KARPASIA
(Haghios Philon) Cyprus.
On the
N coast of the Karpass peninsula ca. 3 km from the
village of Rizokarpasso. The ruins of the town, nearly
3 sq km in area, are now largely covered with sand
dunes; the rest is under cultivation. The town extended
mainly along the shore but also inland as far as the foot
of the high plateau. The town had a harbor; its ancient
moles are still visible. Traces of a city wall, which begins and ends at the base of the two moles, can be followed for its whole course. This wall, however, built
to protect only a small part of the town on the N side,
should date from Early Byzantine times. Nothing is
known so far of a bigger circuit. The necropolis extends
W at the locality Tsambres.
Karpasia was founded, according to tradition, by
Pygmalion. Present archaeological evidence precludes
an earlier date than the 7th c. B.C. for its founding.
Little is known of its history. The first mention of it
dates from 399 B.C., when a man from there led the
mutiny of Conon's Cypriot mercenaries at Kaunos. It
is mentioned in the list of the theodorokoi at Delphi,
and appears on inscriptions of the 2d c. B.C. Among
early writers the town is frequently mentioned (Skyl.
GGM 1.103;
Diod. 20.47.2;
Strab. 14.682; Steph. Byz.;
Plin.
HN 6.30; Ptol. 5.14.4; and in the
Stadiasmus).
Karpasia is better known in history as the place where
Demetrios Poliorketes, coming from Cilicia, landed his
forces in 306 B.C. He stormed Karpasia and Ourania and,
leaving his ships under sufficient guard, marched on
Salamis. The town flourished in Classical, Hellenistic,
Graeco-Roman, and Early Christian times, when it became the seat of a bishop. It was finally abandoned in
Early Byzantine times after the first Arab raids of
A.D. 647.
There is no evidence so far for the worship of any
deities in Karpasia, but there can be no doubt that sanctuaries existed. The remains of marble columns, now
covered by sand, to the S of the town may well belong
to a temple. Further evidence comes from casual finds
of sculptures, among others a sandstone head of Tyche
of the Late Classical period. From an inscription found
in recent years we know that there was a gymnasium to
be located at a short distance to the SW of the Church
of Haghios Philon. Apart from minor excavations carried out in the 1930s around this church, when remains
dating from Early Christian times were uncovered, the
town site is unexcavated. The principal monuments now
visible, apart from the church and the excavated remains
of an Early Christian palace attached to it, are the harbor
and some important rock-cut tombs in the W necropolis.
The two moles in the harbor are the most considerable works of their kind in Cyprus. That of the E side
can be followed for about 100 m from its base on the
shore; it is made for the most part of large well-dressed
rectangular blocks of stone rivetted to each other by
clamps of lead. The outer end had been reinforced in
later times with more blocks including fragments of
columns of marble and basalt. These walls rest on natural rock. The width of the mole was about 3 m; its
original height cannot be determined. It projects W from
the shore towards the point of the other mole which
runs due N. This latter mole, built in a similar manner,
extends from the shore to a large rock in the sea known
as Kastros. This W arm is longer than the E one, measuring ca. 120 m including the rock. The town was
supplied with water from springs W of Rizokarpasso.
Remains of the aqueduct still survive in many parts.
The W necropolis occupies a large area extending
from the cliffs at Tsambres to the plain below as far as
the shore. In the cliff of Tsambres itself there is a series
of fine rock-cut tombs with unusual features. The chambers of the tombs are of the usual type but their facades
seem to be unique in Cyprus. The face of the rock is
carefully scarped and on the right or left of the tomb
doors plain stelai are cut in relief, either simply or in
groups of two or three. Sometimes they are of the
conventional shape with pediment or they are anthropoid. These stelai were not inscribed but were probably
painted. The tombs may be dated to the Late Classical
or Early Hellenistic period.
Finds from the excavation of the necropolis are in
the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia, but certain tomb groups
have been allocated to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, to the Museum of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge, and to the Institute of Archaeology in London.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
D. G. Hogarth,
Devia Cypria (1889);
A. Sakellarios,
Τὰ Κυπριακά I (1890); E. Dray & J. du
Plat Taylor, “Tsambres and Aphendrika,”
Report of the
Department of Antiquities, Cyprus (1937-39) 24-123
MPI;
T. B. Mitford and K. Nicolaou, “An inscription from
Karpasia in Cyprus,”
JHS 77 (1957) 313-14
I; I. Michaelidou-Nicolaou, “. . . Inhabitants of Ronas,”
Vestigia 17
(Acta des VI Internationalen Kongresses fur Griechische
und Lateinische Epigraphik, 1972) 559-61
M.
K. NICOLAOU
