorscheme, at Knossos or in the Shaft Graves of My-

29Knossos white on dark, note 26 above; Thera, amongothers, a flower pot painted with lilies with dead blossomsfalling to the ground, "ein melancholischesBild," S. Mari-natos, Thera IV (1971), pls. 83-84 and Kreta, Thera unddas mykenische Hellas (1976), pl. 161; dark-on-light liliesat Knossos, A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 2 (1928) : p.470, fig. 276 d; at Mycenae, the renowned jug from theFirst Shaft Grave, G. Karo, Die Schachtgriibervon Mykenai(1930-1933), pl. CLXI, no. 199. The lily motif continuesina simplifiedform in Late Minoan I B, II and III A.

FIG.10. Liliumcandidum ., the whitelily. (DetailfromM. Mobius, Jahrbuch des deutschenarchdologischen n-stituts48 (1933): fig. 1.)cenae and comparable early wealthy tombs in Greece.The lilies are rarely red or polychrome as they areon the Cyprus vase, although the famous SwallowFresco from Thera has sprays of red lilies on clumpsof pale green stems above particolored rocks (fig.12).30?Evidently the Toumba tou Skourou fragmentsbelong to a category of pots painted with the flow-ers they were designed to hold, a rough micaceousflowerpot in a style fashionable at Knossos and inThera (fig. 8). We have no way of knowing whetherCycladic ships were involved in the voyages east-ward toward Cyprus; there is nothing obviouslyCycladic in Morphou Bay at least, but one of thebetter known Minoan pieces from Cyprus, a frag-mentary jar painted with lilies picked up at HalaSultan Tekke on the south coast in 1897, was foundalong with a sherd identified as Cycladic,painted witha stem and long pointed leaves.31 Perhaps at thatslightly later stage, Late Minoan III A:1, around1400 B.C., there is evidence for a very probable rou-tine, that Minoan ships came through the Cycladesand past Rhodes before attempting the long stretch

30 See Marinatos,note 28 above.31E. J. Forsdyke, "Minoan Pottery from Cyprus,"Jour.Hellenic Studies 31 (1911): p. 111, fig. 1; Catalogue ofVases in the British Museum1, 1, A 705; cf. A. Evans, ThePalace of Minos 4 (1935) : figs. 258, 297 d, 301 g; theCycladic sherd from Hala Sultan Tekke is British MuseumA 390, directlyafter the fragmentsfrom Thera (A 386-389).



11/25

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUSof open water to Cyprus, and that the cargoes repre-sented several stopping points.

CUPSThere is a special problem connected with the pub-lication of the Minoan cups. Fragments of several

cups, with double axes, with spirals, or flowers, werein poor condition, and the pot-mender, Mr. GeorgeMarkou, who worked on them in Morphou, couldnot make many joins. The excavators made thewrong decision, to wait until more advances inmending should have been made, before preparingthe final photographs and drawings. The photo-graphs are unsatisfactory since sherds of more thanone cup appear in the same picture (fig. 13). Atleast three of these cups seem to have been lost whenthe Turkish Army emptied out the excavation housein 1974 (Tomb 1.499 with double axes, Tomb 1.500with a flower spray, P 795 with a leaf spray), andfragments of others were apparentlymixed with mis-cellaneous sherds when the broken vases were swept

FIG. 11. Fresco fragment from Trianda, Rhodes. (G.Monaco, Clara Rhodos 10 (1941-1949): from color plateXI.)

FIG.12. Fresco with lilies and swallows from Thera,before 1500 B.C.up and replaced. Only more time spent with the col-lection in the Turkish Museum in Morphou, at pres-ent unavailable to us, could bring more professionalresults.4. Cup with doubleaxes, Tomb 1.34 A, P 38 A (fig.14).32 Mendedfrom three fragments,with a maximumheight of 0.08 m, width 0.125 m. Buff clay, lustrousbrownglaze. Body of teacup type with thin offset rimand roundedbowl. Inside of the cup glazed solid; outerrim paintedsolid with additionsin white paint, a whiteedging band below it, and white on ,two dark bandsbelow the decoratedzone; possibly remnant of a wavyline on the rim as well (see no. 5). The decorationconsists of parts of three double axes on double shaftscrownedby a roundball pickedout in a circularpatternof white dots; the wings of the axes are heavily paintedwith a reserved triangle in the center of each. Paintvery worn, the pattern most visible as a pale surfacewhere the flakesof paint have lifted off.

FIG. 13. Cupfragmentsfrom Tomb I, Late MinoanI A.32 Fragments if two similar cups were at first catalogedunder this single number; we have subdividedthem as Aand B in order not to confuse the inventory which is heldin Nicosia and Morphou.

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978] 303


12/25


FIG.16. Cupwith doubleaxes from Thera,Late MinoanI A. (From J. P. Michaud,Bulletin de CorrespondanceHellenique96 (1972): p. 784, fig. 442.)

FIG. 14. Fragments of a cup with double axes, T. 1.34 A,P 38 A. Late MinoanI A.E. Vermeule, The Mycenacanisn the Eastern Mediterranean(1973), pl. VII.3; The Mound of Darkness (1974), fig. 22.5. Cup with double axes. Tomb 1.34 B, P 38 B (fig.15). Major fragment with a maximum height of 0.053m, width 0.095 m, and three more fragments, with partsof axe wings set close together, dark round balls anddouble staffs. These might prove to belong to no. 4,but there is a wavy line on the rim, less white paint, novisible white spots on the balls except a single spot onthe major fragment.33

From the beginning these double axe cups were

FIG.15. Fragmentsof a double axe cup, T. 1.34 B, P 38 B.Late Minoan I A.33The variation in white spots on a single cup is visiblein the close analogue from Thera (below, note 36), not inthe usual published views, but in the Air France Atlas no.77, November, 1972, p. 91 upper right; the axe nearest thehandle has only a central spot.

of interest because of their possible connection to thedouble axe cups of Ayia Irini from tombs of the samedate, early Late Cypriote I (fig. 2).34 However, theAyia Irini cups have a straighter profile, the axesare separated from one another in panels of verticalrows of dots, and there is a circle or arch of dotsaround the ball of the shaft. Dr. Pecorella showedthat these belonged to a type common on the Greekmainland in Late Helladic I and II, at Mycenae,Prosymna, and Lerna in the Argolid, on the Acrop-olis of Athens, at Skillous-Makrysia near Olympiaon the west coast, at Kythera off the south coast andPhylakopi on Melos. It is not the Cretan type. Thecup in the collection of Mr. P. Kolokassides in Ni-cosia35 is more problematical (fig. 3); the axe wingsare long and thin as on the Ayia Irini cups, paintedsolid without the rounded blades or reserved tri-angles characteristic of the Morphou cups; it hasvertical paneling dividers of the mainland type, madeof a rippled stem flanked by alternating dots andcrowned with a lily, and lilies grow from the axesas well; the rim is dotted as on one of the Ayia Irinicups, and there is no added white paint. It may wellcome from Ayia Irini like the others, and belong tothe same mainland Mycenaean tradition.

The closest parallel for the Toumba tou Skouroucups is a complete specimen from the island of Thera,so close they should come from the same workshop,a Minoan one, exporting to Thera before 1500 B.C.It is identical in shape, with the same curved axewings and reserved triangles, double stem, and balldotted with white overpaint (fig. 16).36 Like nos.34See note 16 above.35See note 17 above; the Kolokassides cup might wellcome from Ayia Irini, a favorite exploring ground for gen-erations of tomb-robbers.36 S. Marinatos,To Ergon (1971), p. 203, fig. 246; Praktikates en Athenais ArchaiologogikeHetaireia (1971), pl. 280 B;



13/25


FIG. 17. Fragments of a tall footed cup with double axes,T. 1.499,P 390.1 and 3 these cups may hint of a regular connectionamong all three islands.6. Three major fragments of a tall footed cup (?) withdouble axes (see also no. 7). Tomb 1.499, P 390 (fig.17). Lost. Fragment A: maximum width 0.115 m; B:maximum width 0.098 m; C: handle and rim, height0.052 m, width 0.055 m. Fine buff clay, darker buffslip, dark brown, and dilute gold-brown paint. Notcoated inside. Rim and handle painted solid, a friezeof double axes on double shafts in the handle zone, twothick bands framed by thin stripes below, a series of finedilute gold stripes, a thick band at the bottom.

This is evidently a taller vase than the precedingtwo; the axes have the same form with reserved tri-angles in the wings, but no white paint is preserved;it Tay have been a pedestaled cup of a type knownfrom Palaikastro in Crete, rather than the tall jarBulletin de CorrespondanceHellentique96 (1972) : p. 784,fig. 442; Thera V (1972), pl. 65 b; and see note 33 above.

FIG. 18. Fragments of a cup with spirals, T. 1.494, P 384,Late Minoan I A.with double axes of Zakro or the footed strainer fromGournia.37 It is of excellent fabric and paint.7. Sixty-four fragments of a tall jar (?). Tomb 1.498,P 388 (fig. 28, bottom, left). Fine buff clay, darker buffslip, dark brown-black and dilute golden brown paint.The surviving decoration consists of thick dark bandsand thin gold stripes. Not mended. It is possible thatthese excellent sherds should be associated with no. 6and form the foot of a tall slender pedestaled goblet.

There are parts of three small "teacups" decoratedwith spirals, of Late Minoan I A character, whichcould not be mended.8. Ten fragments of a cup with spirals. Tomb 1.494,P 384 (fig. 18). Pale buff clay, worn black glaze paint,partly dilute gold-brown; coated inside. Low cup withthin offset rim. Bands framing a frieze of runningspirals with solid centers.E. Vermeule, The Mycenaeans n the Eastern Mediterranean(1973), pl. VII.2; K. Nicolaou, ibid., pl. XII.8; The Moundof Darkness (1974), fig. 21.9. Twelve fragments of a small cup with spirals. Tomb1.495, P 385, chamber 3 (next to no. 3) (fig. 13, upperleft). Light buff-pink clay and slip, worn black paint.Thin offset rim, low curved body wall, foot with slightlyflared edge. Not coated inside. The paint is nearlygone; the rim was painted solid, with a frieze of run-ning spirals with solid centers below; one fragment mayshow a projecting leaf angling off the spiral connector.10. Thirteen fragments of a deep cup with spirals.Tomb 1.497, P 387, chamber 1 (fig. 19). Not mendable.Soft pink-buff clay, worn pale red matt paint. Fairlytall cup with offset rim, contracted toward foot, baseraised underneath. Rim painted solid, frieze of linkedspirals with open centers, four bands below; a spiralband around the interior.E. Vermeule, The Mycenaeansin the Eastern Mediterranean(1973), pl. VI.3.

37Palaikastro, for the possible shape, R. C. Bosanquet,R. M. Dawkins, The UnpublishedObjects from the Palai-k3stro Excavations, 1902-1906,The British School at AthensSupplementaryPaper 1 (1923): pl. XVII b (or, p. 34, fig.22?); cf. A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 4 (1935) : fig.301 a, fig. 304 a. The Zakro jar, R. M. Dawkins, Jour.Hellenic Studies 23 (1903): p. 255, figs. 23-24; M. P. Nils-son, The Minoan-MycenaeanReligion2 (1950), p. 208, fig.103; the Gournia footed strainer, H. B. Hawes, Gournia(1908), pl. VIII, no. 26.

305OL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]


14/25


FIG. 20. Cup with spirals from Knossos, Late Minoan I A.

FIG. 19. Fragmentsand artist's reconstructionof a cup withspirals, T. 1.497, P 387, Late Minoan I A.These simple spiral cups are an absolutely standardelement in Late Minoan I A; examples very likethese come from almost every Cretan site: Knossos(fig. 20), Herakleion-Poros, Mallia, the Gulf ofMirabello, Mochlos, Gournia, Palaikastro, Zakros,Phaistos, and overseas on Kythera, Melso, Thera andRhodes.38 They are the most standard of the38Knossos: A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 4 (1928):p. 549, fig. 349 g; Journal of Hellenic Studies 23 (1903):p. 249; M. Popham,Papers of the British School at Athens62 (1967): pl. 78 c; Poros: A. Lembezi, Praktika tes enAthenais Archaiologike Hetaireia 1967: pl. 182 b; Mallia:0. Pelon, Maisons de Mallia 3 (1970): pl. XV.2 (no. 103);Phaistos: L. Pernier, L. Banti, II Palazzo Minoico di Festos2 (1951): p. 363, fig. 226; Gournia: H. B. Hawes, Gournia(1908), pl. VIII.8; Palaikastro: R. C. Bosanquet, R. M.Dawkins, The Unpublished Objects from the PalaikastroExcavations (1923), p. 34, fig. 22; the Gulf of Mirabello,Catalogueof Vases in the British Museum,A 637, 638, 640;Kythera: J. N. Coldstream,G. L. Huxley, Kythera (1972),

Toumba tou Skourou pieces.11. Two non-joiningfragmentsof a small cup with aflower and spirals. Tomb 1.500,P 391 (fig. 21). Lost.The larger fragment has a height of 0.041 m, length0.06 m. Soft buff-pinkclay, worn black and pale brownpaint. A simple flower spray shoots obliquelyup andright off the connectorbetweentwo spirals.

It is not unlikely that a twelfth fragment shouldbe associated with these Minoan pieces from TombI. The tomb's peculiar architecture is complicatedby a shaft which leads down into the back of chamber3, past a smoothed bedrock "facade" which could beexplored only in part with the help of experiencedminers from the Cyprus Mines Corporationat Skourio-tissa. These men inserted pit props in the shaft andthe chamber, but could not advise us to proceed toany detailed exploration because the weight of thestone-walled buildings above the chamber threatenedimminent collapse of the whole area. The shaft wasfilled with millstones, querns, and grinders which hadspilled onto the contents (the lily vase no. 3, thespiral cup no. 9, and the remains of an ivory knifehandle with gold rivets which seems Minoan in char-acter.39 A sherd of a Late Minoan I A cup deco-rated with leaves and spirals was found at the topof this shaft, under the thirteenth-century floor whichsealed it; it may have belonged in the tomb once andbeen disturbed by a robber in antiquity.12. P 795, square J 16 (fig. 22). Maximumlength0.035 m. Pink-gray clay, no slip, flaking brown paint.pl. 29.1-7, pl. 30.69, 71, pl. 31.1, 3, 6, 7, 10; Phylakopi:R. M. Dawkins, J. P. Droop, Papers of the British Schoolat Athens 17 (1910-1911): pl. VIII.106 (local imitation);Thera: S. Marinatos, Thera IV (1971), pl. 75; Thera VII(1976), pl. 46 c-d (local imitations), pls. 48, 50 (imported);Rhodes: A. Furumark,OpusculaAtheniensia6 (1950): fig.2, no. 31. The comparablemainlandcups are generallymoreelaborate in their spirals with heavy white dots, e.g., A. J.B. Wace, Chamber Tombs at Mycenae (1932), pls. I.1,XXXIV.11, XLI.37, all early tombs.39E. Vermeule, F. Wolsky, Report of the DepartmentofAntiquitiesf Cyprus1977,p. 89.



15/25


FIG. 21. Fragment of a small cup with flower and spirals,T. 1.500, P 391, Late Minoan I A.Lost. Band above, perhaps the outer rim of a spiralbelow, off which springs -thebranchingstem of a leafor flower.

The flower-spirals of these two pieces were invogue in the better potting centers of Crete in LateMinoan I A.40The evidence of Tomb I would suggest that Mi-noan contact with Morphou Bay before 1500 B.C.was not yet intense, if it left only ten or twelve vasesin a tomb which contained nearly six hundred Cyp-riote vases. (Their presence in the same chambers asPalestinian vases gives a useful cross-check for Cyp-riote chronology and the relations between the Ae-

gean and the east). Even so, they are more per-suasive of a Minoan presence in Cyprus at the mo-ment when Cyprus began to write a linear script,than the two fairly nondescript sherds from Enkomiwhere the early tablet appeared; both the Enkomisherds may be Mycenaean rather than Minoan, al-though one may be from a spiral cup like thosecataloged above.41

40 Late Minoan I A often has flower sprays running offthe connecting links of spirals; cf. A. Evans, The Palace ofMinos 2 (1928): pp. 470ff., fig. 272; C. Zervos, L'Art de laCrete (1956), fig. 549; there is a series from Palaikastro,R. C. Bosanquet,R. M. Dawkins, The UnpublishedObjectsfrom the Palaikastro Excavations (1923), pl. XV.b, c, e, cf.M. Popham, Papers of the British School at Athens 62(1967): pl. 78 d (as from "Zakro"); for Zakro, R. M.Dawkins, Jour. Hellenic Studies 23 (1903): p. 252, fig. 15.41 See note 18 above; the spiral cup is color frontispiecetovol. I, no. 2, and is coated inside (no. 1805/1); no. 3 haswhite spots as well (no. 1793/2). Dikaios put the start ofLate Cypriote I A around 1575 B.C., asting till 1450 B.c.;from the Toumbatou Skourou point of view this chronologyseems too high, since all we know is that Late Minoan I Ais current in the last third of the sixteenth century B.C.andits context in Tomb I is with very early, and few developed,specimensof Late Cypriote I A. Further discussion of thechronologicalproblemswould not be appropriatehere; TombI must close around 1500 B.C. or shortly after, and mayrepresenttwo generationsof use.

FIG.22. Smallfragment f a cupwith a spiralandleaves,P 795,Late Minoan A.After the initial period of acquaintance,some bond,however slender, seems to have been maintained be-tween the Minoans and the town of Toumba touSkourou. In contrast to Ayia Irihi, and the otherCypriote sites which began to receive a good deal of

Mycenaean pottery after 1400 B.C., Toumba touSkourou has, in all, more Minoan than Mycenaean,if we have diagnosed the fragments correctly. Thenext series belongs to the period of the destructionof the palace at Knossos, Late Minoan III A:1,around 1400 B.C.and shortly after.42Tomb II had four chambers and lay just west ofTomb I; it began in Late Cypriote I A. In the sec-ond chamber was a relatively poor burial of advancedLate Cypriote I. Stuck on the roof of this chamberwere smashed remnants of a beaked jug, of whichother parts were found in the contiguous chamber4. A small communicating "window" between thetwo may have been made when the fourth chamberwas excavated-or reexcavated, since there were twoburial periods in it-and the digging came too close;the fragments in chamber 4 may therefore havefloated through the hole when the jug rose on groundwater and broke against the ceiling.13. Several fragmentsof a tall jug with a narrowneck,probablya beaked ug. Tomb 11.53,P 572, chamber2.2and Tomb 11.96,P 605, chamber4.7 (fig. 23). Mendedinto two major fragments: A: 0.16 m by 0.09 m; B: arim fragment,0.04 m by 0.02 m; C: 0.09 m by 0.05 m.Pink-buff clay, creamy buff slip, dark brick-redpaint.The shoulderis markedlybroad and bulging below thenarrowneck,as the shouldersof ewers are. Remainsofa scallopedborderor the ends of a foliate band around.the neck; then a series of disconnectedspirals whoseloose ends terminate above and below the spiral in atriangular eaf with an emptycenter with lobedspots inthe corners. The leaf is a developmentof the papyrusplant current in Late Minoan I and II design; this vaseshould be dated in Late Minoan, III A:1. It is possiblethat it is Mycenaean,not Minoan,but the fabricdid notappearso to us, and the spiral design is more flowingthan the rather stiff and isolatedversions of this motif

42 For the pottery of this period in Crete, see M. Popham,The Destruction of the Palace at Knossos: Pottery of theLate Minoan III A Period, Studies in MediterraneanAr-chaeology 12 (1970), hereafter Popham,Destruction.

307OL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]


16/25


FIG.23. Fragments and artist's reconstructionof a narrow-necked jug, T. 11.53, P 572 and T. 11.96, P 605, LateMinoan III A:1.which were current in Greece.43 The closest analogy tothe design, though not the shape, is a denser versionon a three-handled jar from Maroni in the Cyprus Mu-seum, and there is a sparser version on a beaked jugfrom Ialysos on Rhodes.44 The vase occurs in a context

43A. Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery (1950), Motif 46,no. 40 (from the Maronijar, see below, note 44); Mycenaeanexamplesat Korakou,C. W. Blegen, Korakou (1921), pl. V;Athens, S. A. Immerwahr,The Athenian Agora in the Neo-lithic and Bronze Ages, Agora Excavations 13 (1971): p.219; cf. K. Schefold, Meisterwerke der griechischen Kunst(1960), no. 21, pp. 116, 118 (Collection J. Muller, Solo-thurn).44The Maroni jar, V. Karageorghis, Corpus VasorumAntiquorum Cyprus 1, pi. 17.4, Cyprus Museum A 1674

FIG. 24. Small fragment of a large closed jug, T. 11.80,P 598, Late Minoan III A:1.of fully developed Base Ring I and White Slip I Cypriotevases.45The third chamber of Tomb II had one small Mi-noan sherd.14. Fragment of a large closed shape. Tomb 11.80,P 598, chamber 3.17 (figs. 24 and 25). Maximum pre-served dimensions 0.048 m by 0.043 m. Lost. Pink-buff clay, pale buff slip, brown-black paint. The designis difficult to understand, but seems to be pictorial, morelike an octopus with spiral tentacles than anything else.The fabric seems Late Minoan III A:1, in a context offine Base Ring I and White Slip I, a poor "PalestinianBichrome" krater, a group of bone tubes and buttons,paste beads and seashells.46A single Minoan sherd appeared in a niche in thedromos of Tomb III. This large niche contained twocracked stone plaques, probably the "door," an earlyBase Ring I juglet imitating a Syrian shape, thisisolated sherd, and the rotted remains of two babiesand some sheep.15. Tomb III.34, P 842, niche 1.4 (fig. 28, bottom,right). Nondescript fragment, length 0.045 m, buffclay, thin brown paint in two wide curving bands.The tomb itself was early, containing a man, woman,and child in the main chamber, with White PaintedV and VI vases, Proto Base Ring and Proto WhiteSlip, but nothing of developed Late Cypriote I. Thebabies in the dromos might have been inserted sometime after the family in the main chamber, but theywere too small to have survived their parents veryfrom Tomb 23 (British Museum Excavations of 1897), ofthe "earliestphase of the MycenaeanIII A:1 period" (it is,of course, possible that the Toumba tou Skourou specimenis Mycenaeanalthoughthe fabric does not seem so); for thesparser version on a beaked jug from Ialysos, the cemeteryof Trianda on Rhodes, A. Maiuri, Anniuariodella ScuolaArcheologicadi Atene 6-7 (1926): p. 185, fig. 108 (A. Furu-mark, The MycenaeanPottery [1950] motif 47, no. 2, My-cenaean II B).45There is also an early buccherojug, Tomb II, no. 52.46E. Vermeule, F. Wolsky, "The Bone and Ivory ofToumbatou Skourou,"Report of the Department of Antiqui-ties of Cyprus 1977: p. 80, pl. XIX. We have "made anoctopus from very little," like P. Dikaios, Enkomi 3, a(1971): pl. 112, no. 5902/2.



17/25


FIG. 27. Joining shoulderpieces of a large jar, P 619,Late MinoanIII A:1.

FIG. 25. Artist's reconstructionof pattern of a large vase,T. 11.80,P 598.long, and the whole context suggests a date of, pro-ably, Late Minoan I A.On the surface of the site two joining fragmentsof an early Aegean stippled cup were found some six-teen meters apart, evidently spread by the bulldozer.It is a nicely made piece with a banded base, of a typefound in both Crete and Greece in the period around1400 B.C.16. P 630, from G 7 robber's trench and F23 surface(fig. 26). A: maximumlength 0.08 m, B: length ca.0.05 m. Pink clay, gray at the core, pink-buffslip, mattdark red-orangepaint. Upper zone finely stippledwitha brush (not a sponge), then a broad band, three finestripes,and a broad bandaround the ring foot.

FIG. 26. Fragments of an Aegean stippled cup, P 630,around 1400 B.C.

These low thin-walled cups are practically limited toa generation or two (II B to III A:1) and appearat Knossos and in Greece at the same time, whenrelations between the two centers were at their mostintense and affable.47 There is a fine contemporaryexample at Enkomi, another at Kourion, and a stip-pled globular jar of ostrich-egg type from Maroni, allmajor sites.48Two joining pieces from the shoulder of a fairlylarge jar were recovered from a well near the tombs.17. P 619, Well 2 (fig. 27). Maximum ength0.106m,width 0.068 m. Gritty pink-buff clay, pale buff slip,dark chestnutglossy paint. Shoulder set off from bodyby four stripes; above, a row of festoons or pendantconcentric loops separated by vertical rows of dashesspreadingtoward the bottom; below, a row of spirals,the alternateones fringedinside. Late MinoanIII A:1.This well was in some sense stratified. The bull-dozer uncovered a large squaredstone wellhead whichwas noted by neighbors in the early 1950's; we foundit pushed down into the well at a depth of 2.45 m.

47For stippledcups see A. Furumark,The MycenaeanPottery (1950), Shape219 (Late HelladicII B-III A:1),Motif77,no.2 (LateHelladic I B-III A:2); fromKnossos,Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum, A 634 (gift ofA. Evans); cf. Popham,Destruction, l. 40 a; fromAthens,E. Vermeule, . Travlos,"A Mycenaean ombBeneath heMiddleStoa,"Hesperia 5 (1966): P 27452,p. 76,pls.22 a,23 b (the periodof the destructionf Knossos),and S. A.Immerwahr,p. cit., note 43, pp. 128-129; rom Mycenae,Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum, A 788.1-8, A789.1-7; cf. Papers of the British School at Athens 59(1964): p. 249, fig. 2, pi. 72; there are othersfrom theArgiveHeraion,Aliki Glyphadan Attica,and see note48.This style of cup is whereMinoanand Mycenaeaneramicdevelopment ostnearlycoincide.48Enkomi:P. Dikaios,Enkomi1 (1969): p. 377, pl. 206/46; K. Nicolaou, The Mycenaeansin the Eastern Mediter-ranean,pl. XII, no. 1.; cf. E. J. Forsdyke, Minoan otteryin Cyprus," our.Hellenic Studies31 (1911): p. 113, fig.2.2; for Kourion,V. Karageorghis, orpusVasorumAnti-quorum,Cyprus1: pl. 26.1 (A 1530)and K. Nicolaou,op.cit. above,p. 55.

309OL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]


18/25


FIG.28. Minoan vase fragments: top, left, T. 1.496,P 386;right, P 844; bottom, left, T. 1.498, P 388; right, T.III.34, P 842.Beneath that was a Cypro-Geometric layer, a layerof bones, a layer of boulders and very early Cypro-Geometric pottery (ca. 1000 B.C.), a thick layer ofgreen soil with bands of water-laid sediment, thensherds of the thirteenth century B.C.,and this frag-ment at a depth of 5.09 m. Still deeper were a Cyp-riote imitation of a late Mycenaean kylix, a Syrianjug, and a red lustrous bottle of the fifteenth or earlyfourteenth century, where this sherd belongs. Thefestoon pattern is the Late Minoan III A simplifica-tion of pendant designs popular in the Palace Style;it is used in zones by itself, with simple loops or in-curved or ogival forms, sometimes filled with flowersand stars, and occurs at a number of Cretan sites inthe period just before the fall of Knossos.49Another sherd from the same well may be Minoan.18. P 638, Well 2. Lost. From the shoulderof a jug?Length0.055 m. Finely temperedgray clay, firedhard;

49The antecedents of the pattern in Late Minoan II areclear, A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 4 (1935): pp. 285-288, 321; for contemporaryexamples from Knossos, Popham,Destruction, pl. 2 f, pl. 13 d, e (Royal Villa), pl. 15 b, pl.18 f (Passage of the Demon Seals), pl. 22 a (South-EastHouse), pl. 37 b (North-West House), pl. 45 a (House ofthe High Priest) ; cf. M. Popham, "The Destruction of thePalace at Knossos and its Pottery," Antiquity 49 (1966):pl. III B, and Papers of the British School at Athens 62(1967): fig. 5, no. 13; therearerelateddesigns n the tombsaroundKnossos, A. Evans, The Prehistoric Tombs of Knos-sos (1906), fig. 117, 62 b; fig. 114, 1 b; on a stirrup jar,p. 22, fig. 14. Analogous pieces at Phaistos, in D. Levi,"L'Abitato di Festos in Localita Chalara,"Annuario dellaScuola Archeologica di Atene 45-46 (1967-1968): p. 142,fig. 93 b upper left, 92 b left of middle row; at Palaikastro,R. C. Bosanquet,R. M. Dawkins, The UnpublishedObjectsfrom the Palaikastro Excavations (1923), figs. 63.2, 76. TheMycenaean pattern is coarser and more spread out (A.Furumark, The MycenaeanPottery [1950], Motif 38, no. 9[British MuseumA 790.1]; the Toumba tou Skourou sherdsseem clearly Minoan.

FIG.29. Minoan sherd, P 933.

dark brown-black paint, very worn. Neat bands andfine stripes, precisely drawn. Found at a depthof 5.24 m.Three further Minoan sherds were found in sur-face levels or just under, in bulldozer disturbance.

19. P 844, A 16 east (fig. 28, top, right). Length0.065 m. Pink-gray clay, buff slip, worn brown paint.From the upper part of a large jar (?), decorated withtwo bands and a series of spirals.20. P 797, L 16, with pithos and Black Slip III sherds.Lost. Maximum length 0.068 m. Pink clay, buff slip,flaking black paint. The lower part of a jar decoratedwith a series of bands and fine stripes.21. P 933, E 5 surface (fig. 29). Preserved dimensions0.047 m by 0.036 m. Buff clay and slip, worn matt blackpaint. The surface is covered with painted dots likethose used in the Minoan "conglomerate" design; how-ever, the usual conglomerate pattern has a series ofround reserved "holes" representing larger pebbles inthe mix, while here there are loose irregular arcs morelike the suggestions of pointed rocks in Minoan wall-painting.50

Two interesting fragments from a well under aplaster floor in a house at the west end of the sitemay both be Minoan. The well was small and notvery productive, so that the chronology is less clearthan elsewhere; it contained coarse cooking pots andplain wares, a fine Aegean sherd of pink clay withglossy black paint inside and out, and perhaps one

50 The usual "conglomerate" atternmay be seen at Palai-kastro, R. C. Bosanquet,R. M. Dawkins, The UnpublishedObjects from the Palaikastro Excavations (1923), p. 36, fig.24; at Gournia, H. B. Hawes, Gournia (1908), pl. VII.40,pl. IX.1; cf. R. Seager, Pseira (1910), fig. 14; these arerhyta and big jars. The "holes" are normally round, some-times with a dark interior fiilling and white spots; cf. M.Popham, Papers of the British School at Athens 62 (1967):p. 338, fig. 1, no. 14 (schematic). For the pointedarc rock-work of frescoes, cf. A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 3(1930): fig. 115; S. Marinatos,op. cit., note 28 above. TheMycenaean version is Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery(1950), motif 76.2 (Late Helladic I-II B).



19/25


FIG. 31. Fragments f a largeglobular lask,P 937,earlyor middleLateMinoan II A.

FIG. 30. Fragments of a large Minoan pithoid jar, P 936,Late Minoan III A.Black Slip III and one Base Ring I sherd.51 Therewas White Slip II and Apliki ware with the frag-ments from the Aegean, which should therefore befourteenth century at the earliest.22. Six fragments (four joining) of a large Late Mi-noan pithoidjar, either a three-handledar or one witha tilted spout (?).52 P 936, J 10, Well 6 (fig. 30).Maximumdimensions0.228 m by 0.126 m. Pink-brownclay with quartz grits, flaky on the inside; buff slip,blackpaint. The profilehas a curious doublebulge, atthe shoulder and just below the central bands. Twobands at the bottom, two bands framing, four stripesaround the middle,and an uninterruptedupper zone ofvertical reed pattern appliedwith a corkscrewingmotionof the brush. At the neck, a broad band and at leastthree fine stripes.The reed design had been common on both cups andlarger vases in Crete since Middle Minoan III, and

51This sherd was not inventoried and is now lost fromSkouriotissa,long with its context.52 I amgrateful o Mrs.VronwyHankey or her workonthispiece,andon all the Mycenaeanases (below,Nos 1-5);andto J. Harward or his carefuldescriptionf the sherds.

was progressively simplified so that by Late MinoanIII A, which this seems to be, the jointed leaveswere reduced to abstract ripples jutting out on oneside of the vertical column. It is usually used onsmaller pieces, a beaked jug from Knossos, a doublejar from Katsamba, and on large pieces is usuallyin several zones set off by bands.53 Mrs. Hankey hasplaced this example in mature Late Minoan III A.23. Large globular flask made of two shallow bowlsclappedtogether rim to rim. P 937, J 10, Well 6 (fig.31). Six fragments, of which four mend into two bigpieces; another from the base. Base diameter0.082 m,height0.154m; the secondfragment: 0.164 by 0.124m.Pink-orangeclay, fine buff slip, red-brownglossy paint.The overlapof the shallow bowls is clear inside; wheelmarksconcentric o each side of the vase; finely tooledring foot. The design is a net of linked spirals withtangentcurves.There seems to be no obvious parallel for this bigglobular flask, since most flasks of the type are pat-terned with circles on each face containing rosettes,chevrons or crosses, with foliate bands, lilies, spiralsor scalloping up the sides; however, all the big earlyexamples were made in Crete, at Knossos and prob-ably at Kydonia (Chania) as well, and this is prob-ably Cretan too. One of the best-known early ex-amples came from Maroni in Cyprus in 1897, per-haps even larger than this once was. These globular

53For Reedpattern,M. Popham,Destruction,ig. 8.1,andPapersof the BritishSchoolat Athens62 (1967): fig. 5,no. 8; the Knossosbeakedug, ibid.,pl. 85 d; the design sclose to the traditionalRipplepattern;cf. S. Alexiou,Hys-terominoikoi aphoiLimenosKnosou(Katsamba)(1967),pl. 9; H. and M. Effenterre,Mallia,L'Agora,CentrePoli-tiqueI (1969), pl. LXIV, nos.85, 86; S. Marinatos, heraIII (1970),p. 54,fig.33; on a Lite Minoan I cupfromtheUnexploredMansionat Knossos,M. Popham,H. Sackett,Jour. Hellenic Studies: ArchaeologicalReportsfor 1972-1973,p. 56, fig. 21, top, left, fig. 24 bottom enters;cf. alsoJ. N. Coldstream, . L. Huxley,Kythera 1972), pl. 78,no.44,pl.72,no. 61. The Mycenaeanersions reA. Furumark,The Mycenaean ottery (1950), Motifs16, 78, but the pat-ternis rare on the Greekmainland; f. C. W. Blegen,Pro-symna(1937), fig. 402,no. 824.

311OL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]


20/25


FIG. 32. Fragments of a large stirrup jar with octopusdecoration,P 389, Late Minoan III B.flasks are limited to early and middle Late MinoanIII A.54

The last in the series of Minoan imports at Toumbatou Skourou consists of parts of two stirrup-jars dec-orated with octopuses, a familiar type in thirteenth-century Cyprus.24. Nearly one hundred fragments of a large Late Mi-noan III B stirrup jar, on and under the surface ofHouse B scattered for more than twenty meters alongthe sou.thedge of the site; possibly some pieces collectedby the Cyprus Survey as well. P 389, House B, K 13,

54See Y. Tzedakis, "Minoan Globular Flasks," Papersof the British School at Athens 66 (1971): pp. 363-368, pls.62-65, all Late Minoan III A; the big flask from Maroni inCyprus is among the earliest; cf. Catalogue of Vases in theBritish Museum 1.ii, p. 110, fig. 193, or M. Popham,Papersof the British School at Athens 62 (1967) : p. 345, pl. 84 d;at sixteen inches in height it compares fairly well with therestorabledimensionsof the Toumbatou Skourouflask whichmay, however, be rounder.55 For a general discussionof these octopus stirrup-jarsinCyprus, H. Catling, V. Karageorghis,"Minoikain Cyprus,"Papers of the British School at Athens 55 (1960): pp. 118f.,121, nos. 22-33.

FIG.33. Fragment of a stirrupjar with octopusdecoration,P 392, Late Minoan III B.

L 13, K-L 14, J 13 (fig. 32). No final measurements,only partially mended. Pale buff oatmeal fabric, wornblack and pale brown paint.E. Vermeule, The Mound of Darkness (1974), fig. 44.

FIG. 34. Mycenaeanpilgrim flask, T. 11.93,P 602, Amarnaperiod. Drawing by Elias Markou.



21/25


FIG. 35. Mycenaean pilgrim flask, T. 11.94,P 603,Amarna period.25. P 392, House B, K-L 13 (fig. 33). Maximum di-mensions 0.061 m by 0.055 m. Hard red-gray clay,coarse buff slip, worn brown paint. Two bands at thetop, parts of two tentacles from the animal's left side.A smaller vase than the last.These stirrup jars are known from a number of sites,such as Enkomi, Episkopi, Dhenia, Pyla-Kokkino-kremnos, Akanthou-Moulos, or Kouklia-Mantissa,and were certainly storage containers for a brisktrade in liquids between Crete and Cyprus in LateMinoan III B. The house in which they were storedwas otherwise some kind of factory for large pithosstorage jars, perhaps a showroom for Cypriotes whocame to take them away in wagons.It is curious that there is more Minoan than My-cenaean pottery at Toumba tou Skourou; this is thereverse of the experience at most Cypriote sites. Ithas been discussed in some detail because it is un-usual to see so much of it from early periods, andmight have some bearing on the development of theAegean-looking script of Cyprus. The Mycenaeanpottery is, in contrast, absolutely standard, of types

FIG. 36. Mycenaeanpilgrim flask, decorationon the sides,T. 11.94, P 603.

exported everywhere, and of no particular signifi-cance; a brief catalog is attached only to completethe Aegean record of this part of Morphou Bay.The first group was a set of small vases found inthe fourth chamber of Tomb II, where an olderburial was pushed aside to make room for a youngwoman whose head had been flattened in infancy bya cradle board, and who died apparently from anosteoma in her middle twenties. This young womanalso had a set of ivory toilet boxes or pyxides, anda lapis lazuli cylinder seal, perhaps representing thedegree of easy comfort which Cyprus enjoyed in thefourteenth century with its continuing peaceful tradewith Mycenaean Greece. The burial is dated by theMycenaean rather than the Cypriote pottery (BaseRing II), and belongs in the so-called Amarna pe-riod, the middle of the fourteenth century; the pieceshave obvious parallels at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt

FIG. 37. Mycenaeanstirrupjar, T. 11.103,P 612,Amarna period.

313OL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]


22/25


FIG. 39. Mycenaeanstraight-sidedalabastron,T. II.100,P 609, Amarna period.1. Pilgrim flask. Tomb 11.93, P 602, chamber 4.4 (fig.34). Height 0.13 m, diameter 0.102 m. Pale pink-buffclay, fine buff slip, red-orange paint. FS 189. Typicaldesign of concentric rings on each face, running quirksand wavy lines up the sides, turning into chevron flowerson the shoulders.572. Pilgrim flask. Tomb 1.94, P 603, chamber 4.5 (figs.35 and 36). Height 0.12 m, diameter ca. 0.082 m. Buffclay and slip, red-orange paint. Ring foot missing.Concentric circles on each face, chevrons on neck, arc-filled chevrons, slashes and ladders on the sides. FS189.583. Stirrup-jar. Tomb II.103, P 612, chamber 4.14 (figs.37 and 38). Preserved height 0.11 m, diameter 0.112 m.

I

FIG. 38. Mycenaeanstirrupjar, T. 11.103,P 612.Drawing by Elias Markou.itself, and at many other sites around the east andin Greece.56

56 Mrs. Hankey, who specializes in the Mycenaeanpotteryfrom Amarna, has dated this group to the Amarna period,Late Helladic III A:2, and noted the minor variations fromthe norm. See Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum1.i, A 990-999; W. F. Petrie, Tell el-Amarna (1894), pls.xxvi-xxx; A. Furumark, The Chronology of MycenaeanPottery (1950), p. 113; V. Hankey, The Mycenaeansin theEastern Mediterranean (1973), pp. 128-136; V. Hankey,P. Warren, Bull. Institute of Classical Studies of the Uni-versity of London 21 (1974): pp. 142-152.

FIG. 40. Mycenaeanalabastron,T. II.100, P. 609.Drawing by Elias Markou.57Mrs. Hankey associates R. Merrillees,Miscellanea Wil-bouriana1 (1972): p. 121, fig. 20; cf. Catalogueof Vases inthe British Museum l.i, A 998.8.58 Mrs. Hankey places it early in the series; the arc de-sign, A. Furumark,The MycenaeanPottery (1950), Motif25.9 is derived from the "bivalve shell."

It

I


1:1 1,

I


23/25


FIG. 41. Mycenaeanpilgrim flask on a high foot, P 935,Amarna period. FIG. 42. Mycenaeanvase fragments: top, left, P 623; right,P 628; middle, left, P 794; right, P 799; bottom, left,P 274; right, P 672.Fine green-buff clay, stained buff slip, dark brown-black rg, .paint. Flat disc, beveled rim on spout, concave spout,low globular body, lower body and foot missing. Spiralon disc, loops around handle bases, flowers on shoulder,groups of three and four fine bands around body. FS 178,FM 82.594. Straight-sided alabastron. Tomb II.100, P 609,chamber 4.11 (figs. 39 and 40). Height 0.078 m, diam-eter 0.113 m. Red clay, pink-buff slip, dark red-orangepaint. Rim and neck painted solid with reserved stripes,handles solid, diaper net pattern on shoulder, band framedby stripes at top and bottom of sides, four concentriccircles under the base. FS 94, FM 57:2. There aresimilar pieces at Enkomi.60?

Another vase of the Amarna period was found ina baulk at a high level, which was generally archaic;perhaps it was rolled around by the bulldozer. There Xvwas no detectable fourteenth-century architecture on

59Mrs. Hankey points to the oddity of the lack of broadbands separatingthe groups of fine lines, but has parallelsatel-Amarna.ooP. Dikaios, Enkomi 3 a (1971): pls. 207.41 (218), 210.49(133, Tomb 10), 211.21 (122, Tomb 10); from Amarna, cf.Catalogueof Vases in the British Museum 1.i, A 991.2; fromSesebi, R. Merrillees, Miscellanea Wilbouriana 1 (1972):p. 125, figs. 33-34 (V. Hankey notes the prints are upside FIG. 43. Fragments of a Mycenaeanopen krater withdown). pictorialdecoration,P 667.

315OL. 122, NO. 5, 19781


24/25


FIG.44. Fragmentfrom the shoulderof a Mycenaeanstirrupjar, P 798, Late Helladic III B-C. Drawing by HenryPetersen.the site, which makes this a curiosity, but it goeswell enough with the material from Tomb II andWell 2.5. Pilgrim flask on high foot. P 935, I 9 (fig. 41),in melted mudbrick. Preserved height 0.18 m, diameter0.135 m. Creamy-buff clay inside, pink outside, palebuff slip, weak red paint. Concentric circles on eachface, on the sides a vertical row of dots flanked on eachside by a vertical column of arcs, a late version of thefoliate band. The spreading foot and tall stem are un-usual. FS 187, FM 64.25.

From the same period, with the Minoan fragmentsfrom Well 2, comes part of the handle zone andshoulder of a Mycenaean three-handledjar.6. Fragmentary three-handled jar. P 623, K 15, Well2 at -3.63 to -4.11 m (fig. 42, top, left). Maximumheight 0.05 m, width 0.045 m. Buff clay and slip, darkbrown streaky glaze paint. Handle zone painted solid,

FIG. 45. Uninventoriedherdfroma cup decoratedwitha spiral.diapernet patternon shoulder, wo broad bandsframingfour fine stripes below.There are numbers of these standard export jarsthroughout the eastern Mediterranean,with compara-ble pieces at Enkomi, Klavdhia, Kourion and Maronion Cyprus.61The other Mycenaean fragments are small.7. Fragment of a three-handled jar. Surface bulldozerdebris. P 628, J 22 (fig. 42, top, right). Maximumlength 0.032 m. Green-gray clay, finely tempered, glossydark brown paint. Part of a diaper net pattern pre-served, and three stripes.8. Shoulder fragmen.t of a jar. Late Helladic III A :2.P 672, A 10 (fig. 42, bottom, right). Length 0.035 m.Gray clay, buff slip, red paint. Parts of three bands,three stripes.

61 Comparablepieces in V. Karageorghis,Corpus VasorumAntiquorum,Cyprus 1: pls. 17.6 (A 1662, Klavdhia), 17.9(A 1660, Maroni Tomb 22), 18.2 (A 1663), 19.2 (A 1552,Enkomi Tomb 41); cf. F. Stubbings,MycenaeanPottery inthe Levant (1951), pl. VIII.6 (Cyprus Museum 1664); J. L.Benson, Bamboulaat Kourion (1972), pl. 32.B 1107.



25/25

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS9. Fragment. P 794, I 21, over Tomb II, chamber 4(fig. 42, middle row, left). Maximum length 0.027 m.Gritty buff clay, red paint. Part of a scale pattern.FM 70.1 and 7. Late Helladic III A :2.10. Fragment. P 799, L 16 (fig. 42, middle row, right).Lost. Length 0.034 m. Pink clay, gray at the core,matt black paint. Parts of three stripes.11. Two unrelated fragments. P 801, L 14 and L 15.Lost. A: maximum length 0.029 m. Gray clay, bur-nished surface, brown paint. Part of a band. B: maxi-mum length 0.026 m. Pink clay, grayish core, bur-nished surface, wheel-marks. Part of a scale pattern.12. Rim fragment of a straight-sided cup. P 274, E 5,level III (fig. 42, bottom, left). Length 0.025 m. Finebuff clay and slip, red paint. Rim banded, above a zoneof N-pattern. FS 227/231, FM 60.2.E. Vermeule, The Mycenaeansin the Eastern Mediterranean,pl. VI.2.6213. Two joining rim fragments of a Mycenaean openkrater. P 667, A 10 (fig. 43). Length at rim 0.065 m.Pink-buff clay, red paint. The design is probably partof the back of a spotted bull.14. Fragment from the shoulder of a stirrup-jar. P 798,J 19 (fig. 44). Lost. Length ca. 0.08 m. Pink clay,gray at the core, brown-orange paint. Part of a hand-some series of flowers, made of four chevrons with asolid filled arc, fine concentric arcs and fringes. FM

18.149. Late Helladic III B-C. This is the end of theBronze Age life of the site.If the bulldozer had not swept away most ofToumba tou Skourou we might be far better in-formed about the nature of a town which seemed tohave been a regular port of call for Minoan shipscoming from the Cyclades between about 1520 and1370 B.c. The surviving material is so fragmentaryand worn, it is hard to feel much aesthetic admira-tion for it; but historically it has considerable im-portance, and contributes in its own small way to agradual illumination of the old problem, of whyCyprus writes an Aegean script.63

62Cf. P. Dikaios, Enkomi 3 a (1971), pls 91.14 (2807/1),111.1982/2and 3, 1986/3.63 This survey does not include the Late Cypriote IIIDecorated Ware (Mycenaean III C:1) which is plentiful atthe site but never stratified,only found in pits, particularlyoutside the north perimeter of the mound, where it was

pushed by the bulldozer.There was an uninventoriedsherd from a cup decoratedwith a spiral, from Square G 6, Locus 13, a mass of erodedmudbrick at the east end of the site: pink fabric with whiteslip and dark paint, perhaps Minoan (fig. 45). This waslost with the other sherds at Skouriotissa. In the CyprusSurvey Collection (C.S 251) from Toumba tou Skourouthere are several other sherds which appear to be from theAegean, decorated with spirals.

317OL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]