KITION
(Larnaca) Cyprus.
The ruins cover
a large area now occupied by the modern town. The
city site, on the S coast, is situated on a hill sloping
gently S. The acropolis is NE of the city, but unfortunately very little of it survives. The port lay on the
E side below the acropolis. At this end the sea penetrated inland and reached the foot of the acropolis and
then turned a little to the S. This inlet formed a natural
harbor, the enclosed harbor of Strabo. All this is now
silted up and the present coast line is ca. one-half km
away. Traces of the city wall and of the moat, which followed the edge of the plateau, are still visible, particularly on the W side. A vast necropolis extends N, W,
and S. The tombs date from the Early Bronze Age to
Graeco-Roman times.
The city was founded, according to archaeological
evidence, in the Late Bronze Age but the site was already
occupied in the Early Bronze Age. Recent excavations have shown that the founders were Mycenaeans
coming from the Peloponnese. The Phoenicians arrived at Kition at the end of the 9th c. B.C. at first as
traders during their expansion to the W, and later as
settlers; yet the vast population of the city must have
remained Greek, as the archaeological evidence testifies.
Later, however, with the help of the Persians, the Phoenicians established a dynasty which ruled the city in the
5th and 4th c. B.C.
There is no positive evidence as to the earlier kings
of Kition but a memorial stele of Sargon II, erected
here in 709 B.C., mentions that the Cypriot kings submitted to the Assyrian king and paid him tribute. The
inscription mentions seven kings of Ya, a district of
Yatnana, which seems to be the cuneiform rendering
of “the isles of the Danai,” i.e. the land of Greeks.
Therefore the king of Kition, where the stele was found,
must have been at that time a Greek. Unfortunately the
names of the kings are not mentioned. The Greek rulers
must have remained in power down to the very end of the
6th c. B.C. for at the time of the Ionian Revolt (499-498
B.C.) Kition joined the revolt against Persia.
The failure of the revolt and the support which the
Persians gave the Phoenicians, especially after the battles
of Marathon and Salamis, soon brought them to power.
In the year 479 a Phoenician dynasty had been established, which ruled Kition until it fell to Ptolemy I Soter
in 312 B.C. The Phoenician dynasty, however, was broken
for a short period in 388-387 B.C. by the installation
at Kition of King Demonikos at the time when most of
Cyprus was liberated by King Euagoras I of Salamis
with the help of the Athenian general Chabrias.
Kition was the birthplace of Zeno, the Stoic philosopher and of the physician Artemidoros. From a metrical
epitaph of the 2d c. A.D. we learn that Kilikas, a native of
Kition, was a teacher of the Homeric poems. According
to other epigraphical evidence quinquennial games were
held at Kition in Graeco-Roman times.
Systematic excavations were conducted in 1894, when
a number of tombs and a sanctuary were investigated.
Later, in 1913, the Bamboula hill, i.e., the acropolis,
was explored. In 1930, on the same acropolis, the Temple
of Herakles-Melkart was excavated. And since 1959
excavations in the N extremity of the town have been
carried out. Most of the ruins, however, remain unexcavated and the task of exploring them is a very difficult one because the modern town is built over them.
The principal monuments uncovered to the present
time include, in addition to those mentioned above, part
of the fortifications of the Mycenaean city and a large
Phoenician temple in the N part of the city. The city wall
of the Classical period can be traced for most of its
course, particularly on the W side, and the site is known
of the ancient harbor, now silted up. The site of the
Hellenistic gymnasium and that of the Temple of Artemis Paralia is also known, while the site of a theater
may be conjectured. A Temple of Aphrodite-Astarte
may have stood on the acropolis side by side with
that of Herakles-Melkart. And from inscriptions we
know of the worship of Zeus-Keraunios, Asklepios and
Hygeia, Aphrodite, Esmun-Adonis, Baal Senator, and
Esmun Melkart, the last by the Salt Lake.
Substantial remains of the city wall of Mycenaean
Kition, later of Classical Kition as well, can be seen on
the N extremity of the ancient town. Houses of the
Geometric period were built in this part of the city
above the Mycenaean remains and follow the architecture of the previous period, for in most cases the older
foundations were reused. The Temple to Astarte was
built towards the end of the 9th c. on the foundations
of an earlier Mycenaean temple which had fallen into disuse ca. 1000 B.C. when this part of the Mycenaean town
was abandoned. It is an imposing rectangular building
measuring 35 x 22 m. The walls were constructed of
large ashlar blocks, some of them measuring as much as
3.50 m in width and 1.50 m in height. Two parallel
rows of columns, six in each row, supported the roof of
the temple. The adyton stood at the W side and in
front there is a large courtyard with two entrances. Four
rows of wooden columns, of which only the stone bases
survive, supported the roof of the porticos on each side
of the courtyard. The temple suffered many changes—four successive floors were recognized—during the five
centuries of its life until its final destruction in the year
312 B.C., when Ptolemy I Soter put to death Pumiathon,
the last Phoenician king of Kition, and burned the Phoenician temples of the town.
A bath establishment of the Hellenistic period was
recently uncovered at Chrysopolitissa. It consisted of
two tholoi within which were a series of cemented basins
around the hall. One of the rooms was circular with a
column in its center; the other was rectangular. Nearby
was found a mosaic floor of the Graeco-Roman period,
composed of geometric and floral patterns in black and
white.
Four built tombs (archaic) can be seen in the W
necropolis of Kition. The tomb of Haghia Phaneromeni
contains two chambers, one behind the other. The outer
chamber is rectangular in shape; the interior, square
with one corner rounded. The roofs of both the chambers are vaulted, and are formed by huge blocks hollowed out and covering the whole width of the chambers. The so-called Cobham's tomb contained three
chambers entered by a dromos leading down to them.
The first chamber had a very fine coffered ceiling, the
second and third were provided with barrel roofs with
real vaults. The third room was quite small, more or
less a recessed space to contain the sarcophagus. The
walls between the chambers were provided with moldings in the shape of pilaster capitals on both sides of
the doorways. Close by is the Evangelis Tomb, which
was damaged in late times. It may originally have had
a similar plan to the Phaneromeni Tomb, with a dromos
leading down to a large rectangular chamber with a
second one behind. Both chambers had corbel vaults and
were constructed of large, well-dressed blocks.
The finds are in the Nicosia and Larnaca Museums.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Luigi Palma di Cesnola,
Cyprus, its Ancient Cities, Tombs and Temples (1877); A. Sakellarios,
Τὰ Κυπριακά I (1890); John L. Myres, “Excavations in
Cyprus 1894: Larnaca,”
JHS 17 (1897), 152-73
I; id.,
“Excavations in Cyprus 1913: The Bamboula Hill at
Larnaca,”
BSA 41 (1940-45) 85-69
PI; I. K. Peristianes,
Γεϝικὴ Ἱστορία τῆς νήσου Κύπρου (1910); V. Karageorghis,
“Fouilles de Kition 1959: Etudes sur les origines de la
ville,”
BCH 84 (1960), 504-88
MPI; id., “Chronique des
fouilles et découvertes archéologiques à Chypre,”
BCH
84 (1960), 283-86
I; 90 (1966), 362-65
PI; 91 (1967)
315-24
I; 92 (1968) 302-11
PI; 93 (1969) 517-27
PI;
94 (1970) 251-58
PI; 95 (1971) 377-90
PI; 96 (1972)
1058-64
PI; 97 (1973) 648-53
I; id., “New Light on the
History of Ancient Kition,”
Mélanges K. Michalowski
(1966) 495-504
I; K. Nicolaou,
Κίτιον Ἑλληνίς * Kypriakai Spoudai 15 (1961) 19-39
MI; id., “Archaeological News
from Cyprus 1966,”
AJA 71 (1967) 401; 72 (1968)
374-75; 74 (1970) 73, 393-94; 76 (1972) 313-14; 77
(1973) 53-54,427.
K. NICOLAOU
