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

Author(s): Emily Vermeule and Florence Wolsky Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 122, No. 5 (Oct. 19, 1978), pp. 294-317 Published by: American Philosophical Society Stable 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 of content 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 support@jstor.org.

American Philosophical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.

http://www.jstor.org

NEW AEGEAN RELATIONSWITH CYPRUS: THE MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN

POTTERY FROM TOUMBA TOU SKOUROU, MORPHOU*
EMILY VERMEULE ZemurrayStone-RadcliffeProfessor,Harvard University and FLORENCE WOLSKY Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Read April 20, 1974) Unless otherwise indicated in the figure legends, the pottery illustrated is from Toumba tou Skourou, and the drawings are by the authors. THE ISLAND OF Cyprus in the eastern Mediter-

ranean has always been valued by historians and archaeologists as a perfect example of a natural and cultural bridge where east and west could cross and meet. In the Bronze Age, especially after 1600 B.C., the arts and the ideas of the Levantine and the Aegean worlds met there and made creative exchanges. A bridge may not be the best image for Cyprus, since it implies a single structure; in the
* This article has been much delayed in publication from the time of its presentation to the American Philosophical Society on April 20, 1974. We had hoped to complete the mending of the Aegean pottery, with consequently better illustrations and measurements,in the next season of excavations. However, the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July, 1974, made it impossible to resume work. Morphou was captured in mid-August, 1974. All the pottery which was incompletely mended was in Morphou at that time in the care of a year-round potmenderand foreman, Mr. George Markou of Karpashia. It was kept in the disused army barracks, and the Turkish army, wanting the space, discarded the excavation finds on the ground outside; they were collected again toward the end of September when officials of UNESCO and of the Turkish Antiquities Service began touring the region, but some two hundred and fifty pieces were lost or destroyed. This unfortunately included a not inconsiderable percentage of the imported pottery, both Minoan and Tell el-Yahudiyeh. Emily Vermeule was able to visit the collection in November, 1974, and Florence Wolsky (with Dr. Leonard Wolsky and Mrs. Stella LubsenAdmiraal) in October, 1975; both visits were devoted to checking the inventory and determining what was lost. On a further visit in April, 1976, it was not possible to cross the Turkish military lines. In the meantime, the American ambassador to Cyprus, the Hon. William R. Crawford, had discovered that all the stratified sherds of the excavation, stored in the Old Clinic of the Cyprus Mines Corporationat Skouriotissa, had been lost. The Clinic was less than one hundred meters from No-Man's Land between the Greek and Turkish forces, and apparently it had seemed desirable to the soldiers to empty out the eighteen hundred sherd bags to fill them with sand for defense. The boxes containing bones and samples were used for fuel. It is therefore not possible to present the results of the excavation in as finished or professional a form as we could have wished, but there seems no chance of improvement in the immediate future. Perhaps a report with defects is better than no report at all.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, VOL.

Late Bronze Age, although Cyprus was generally peaceful, there is no evidence that it was a single political entity. The record of excavation at sites that flourished between 1600 and 1200 B.C.suggests rather that Cyprus was divided into provincial districts governed from principal towns, perhaps each with its own "king," and that these districts had different degrees of experience with foreigners and overseas trade. The main ancient towns were situated at the edges of plains which had easy access to coastal harbors and river estuaries, or in inland valleys with good communications both to the coast and to the forested mountains of the copper zones in the southwest center of the island. On the east and south coasts the big sites like Enkomi, Hala Sultan Tekke, and Kition were in active mercantile contact with the trading centers of the Near East and Egypt. The goods exchanged included copper, timber, ivory, gold, opium, pottery, probably cattle, textiles, farm produce, and political prisoners. The trade with the Syrian and Palestinian coasts was particularly brisk. For these commercial exchanges, records and bills of lading must have existed to some degree; and one would have expected, simply from geographical propinquity (map 1) that the island would have benefited both diplomatically and economically by writing some form of the cuneiform script which was current all through the east.'
1The position of Cyprus in relation to her Bronze Age neighbors is reviewed in such standard and recent articles as H. W. Catling, "Patterns of Settlement in Bronze Age Cyprus," Opuscula Atheniensia 4 (1962): pp. 129-169 and Cambridge Ancient History 2, 2 (1975): pp. 188-216; J. Nougayrol, Ugaritica 5 (1968): pp. 79-89; H. G. Giiterbock, "The Hittite Conquest of Cyprus Reconsidered,"Jour. Near Eastern Studies 26 (1967): pp. 73-81; E. D. Oren, "Cypriot Imports in the Palestinian LB I Context," Opuscula Atheniensia 9 (1969): pp. 127-150; several papers in the Proc. First International Cyprological Congress [1969] (1972): G. Cadogan, "Cypriot Objects in the Bronze Age Aegean and their Importance," pp. 5-13; J.-C. Courtois, "Chypre et l'Europe Prehistorique a la fin de l'Age du Bronze," pp. 23-32; M. Dothan, "Relations between Cyprus and the Philistine Coast in the Late Bronze Age," pp. 51-55;
OCTOBER 1978

122, NO. 5,

294

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS

295

It has consequently always been a historical mystery that Cyprus, whose people were not Aegean in tradition, chose to avoid cuneiform and to develop a script which is almost certainly modeled on and closely related to the linear scripts of the Aegean world, particularly the Linear A script of Minoan Crete.2 Not much of this script is known yet, and it has not been deciphered; yet it occurs on five tablets from Enkomi and one large clay cylinder with one hundred and eighty-six signs; on four tablets from Ugarit (Ras Shamra) which was Enkomi's "sister" city some sixty miles across the water in Syria, one of the most important of all Bronze Age towns; and on a variety of clay balls, ingots, copper tools, vases and other simple artifacts, enough to assure that most towns in Cyprus were using the same 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 Enkomi (fig. 1), is closest to the Cretan script, while later forms have been somehow influenced by the scribal habits of the Near East, in the shapes of the tablets and the forms of the syllabary, although private writing on vases and other objects stays closer to the Aegean styles. While some scholars would like to see Hurrian or Anatolian elements in the language of the later tablets from Enkomi, such discussions are probably premature, and to some degree run counter to the archaeological record. The early text is particularly hard to account for because of the absence of any visible Minoan activity in the island at the beginning of the Late Bronze
R. S. Merrillees, "Alasia," pp. 111-119; J. D. Muhly, "The Land of Alashiya: References to Alashiya in the Texts of the Second Millennium B.C. and the History of Cyprus in the Late Bronze Age," pp. 201-219; I. Tzedakis, "Cypriot Pottery in Western Crete," pp. 163-166; R. S. Merrillees, Trade and Transcendencein the Bronze Age Levant, Studies

FIG. 1. Fragment a clay tabletinscribed of with the CyproMinoan script, from Enkomi, ca. 1500 B.c. (From V. Karageorghis, The Civilization of Prehistoric Cyprus, fig. 153.)

in Mediterranean 39 Archaeology (1974); H. W. Catling, V. Karageorghis, in "Minoika Cyprus," Papersof the British School at Athens55 (1960): pp. 109-127and M. Popham, "TwoCypriotSherdsfrom Crete," ibid. 58 (1963): pp. 8993. The Aegeanworldapparently admired particularly Cypriote White Slip I (and II) milk bowls, which have been at on reported Triandain Rhodes,Phylakopi Melos,Thera, Kea (add to Merrilleesreferencesabove, J. L. Caskey, Hesperia 41 (1972): pl. 96, J 12-13), Aigina, Athens, Zakroand Chania. Knossos,Katsamba, 2Among many discussionsof the Cypriotescript, J. F. to Daniel, "Prolegomena the Cypro-Minoan Script,"Amer. Jour. Archaeology (1941): pp. 249-282; M. Ventris,J. 45 Documents Mycenaean in Greek (1956), pp. 60Chadwick, 66; J. V. Karageorghis, "Originedu syllabaireChyproRevue Archeologique 1958: pp. 1-19; 0. Masson, Minoen," Les inscriptions chypriotes (1961), pp. 30-38 and syllabiques Viva2 (1969): pp. 149-152; Masson,VingtE. Archaeologia Arsix boulesd'argilesinscrites,Studiesin Mediterranean ibid. 31, chaeology 1 (1971) and Cyprominoica, 31, 2 (1974), Minos 10, 1 (1969): pp. 64-77; P. Meriggi,"I nuovi testi Minos 13 (1972): pp. 199-258;J. C. Billigciprominoici," of Amer. meier, "Towarda Decipherment Cypro-Minoan," 80 Jour. Archaeology (1976): pp. 295-300.

Age, which is Late Cypriote I A and Late Minoan I A. Later on, after 1400 B.C. there are sharply increasing contacts between the Cypriotes and the Mycenaeans of mainland Greece, who had themselves adapted the Cretan script to the Greek language. There is so much Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus, both exported from the Argolid and made locally by Mycenaean potters in Cyprus, that it is obvious the degree of trade relations was very strong. Although Cyprus would not be truly colonized by Mycenaean Greeks until the end of the Late Bronze Age,3 there must have been a number of bilingual persons on the island who would find it convenient to write Cypriote and old Greek in a script nearly familiar to visitors from the west. By the end of the Bronze Age, Greek was implanted on the island, and persisted until the fourth century B.C. to be written in a classical form of the old Cypriote syllabary. That Cyprus was the homeland of a very literate people is not in doubt in spite of the few surviving texts, for the Enkomi tablets are quite long, and the texts continuous unlike the staccato lists and records of the Aegean world, and the Cypriote texts from Ugarit are also fairly elaborate.4 In such an island there might well have been more than one form of script current, as at Ugarit; and certainly when Cyprus appears in international diplomatic correspondence (if Cyprus is "Alashiya" as many scholars believe) its activities are recorded in cuneiform, as in the Amarna archives of central Egypt.5 However,
3 The issue of Mycenaean colonists in Cyprus is discussed by several speakers in the Acts of the InternationalArchaeological Symposium: The Mycenaeansin the Eastern Mediterranean (1973), summedup by H. W. Catling, "The Achaean Settlement of 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. 5 See J. D. Muhly, op. cit., note 1 above.

296

E. D. T. VERMEULE,

FLORENCE WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

"-.

.,

E 0
:-

11
te.

00

C/) g0
_ 2?
Q-*

O C

o'
f.

.4, = 0

.0 X_
0;
-I

1,I

1-4

a
V s

0
C

'-c
C:t

I
"'A

x WIz 01

o _s

e.

-t
a

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS

297

no example of cuneiform has been found in Cyprus itself, and at least two of the biggest towns, Enkomi and Kition, have been so thoroughly excavated that if cuneiform was in any way popular it should have been seen by now.6 One problem may be that the organization of society in Cyprus apparently did not demand the construction of centralized palaces which would keep official archives, a fact which clearly differentiates the script situation from that in Greece and the Near East. Still, the literacy of Cyprus from an early period is unquestioned, and the early tablet from Enkomi with its strongly Minoan aspect was found in a context datable close to 1500 B.C.7 It is too early to have been affected by the Mycenaean contacts of the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries, and too close to Linear A for there to be much doubt of its derivation. There has been a very clear imbalance, then, between Cyprus's energetic trade with Syria, Palestine, and Egypt while not writing their script, and her invisible contact with Minoan Crete while using a Cretan script as a model. Although one isolated and broken tablet is a small foundation for large historical interpretations, there is no doubt that Cyprus began a westward cultural orientation around 1500 B.C., of which the script is a sign, and which has been difficult to understand. As one sagacious commentator on the history and origin of the script has remarked, "une ecriture ne s'implante pas tres aisement dans un pays nouveau";8 at some point Minoans must have been on Cyprus, or Cypriotes in Crete. This is a trip of nearly four hundred miles, which could at the western end be broken among the Greek islands but with rough open water east of Rhodes for the last run. Such a trip would probably not have been undertaken without trade goods, and if the Minoans had come from Crete at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, for copper or any other purpose, it was odd that they should have left nothing behind at all.9 There were two Middle Minoan vases, too early to have affected the script as we know it, and then nothing 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-Alasia (1952), Alasia 1
(1971); P. Dikaios, Enkomi 1948-1958 1 (1969); Kition: V.

It was the fortune of Harvard University and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, to have been granted a permit by the Department of Antiquities of the Republic of Cyprus to explore a Bronze Age mound in northwest Cyprus, and to begin partially to correct the impression scholars had had about the lack of Minoan objects in Cyprus in the crucial period. The mound has the modern name of Toumba tou Skourou," the Mound of Skouros or the Mound of Darkness.12 It lies close to the present north bank of the Ovghos River, just north of the modern city of Morphou. It is some four miles from the sea, but was much closer to it in the Bronze Age, on an estuary or lagoon. The plain behind was extremely fertile, where the two rivers Ovghos and Seirakhis run west to the sea; the copper deposits in the hills are only ten miles to the south. But the waters were shallow with bad cross-currents and undertows near the sandy shore, and it was presumably the shelter of the estuary of the Ovghos which allowed any maritime trade at all. The situation is not unlike that of Enkomi on the east coast, on the Pediaeus river. Toumba tou Skourou was first explored in 1936, by Dr. Porphyrios Dikaios who later excavated at Enkomi.13 It was examined archaeologically again in the 1950's by Dr. Hector Catling and the Cyprus Survey; Catling expressed the opinion that Toumba tou Skourou might prove to be the Enkomi of the west coast, but noted serious agricultural depredations.14 What this meant was all too clear, when the government was finally able to buy a plot of land 11Local Cypriotesunderstand name as a relic of an this infamousKing Skouroswho fought a worse King Minoas many years ago; others have suggestedit may be Roman at as in the churchof the PanaghiaSkouriotissa, the copper minesat Skouriotissa 12 Previous publications of the site include P. Dikaios,
Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus 1936: obscurus, Venetian oscuro, or Greek skouria, rust and slag,

in of p. 115; H. Catling,"Patterns Settlement BronzeAge

(1959): p. 339,88 (1964): p. 313,96 (1972): pp. 1051-1054; 97 (1973): pp. 641-645;98 (1974): pp. 861-864,The Civilisation of Prehistoric Cyprus (1976), pp. 150, 155, 158; E.

Cyprus," 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

Enkomi 1948-1958 2 (1971): pp. 882-884. 8 J. Karageorghis, cit., note 2 above,p. 11. op. 9 See E. J. Forsdyke, "Minoan Pottery from Cyprus," Jour. Hellenic Studies 31 (1911): pp. 110-113; H. W. Catling, V. Karageorghis, "Minoika in Cyprus," Papers British School at Athens 55 (1960) : pp. 109-127. 10V. Grace, "A Cypriote Tomb and Minoan Evidence for
its Date," Amer. Jour. Archaeology 44 (1940):

25 Kition (1976). Porada,F. Maier,Archaeology (1972): p. 298; K. NicoKarageorghis, News from Cyprus," Amer. Jour. Ar7The Enkomitabletis CyprusMuseum1885; P. Dikaios, laou, "Archaeological "TheRam 77 "The Contextof the EnkomiTablets,"Kadmos2 (1963): chaeology (1973): pp. 54-55; C. C. Vermeule, Report pp. 39-52; Antiquity 30 (1956): pp. 40-42 with M. Ventris; Cults of Cyprus;Pastoralto Paphianat Morphou,"
of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus 1974: pp. 151Morphou," The Mycenacaus in the Eastern Mediterranean (1973), pp. 25-33, Toumba tou Skourou, The Mound of

at 156; E. Vermeule,"Excavations Toumbatou Skourou,

and F. Wolsky, "Pot-Marks Darkness(1974); E. Vermeule Kadmos15 (1976): fromToumba Skourou," tou and Graffiiti pp. 61-76, and "The Bone and Ivory from Toumbatou
Skourou,"Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus 1977: pp. 80-96.
13 See note 12 above.

J. Stewart, "The Tomb of the Seafarer at Karmi in Cyprus," Opuscula Atheniensia 4 (1962): pp. 197-206; H. W. Catling, V. Karageorghis, op. cit., note 9 above, pp. 109-110.

pp. 10-52;

14See note 12 above.

298

E. D. T. VERMEULE, FLORENCE WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

Late Bronze Age, Late Cypriote I A. Although much of its later history was gone, it was clear that it had been inhabited without obvious breaks down to the decades just before 1200 B.C.; there was very sparse indication of Dark Age habitation, only a few sherds, but in the early Iron Age it had again at least a great deal of pottery, which was scattered by the bulldozer or found in wells near the old Bronze Age houses. It has, therefore, a typical Cypriote history, and must have been a favored place to attract inhabitants for some nine hundred years, 1600 to 700 B.C. Perhaps the river was silting up by then, and the commercial center shifted down to Soloi on the south shore of Morphou Bay, just as Enkomi gave way to Salamis in the east. Almost from the beginning Toumba tou Skourou was in contact with the east, or at least eastern goods came into the town, Syrian ostrich eggs, ivory and the so-called Tell el-Yahudiyeh and "Palestinian Bichrome" wares,15 which were imitated on the spot in local fabrics as well. Toumba tou Skourou seems to have been one of the great pottery centers of the island, and with its neighbor Ayia Irini on the coast some eight miles north provides a clear picture of the ceramic transitions from the Middle to the Late Bronze Ages. At Toumba tou Skourou there is FIG. 2. Cupsfrom Ayia Irini, decorated with doubleaxes, quite abundant slag, which proved not to be the sixteenth to early fifteenthcenturiesB.C. (From P. copper slag one might expect in a place so close to Pecorella, The Mycenaeans in the Eastern Mediterthe Skouriotissa and Mavrovouni copper mines in ranean, pI. V.) the foothills of the Troodos mountains ten miles to there in 1970, and the Harvard expedition began the south; it was ceramic slag which, along with work in 1971. Most of the ancient town was gone, waste pieces and misfirings, assured that the town bulldozed away and buried under sand imported to had made its own pottery on a generous scale. help plant orange trees. The small surviving fragAt nearly the same time, the Italian excavators of ment had also been thoroughly bulldozed-the tracks Ayia Irini and the 1971 discoveries at Toumba tou of the machine were clear even in the bedrock-and Skourou began to change the impression that trade what survived was a piece of an artificial mudbrick with the Aegean had been late developing in Cyprus. platform, some major retaining walls, parts of three Three very elegant Aegean cups from tombs at Ayia houses along the south flank of the mound, and Irini were demonstrated by Dr. Paolo Pecorella to twelve chambers belonging to six tombs partly under belong to the period of the Shaft Graves at Mycenae those houses. What had been a huge place "to the and the rich associated tombs of the Argolid in the height of a telephone pole" (according to the bull- sixteenth and early fifteenth centuries B.C. (fig. 2).16 dozer driver who worked there for a month in the Another comparable cup with double axes and lilies early 1950's) had been reduced to a flat space where was known in a private collection in Cyprus (fig. the modern surface was already of the thirteenth 3).17 Pecorella was quite certain that the Ayia Irini century B.C. The history and nature of the site are 15For the Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware at Morphou and on too complex to be described here, but a few basic Imitations Tell of Cyprusin general,0. Negbi, "Cypriote facts became clear in the course of three years of ex- el-Yahudiyeh WarefromToumba Skourou," tou Amer.Jour. 82 cavation, in spite of the way in which the bulldozer Archaeology (1978): pp.137-149; Palestinian for Bichrome, "The Originof the 'Paleshad, starting at the top of the mound and spreading M. Artzy, F. Asaro,I. Perlman, Bichrome Jour.Amer.Oriental 93 (1973): Soc. Ware," material to the sides, effectively turned the ancient tinian' Palestinian Bichrome pp. 446-461;C. Epstein, Ware (1966). strata upside down. 16P. Pecorella, "Mycenaean Pottery from Ayia Irini," Toumba tou Skourou was, like many sites in Cy- The Mycenacans in the EasternMediterranean (1973), pp. p. prus, a new foundation in the increasingly prosperous 19-24,pl. V, and discussion 305 f.; Studi Cipriotie Rapclosing years of the Middle Bronze Age, in the early portidi Scavo 1 (1971): pp. 57-59,2 (1976): p. 125,fig. 46. 17Cup in the collectionof P. Kolokassides, KarageorV. sixteenth century B.C. Its most flourishing epoch, Cyprus2: pl. 29, 1-3, ghis, CorpusVasorumAntiquorum, according to the remains, was the early part of the no. 1610,pp. 19-20,fig. 2.

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE AEGEAN AND -CYPRUS

299

FIG. 3. Cup from the collection of P. Kolokassides, decorated with double axes and lilies, sixteenth to fifteenth centuries B.c. (From V. Karageorghis, Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum, Cyprus 2: pl. 29.1, no. 1610.)

cups were manufactured in mainland Greece, although their design of double axes was also obviously taken from a Minoan model. At least it was clear that ships from the Aegean had been coming to Cyprus at about the time the script was developing; and since, in all the years of excavation at Enkomi since the 1890's, only two possible sherds had been unearthed which might with good will be taken as belonging to this early horizon,18 it seemed also clear that these ships were, naturally, reaching the west coast first. The settlements around Morphou Bay, badly destroyed as they were, perhaps might have held the key to Cyprus's Aegean connections, which have lasted until the present day, had they been explored before the citrus boom after World
War II.19

was also rising and falling groundwater which dissolved the skeletons and took the paint off the imported pots while the local ones, by some affinity, generally resisted. The range of offerings in the tomb runs in ceramic terms from the late Middle Bronze Age to fully developed Late Cypriote I, with the emphasis on the early side. The Minoan pottery helps confirm this, since it seems to be all Late Minoan I A. The precise end of this pottery in absolute chronological terms in Crete cannot be fixed accurately; somewhere between 1500 and 1475, perhaps. Some of the Minoan pieces have good parallels in the Cycladic town buried under ash in the eruption of 18 P. Dikaios, Enkomi, Excavations 1948-1958 (1969-1971) Thera/Santorini, and this volcanic spasm also seems 1: color frontispiece, 229-230;2: pp. 478-480;3 a: pl. to have occurred around 1500 B.C. pp. 58.26-28; the context seems Late Cypriote I A, the sherds A brief catalog of the pieces and notes on parallels were thought to be Mycenaean rather than Minoan. in the Aegean may clarify the archaeological and 1"A mound some two miles closer to the sea, Toumba tou historical situation. Tillirou, with very promising surface finds of Late Cypriote I A, large stone walls, pithoi, and stone grinders, was un- 1. Late Minoan I A jug, from chamber1. Tomb 1.485, fortunately leveled in 1973. P 375 (figs. 4 and 5). Height 0.215 m, diameter0.13 m.

At Toumba tou Skourou, in contrast to Ayia Irini, there was a small quantity of broken vases in the major tomb of the site, Tomb I, which seemed clearly Minoan imported from Crete before 1500 B.C. Tomb I ihad a curious construction, a round central hole like a chimney into the faces of which were excavated small niches for infant burials, a rectangular piece of bedrock at the bottom of the chimney, and three chambers opening downward off it. It is possible that the bedrock area was used as a primary resting place for dead bodies which were later swept down into the chambers with their possessions; at least pottery joins together from chambers 1 and 3, and sometimes from 2 as well. This procedure would help to account, partly, for the very broken and worn condition of the Minoan pottery in the tomb; there

FIG.

4. Tall jug, T. 1.485, P 375, Late Minoan I A.

300

E. D. T. VERMEULE, FLORENCE WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

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, drawing by Elias Markou.

metal vases,21 and is intermediate between those palatial vases and the finer ceramic development of the shape into the famous ewers of the Marine Style of Late Minoan I B, like the Marseilles or Zakros ewers.22 There is a finer version of the shape in the Shaft Graves at Mycenae,28 and a clumsier version from the buried city on Thera,24 an island imitation of the Minoan model.

Mended from many pieces.20 Coarse pink clay with black grits and pocked surface, pale buff slip, matt black paint. Round mouth with a spreading rim tilted slightly up in front, beveled toward the outside; low concave neck; modeled ridge at the junction of neck and shoulder; broad sloping shoulder, long narrow body flaring toward a raised foot; grooved strap handle from rim to shoulder with a clay rivet on top. The rim and handle are pain.ted solid; 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 Mycenaeans in 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.

3. Fragments of a flower-vase painted with lilies, Late Minoan I A. Tomb 1.340, P 268 (figs. 6 and 7). At least seven to nine non-joining fragments, chambers 1 and 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 red paint. Tall cylindrical vase bulging slightly toward the bottom; a small ledge rim with part of a miniature loop handle, perhaps a string-hole rather than a handle. Parts of at least two displays of the Lilium candidum L., probably one on each side of the vase, the central stalk ridged with sharp alternating leaves, the unfolded blossoms on long bending stems in staggered pairs. Some blossoms painted solid, others with a reserved center and arc across the top; the top blossom on fragment B was poly21 The shape is ultimately related to the famous braided stone vase of A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 1 (1921): p. 2. Fragment of a Late Minoan I A jug. Tomb 1.496, 412, fig. 296, with a more profiled shoulder and high-swung P 386 (fig. 28, top, left). This comes from the shoulder handle, and contemporarybronze and silver jugs. 22E.g., A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 4 (1935), p. 277, of an identical jug, with scalloped wave pattern and fig. 210; N. Platon, Zakros (1971), p. 106. bands; two other pieces may belong. 23 G. Karo, Die Schachtgrdbervon Mykenai (1930-1933), This is not a common shape. It may copy stone or Grave VI no. 945, pl. CLXXV. The Mycenaean version of the shape is A. Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery (1950), 20The fragments were recognized in a number of sherd shape 117 (hereafter FS). 24 S. Marinatos, Thera VI (1974), pl. 74 b; there are trays by Dr. V. Karageorghis, the Director of Antiquities, in the winter of 1971; we are grateful in this and many other similar necks from the older excavations, L. Renaudin, instances for the Department's laboratory facilities and the "Vases de Thera," Bulletin de CorrespondanceHellenique 46 (1922): p. 129,figs. 18 a,e. drawings by Mr. Elias Markou.

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE

AEGEAN

AND

CYPRUS

301

FIG.

7. Artist's reconstructionof the lily vase, T. 1.340, P 268.

chrome, with dark red and pale orange paint picked out with a series of applied white dots along the outlines. V. Karageorghis, Bulletin de CorrespondanceHellenique 96 (1972): p. 1053, fig. 67; E. Porada, F. Maier, Archaeology 25 (1972): p. 299; E. Vermeule, The Mycenaeans in the Eastern Mediterranean (1973), pl. VIII.l1; K. Nicolaou, Amer. Jour. Archaeology 77 (1973): pl. 8, fig. 22; E. Vermeule, The Mound of Darkness (1974), fig. 23. Although there can be no doubt of the essentially Minoan character of the vase, the shape and fabric are not precisely paralleled.25 Lilies were painted on vases in Crete from the Middle Minoan period onward, either as isolated decorative blossoms or, especially in Middle Minoan III, as fully organized plants very close in manner to those in wall-painting. There are the famous vases found in the Magazine of the Lily Vases at Knossos, dated to late Middle Minoan III,26 which are closely related to the frescoes at Knossos in the House of the Frescoes or the South-

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 the lily garden at Amnisos (figs. 8-10).27 The Cycladic islands also played with the theme, possibly for its sacral associations as well as its picturesque values; there are comparable lily scenes from Phylakopi on Melos, from the old and new excavations on Thera, and from Trianda on Rhodes (fig. 11).28 Often the blossoms spring directly from the stalk, but one or two of the frescoes show the long bending stem as

27House of the Frescoes, A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 2 (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, Archdolog25 M. S. F. Hood, The Mycenaeans in the Eastern Mediischer Anzeiger 1933: p. 291, fig. 2; A. Evans, The Palace terranean (1973), p. 307; the Cretan archaeologists assem- of Minos 4 (1935), supplementary plate LXVII a,b; S. bled at the congress in Nicosia, 1972, agreed that the Toumba Marinatos, M. Hirmer, Kreta, Thera und das mykenische tou Skourou material was Minoan, contrary to previous ex- Hellas (1976), pl. XXIII. 28 Phylakopi, R. Bosanquet, Excavations at Phylakopi pectation. 26A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 1 (1921): pp. 576-578, (1904), pp. 75-76, fig. 64; Thera, G. Perrot, C. Chipiez, figs. 420, 421; p. 604, fig. 443; 2 (1928): p. 473; for the lily Histoire de I'Art 6 (1894): p. 537, fig. 211; p. 538, fig. 212; motif in ceramics, A. Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery S. Marinatos, Athens Annals of Archaeology 4 (1971): pp. (1950): pp. 136, 141, 155, 188, 257; the botanical connections 66-67, figs. 13-15, Thera IV (1971), color plates A-C, of Cretan painting, M. Mobius, "Pflanzenbilderder minoi- Kreta, Thera und das mykenische Hellas (1976), pls. schen Kunst in botanischer Betrachtung," Jahrbuch des XXXVI-XXXVII; Trianda, G. Monaco, "Scavi nella zona deutschen archaologischenInstituts 48 (1933): pp. If., lilies; micenea di Jaliso," Clara Rhodos 10 (1941-1949): p. 128, color plate XI. p. 3, fig. 1; p. 5, fig. 2.

302

E. D. T. VERMEULE, FLORENCE WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

FIG. 10. Liliumcandidum the white lily. (Detail from L., M. Mobius, Jahrbuch des deutschen archdologischenIn-

stituts48 (1933): fig. 1.)

cenae and comparable early wealthy tombs in Greece. The lilies are rarely red or polychrome as they are on the Cyprus vase, although the famous Swallow Fresco from Thera has sprays of red lilies on clumps of pale green stems above particolored rocks (fig. 12).30? Evidently the Toumba tou Skourou fragments belong to a category of pots painted with the flowers they were designed to hold, a rough micaceous flowerpot in a style fashionable at Knossos and in Thera (fig. 8). We have no way of knowing whether Cycladic ships were involved in the voyages eastFIG. 9. Fresco with lilies from the Little Palace of Haghia ward toward Cyprus; there is nothing obviously Triada, Middle Minoan III. (From A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 1: fig. 444.) Cycladic in Morphou Bay at least, but one of the better known Minoan pieces from Cyprus, a fragmentary jar painted with lilies picked up at Hala on the Toumba tou Skourou vase. By the beginning Sultan Tekke on the south coast in 1897, was found Minoan I A the lily stalk became a familiar of Late along with a sherd identified as Cycladic, painted with element in vase design, both white on a dark ground a stem and long pointed leaves.31 Perhaps at that (at Knossos and Thera) to suggest the natural slightly later stage, Late Minoan III A:1, around color,29 and dark-on-light in the new prevailing color 1400 B.C., there is evidence for a very probable rouscheme, at Knossos or in the Shaft Graves of Mytine, that Minoan ships came through the Cyclades 29Knossos white on dark, note 26 above; Thera, among the long stretch dead blossoms and past Rhodes before attempting
others, a flower pot painted with lilies with falling to the ground, "ein melancholisches Bild," S. Marinatos, Thera IV (1971), pls. 83-84 and Kreta, Thera und das mykenische Hellas (1976), pl. 161; dark-on-light lilies at Knossos, A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 2 (1928) : p. 470, fig. 276 d; at Mycenae, the renowned jug from the First Shaft Grave, G. Karo, Die Schachtgriibervon Mykenai (1930-1933), pl. CLXI, no. 199. The lily motif continues in a simplifiedform in Late Minoan I B, II and III A. Marinatos, note 28 above. 31E. J. Forsdyke, "Minoan Pottery from Cyprus," Jour. Hellenic Studies 31 (1911): p. 111, fig. 1; Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum 1, 1, A 705; cf. A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 4 (1935) : figs. 258, 297 d, 301 g; the Cycladic sherd from Hala Sultan Tekke is British Museum A 390, directly after the fragments from Thera (A 386-389).
30 See

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS

303

of open water to Cyprus, and that the cargoes represented several stopping points. CUPS There is a special problem connected with the publication of the Minoan cups. Fragments of several cups, with double axes, with spirals, or flowers, were in poor condition, and the pot-mender, Mr. George Markou, who worked on them in Morphou, could not make many joins. The excavators made the wrong decision, to wait until more advances in mending should have been made, before preparing the final photographs and drawings. The photographs are unsatisfactory since sherds of more than one cup appear in the same picture (fig. 13). At least three of these cups seem to have been lost when the Turkish Army emptied out the excavation house in 1974 (Tomb 1.499 with double axes, Tomb 1.500 with a flower spray, P 795 with a leaf spray), and fragments of others were apparently mixed with miscellaneous sherds when the broken vases were swept

FIG. 12. Fresco with lilies and swallows from Thera,

before 1500 B.C.

consists of parts of three double axes on double shafts crownedby a roundball picked out in a circularpattern of white dots; the wings of the axes are heavily painted with a reserved triangle in the center of each. Paint very worn, the pattern most visible as a pale surface where the flakes of paint have lifted off.

line on the rim as well (see no. 5).

up and replaced. Only more time spent with the collection in the Turkish Museum in Morphou, at present unavailable to us, could bring more professional results. 4. Cup with double axes, Tomb 1.34 A, P 38 A (fig. 14).32 Mendedfrom three fragments,with a maximum height of 0.08 m, width 0.125 m. Buff clay, lustrous brown glaze. Body of teacup type with thin offset rim and roundedbowl. Inside of the cup glazed solid; outer rim painted solid with additions in white paint, a white edging band below it, and white on ,two dark bands below the decoratedzone; possibly remnant of a wavy
The decoration

FIG. 13. Cup fragments from Tomb I, Late Minoan I A. FIG. 11.

Fresco fragment from Trianda, Rhodes. (G. Monaco, Clara Rhodos 10 (1941-1949): from color plate XI.)

32 Fragments if two similar cups were at first cataloged under this single number; we have subdivided them as A and B in order not to confuse the inventory which is held in Nicosia and Morphou.

304

E. D. T. VERMEULE, FLORENCE WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

FIG.16. Cup with doubleaxes from Thera, Late Minoan

I A. (From J. P. Michaud, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique 96 (1972): p. 784, fig. 442.)

of interest because of their possible connection to the double axe cups of Ayia Irini from tombs of the same date, early Late Cypriote I (fig. 2).34 However, the FIG. 14. Fragments of a cup with double axes, T. 1.34 A, P 38 A. Late Minoan I A. Ayia Irini cups have a straighter profile, the axes are separated from one another in panels of vertical E. Vermeule, The Mycenacanis the Eastern Mediterranean rows of dots, and there is a circle or arch of dots in (1973), pl. VII.3; The Mound of Darkness (1974), fig. 22. around the ball of the shaft. Dr. Pecorella showed that these belonged to a type common on the Greek 5. Cup with double axes. Tomb 1.34 B, P 38 B (fig. 15). Major fragment with a maximum height of 0.053 mainland in Late Helladic I and II, at Mycenae, m, width 0.095 m, and three more fragments, with parts Prosymna, and Lerna in the Argolid, on the Acropof axe wings set close together, dark round balls and olis of Athens, at Skillous-Makrysia near Olympia double staffs. These might prove to belong to no. 4, but there is a wavy line on the rim, less white paint, no on the west coast, at Kythera off the south coast and visible white spots on the balls except a single spot on Phylakopi on Melos. It is not the Cretan type. The the major fragment.33 cup in the collection of Mr. P. Kolokassides in Nicosia35 is more problematical (fig. 3); the axe wings From the beginning these double axe cups were are long and thin as on the Ayia Irini cups, painted solid without the rounded blades or reserved triangles characteristic of the Morphou cups; it has vertical paneling dividers of the mainland type, made of a rippled stem flanked by alternating dots and crowned with a lily, and lilies grow from the axes as well; the rim is dotted as on one of the Ayia Irini cups, and there is no added white paint. It may well come from Ayia Irini like the others, and belong to the same mainland Mycenaean tradition. The closest parallel for the Toumba tou Skourou cups 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 axe wings and reserved triangles, double stem, and ball FIG. 15. Fragments of a double axe cup, T. 1.34 B, P 38 B. dotted with white overpaint (fig. 16).36 Like nos.
Late Minoan I A. 33The variation in white spots on a single cup is visible in the close analogue from Thera (below, note 36), not in the usual published views, but in the Air France Atlas no. 77, November, 1972, p. 91 upper right; the axe nearest the handle has only a central spot. 34See note 16 above. 35See note 17 above; the Kolokassides cup might well come from Ayia Irini, a favorite exploring ground for generations of tomb-robbers. 36 S. Marinatos, To Ergon (1971), p. 203, fig. 246; Praktika tes en Athenais Archaiologogike Hetaireia (1971), pl. 280 B;

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS

305

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 from Gournia.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 buff slip, dark brown-black and dilute golden brown paint. The surviving decoration consists of thick dark bands and thin gold stripes. Not mended. It is possible that these excellent sherds should be associated with no. 6 and form the foot of a tall slender pedestaled goblet. There are parts of three small "teacups" decorated with spirals, of Late Minoan I A character, which could 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 with thin offset rim. Bands framing a frieze of running spirals with solid centers. E. Vermeule, The Mycenaeans in the Eastern Mediterranean (1973), pl. VII.2; K. Nicolaou, ibid., pl. XII.8; The Mound of Darkness (1974), fig. 21. 9. Twelve fragments of a small cup with spirals. Tomb 1.495, P 385, chamber 3 (next to no. 3) (fig. 13, upper left). Light buff-pink clay and slip, worn black paint. Thin offset rim, low curved body wall, foot with slightly flared edge. Not coated inside. The paint is nearly gone; the rim was painted solid, with a frieze of running spirals with solid centers below; one fragment may show 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. Fairly tall cup with offset rim, contracted toward foot, base raised underneath. Rim painted solid, frieze of linked spirals with open centers, four bands below; a spiral band around the interior. E. Vermeule, The Mycenaeans in the Eastern Mediterranean (1973), pl. VI.3. 37Palaikastro, for the possible shape, R. C. Bosanquet, R. M. Dawkins, The Unpublished Objects from the Palaik3stro Excavations, 1902-1906, The British School at Athens SupplementaryPaper 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. Nilsson, The Minoan-MycenaeanReligion 2 (1950), p. 208, fig. 103; the Gournia footed strainer, H. B. Hawes, Gournia (1908), pl. VIII, no. 26.

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 connection among all three islands. 6. Three major fragments of a tall footed cup (?) with double 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, height 0.052 m, width 0.055 m. Fine buff clay, darker buff slip, dark brown, and dilute gold-brown paint. Not coated inside. Rim and handle painted solid, a frieze of double axes on double shafts in the handle zone, two thick bands framed by thin stripes below, a series of fine dilute gold stripes, a thick band at the bottom. This is evidently a taller vase than the preceding two; the axes have the same form with reserved triangles in the wings, but no white paint is preserved; it Tay have been a pedestaled cup of a type known from Palaikastro in Crete, rather than the tall jar Bulletin de CorrespondanceHellentique96 (1972) : p. 784, fig. 442; Thera V (1972), pl. 65 b; and see note 33 above.

306

E. D. T. VERMEULE, FLORENCE WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

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

Toumba tou Skourou pieces. 11. Two non-joining fragments of a small cup with a flower and spirals. Tomb 1.500, P 391 (fig. 21). Lost. The larger fragment has a height of 0.041 m, length 0.06 m. Soft buff-pinkclay, worn black and pale brown paint. A simple flower spray shoots obliquely up and right off the connectorbetweentwo spirals. It is not unlikely that a twelfth fragment should be associated with these Minoan pieces from Tomb I. The tomb's peculiar architecture is complicated by a shaft which leads down into the back of chamber 3, past a smoothed bedrock "facade" which could be explored only in part with the help of experienced miners from the Cyprus Mines Corporationat Skouriotissa. These men inserted pit props in the shaft and the chamber, but could not advise us to proceed to any detailed exploration because the weight of the stone-walled buildings above the chamber threatened imminent collapse of the whole area. The shaft was filled with millstones, querns, and grinders which had FIG. 19. Fragments and artist's reconstructionof a cup with spilled onto the contents (the lily vase no. 3, the spirals, T. 1.497, P 387, Late Minoan I A. spiral cup no. 9, and the remains of an ivory knife handle with gold rivets which seems Minoan in charThese simple spiral cups are an absolutely standard acter.39 A sherd of a Late Minoan I A cup decoelement in Late Minoan I A; examples very like rated with leaves and spirals was found at the top these come from almost every Cretan site: Knossos of this shaft, under the thirteenth-century floor which (fig. 20), Herakleion-Poros, Mallia, the Gulf of sealed it; it may have belonged in the tomb once and Mirabello, Mochlos, Gournia, Palaikastro, Zakros, been disturbed by a robber in antiquity. Phaistos, and overseas on Kythera, Melso, Thera and Rhodes.38 They are the most standard of the 12. P 795, square J 16 (fig. 22). Maximum length 0.035 m. Pink-gray clay, no slip, flaking brown paint.
38Knossos: 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 Athens 62 (1967): pl. 78 c; Poros: A. Lembezi, Praktika tes en Athenais 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 Festos 2 (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 Palaikastro Excavations (1923), p. 34, fig. 22; the Gulf of Mirabello, Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum, A 637, 638, 640; Kythera: J. N. Coldstream, G. L. Huxley, Kythera (1972), 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 School at 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, Opuscula Atheniensia 6 (1950): fig. 2, no. 31. The comparablemainlandcups are generally more elaborate 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 Department of

Antiquities Cyprus1977,p. 89. of

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS

307

of FIG.22. Small fragment a cup with a spiraland leaves, P 795, Late MinoanI A. After the initial period of acquaintance, some bond, however slender, seems to have been maintained beFIG. 21. Fragment of a small cup with flower and spirals, tween the Minoans and the town of Toumba tou T. 1.500, P 391, Late Minoan I A. Skourou. In contrast to Ayia Irihi, and the other Cypriote sites which began to receive a good deal of Lost. Band above, perhaps the outer rim of a spiral Mycenaean pottery after 1400 B.C., Toumba tou below, off which springs -the branching stem of a leaf Skourou has, in all, more Minoan than Mycenaean, or flower. if we have diagnosed the fragments correctly. The The flower-spirals of these two pieces were in next series belongs to the period of the destruction vogue in the better potting centers of Crete in Late of the palace at Knossos, Late Minoan III A:1, Minoan I A.40 around 1400 B.C.and shortly after.42 The evidence of Tomb I would suggest that MiTomb II had four chambers and lay just west of noan contact with Morphou Bay before 1500 B.C. Tomb I; it began in Late Cypriote I A. In the secwas not yet intense, if it left only ten or twelve vases ond chamber was a relatively poor burial of advanced in a tomb which contained nearly six hundred CypLate Cypriote I. Stuck on the roof of this chamber riote vases. (Their presence in the same chambers as were smashed remnants of a beaked jug, of which Palestinian vases gives a useful cross-check for Cyp- other parts were found in the contiguous chamber riote chronology and the relations between the Ae- 4. A small communicating "window" between the gean and the east). Even so, they are more per- two may have been made when the fourth chamber suasive of a Minoan presence in Cyprus at the mo- was excavated-or reexcavated, since there were two ment when Cyprus began to write a linear script, burial periods in it-and the digging came too close; than the two fairly nondescript sherds from Enkomi the fragments in chamber 4 may therefore have where the early tablet appeared; both the Enkomi floated through the hole when the jug rose on ground sherds may be Mycenaean rather than Minoan, al- water and broke against the ceiling.
though one may be from a spiral cup like those cataloged above.41

13. Several fragmentsof a tall jug with a narrow neck, probablya beakedjug. Tomb 11.53,P 572, chamber2.2 40 Late Minoan I A often has flower sprays running off and Tomb 11.96,P 605, chamber4.7 (fig. 23). Mended the connecting links of spirals; cf. A. Evans, The Palace of into two major fragments: A: 0.16 m by 0.09 m; B: a Minos 2 (1928): pp. 470ff., fig. 272; C. Zervos, L'Art de la rim fragment,0.04 m by 0.02 m; C: 0.09 m by 0.05 m. Crete (1956), fig. 549; there is a series from Palaikastro, Pink-buff clay, creamy buff slip, dark brick-red paint. R. C. Bosanquet, R. M. Dawkins, The UnpublishedObjects The shoulder is markedlybroad and bulging below the Remainsof from the Palaikastro Excavations (1923), pl. XV.b, c, e, cf. narrow neck, as the shouldersof ewers are. M. Popham, Papers of the British School at Athens 62 a scallopedborder or the ends of a foliate band around (1967): pl. 78 d (as from "Zakro"); for Zakro, R. M. .the neck; then a series of disconnectedspirals whose Dawkins, Jour. Hellenic Studies 23 (1903): p. 252, fig. 15. loose ends terminate above and below the spiral in a 41 See note 18 above; the spiral cup is color frontispiece to triangularleaf with an empty center with lobed spots in vol. I, no. 2, and is coated inside (no. 1805/1); no. 3 has the corners. The leaf is a developmentof the papyrus
white spots as well (no. 1793/2). Dikaios put the start of Late Cypriote I A around 1575 B.C.,lasting till 1450 B.c.; from the Toumba tou Skourou point of view this chronology seems too high, since all we know is that Late Minoan I A is current in the last third of the sixteenth century B.C.and its context in Tomb I is with very early, and few developed, specimens of Late Cypriote I A. Further discussion of the chronological problems would not be appropriatehere; Tomb I must close around 1500 B.C. or shortly after, and may represent two generations of use. plant current in Late Minoan I and II design; this vase should be dated in Late Minoan, III A:1. It is possible

that it is Mycenaean,not Minoan,but the fabric did not appear so to us, and the spiral design is more flowing than the rather stiff and isolated versions of this motif
42 For the pottery of this period in Crete, see M. Popham, The Destruction of the Palace at Knossos: Pottery of the

Late Minoan III A Period, Studies in MediterraneanArchaeology 12 (1970), hereafter Popham, Destruction.

308

E. D. T. VERMEULE, FLORENCE WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

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 Cypriote

vases.45

The third chamber of Tomb II had one small Minoan sherd. 14. Fragment of a large closed shape. Tomb 11.80, P 598, chamber 3.17 (figs. 24 and 25). Maximum preserved dimensions 0.048 m by 0.043 m. Lost. Pinkbuff clay, pale buff slip, brown-black paint. The design is difficult to understand, but seems to be pictorial, more like an octopus with spiral tentacles than anything else. The fabric seems Late Minoan III A:1, in a context of fine Base Ring I and White Slip I, a poor "Palestinian Bichrome" krater, a group of bone tubes and buttons, paste beads and seashells.46 A single Minoan sherd appeared in a niche in the dromos of Tomb III. This large niche contained two cracked stone plaques, probably the "door," an early Base Ring I juglet imitating a Syrian shape, this isolated sherd, and the rotted remains of two babies and some sheep. 15. Tomb III.34, P 842, niche 1.4 (fig. 28, bottom, Nondescript fragment, length 0.045 m, buff right). clay, 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 Painted V and VI vases, Proto Base Ring and Proto White Slip, but nothing of developed Late Cypriote I. The babies in the dromos might have been inserted some time after the family in the main chamber, but they were too small to have survived their parents very from Tomb 23 (British Museum Excavations of 1897), of the "earliest phase of the Mycenaean III A:1 period" (it is, of course, possible that the Toumba tou Skourou specimen is Mycenaeanalthough the fabric does not seem so); for the sparser version on a beaked jug from Ialysos, the cemetery of Trianda on Rhodes, A. Maiuri, Anniuariodella Scuola Archeologica di Atene 6-7 (1926): p. 185, fig. 108 (A. Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery [1950] motif 47, no. 2, Mycenaean II B). 45There is also an early bucchero jug, Tomb II, no. 52. 46E. Vermeule, F. Wolsky, "The Bone and Ivory of Toumba tou Skourou,"Report of the Departmentof Antiquities of Cyprus 1977: p. 80, pl. XIX. We have "made an octopus from very little," like P. Dikaios, Enkomi 3, a (1971): pl. 112, no. 5902/2.

FIG.23. Fragments and artist's reconstructionof a narrownecked jug, T. 11.53, P 572 and T. 11.96, P 605, Late Minoan III A:1. which were current in Greece.43 The closest analogy to the design, though not the shape, is a denser version on a three-handled jar from Maroni in the Cyprus Museum, and there is a sparser version on a beaked jug from Ialysos on Rhodes.44 The vase occurs in a context 43 A. Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery (1950), Motif 46, no. 40 (from the Maroni jar, see below, note 44); Mycenaean examples at Korakou, C. W. Blegen, Korakou (1921), pl. V; Athens, S. A. Immerwahr, The Athenian Agora in the Neolithic 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, Solothurn).

44 The Maroni jar, V. Karageorghis, Corpus Vasorum

Antiquorum Cyprus 1, pi. 17.4, Cyprus Museum A 1674

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS

309

FIG.

27. Joining shoulder pieces 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, proably, Late Minoan I A. On the surface of the site two joining fragments of an early Aegean stippled cup were found some sixteen meters apart, evidently spread by the bulldozer. It is a nicely made piece with a banded base, of a type found in both Crete and Greece in the period around 1400 B.C.

These low thin-walled cups are practically limited to a generation or two (II B to III A:1) and appear at Knossos and in Greece at the same time, when relations between the two centers were at their most intense and affable.47 There is a fine contemporary example at Enkomi, another at Kourion, and a stippled globular jar of ostrich-egg type from Maroni, all major sites.48 Two joining pieces from the shoulder of a fairly large jar were recovered from a well near the tombs.

17. P 619, Well 2 (fig. 27). Maximumlength 0.106 m, width 0.068 m. Gritty pink-buff clay, pale buff slip, dark chestnut glossy paint. Shoulderset off from body by four stripes; above, a row of festoons or pendant 16. P 630, from G 7 robber'strench and F23 surface concentric loops separated by vertical rows of dashes (fig. 26). A: maximum length 0.08 m, B: length ca. spreading toward the bottom; below, a row of spirals, 0.05 m. Pink clay, gray at the core, pink-buffslip, matt the alternateones fringed inside. Late Minoan III A:1. dark red-orangepaint. Upper zone finely stippled with This well was in some sense stratified. The bulla brush (not a sponge), then a broad band, three fine dozer uncovered a large squared stone wellhead which stripes, and a broadband aroundthe ring foot. was noted by neighbors in the early 1950's; we found it pushed down into the well at a depth of 2.45 m. 47For stippledcups see A. Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery (1950), Shape219 (Late HelladicII B-III A:1), Motif77, no. 2 (Late HelladicII B-III A:2); fromKnossos, A. Evans); cf. Popham, pl. Destruction, 40 a; fromAthens, Tomb Beneaththe E. Vermeule, Travlos,"A Mycenaean J. 35 MiddleStoa,"Hesperia (1966): P 27452,p. 76, pls. 22 a, of 23 b (the periodof the destruction Knossos),and S. A. Immerwahr, cit., note 43, pp. 128-129;from Mycenae, op. (1964): p. 249, fig. 2, pi. 72; there are others from the in Argive Heraion,Aliki Glyphada Attica,and see note 48. ceramic This style of cup is where Minoanand Mycenaean most nearlycoincide. development 48Enkomi:P. Dikaios,Enkomi1 (1969): p. 377, pl. 206/
46; K. Nicolaou, The Mycenaeans in the Eastern MediterCatalogue of Vases in the British Museum, A 788.1-8, A 789.1-7; cf. Papers of the British School at Athens 59 Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum, A 634 (gift of

FIG. 26. Fragments of an Aegean stippled cup, P 630,

around 1400 B.C.

"Minoan Pottery ranean, XII, no. 1.; cf. E. J. Forsdyke, pl. Jour. Hellenic Studies 31 (1911): p. 113, fig. in Cyprus," AntiCorpusVasorum 2.2; for Kourion,V. Karageorghis, Cyprus1: pl. 26.1 (A 1530) and K. Nicolaou,op. quorum, cit. above,p. 55.

310

E. D. T. VERMEULE, FLORENCE WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

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.

FIG.29. Minoan sherd, P 933. dark brown-black paint, very worn. Neat bands and fine stripes, precisely drawn. Found at a depth of 5.24 m. Three further Minoan sherds were found in surface levels or just under, in bulldozer disturbance. 19. P 844, A 16 east (fig. 28, top, right). Length 0.065 m. Pink-gray clay, buff slip, worn brown paint. From the upper part of a large jar (?), decorated with two 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 decorated with a series of bands and fine stripes. 21. P 933, E 5 surface (fig. 29). Preserved dimensions 0.047 m by 0.036 m. Buff clay and slip, worn matt black paint. The surface is covered with painted dots like those used in the Minoan "conglomerate" design; however, the usual conglomerate pattern has a series of round reserved "holes" representing larger pebbles in the mix, while here there are loose irregular arcs more like the suggestions of pointed rocks in Minoan wallpainting.50 Two interesting fragments from a well under a plaster floor in a house at the west end of the site may both be Minoan. The well was small and not very productive, so that the chronology is less clear than elsewhere; it contained coarse cooking pots and plain wares, a fine Aegean sherd of pink clay with glossy black paint inside and out, and perhaps one
50 The usual "conglomerate" pattern may be seen at Palaikastro, R. C. Bosanquet, R. M. Dawkins, The Unpublished Objects 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 are rhyta and big jars. The "holes" are normally round, sometimes 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 pointed arc rockwork of frescoes, cf. A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 3 (1930): fig. 115; S. Marinatos, op. cit., note 28 above. The Mycenaean version is Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery (1950), motif 76.2 (Late Helladic I-II B).

Beneath that was a Cypro-Geometric layer, a layer of bones, a layer of boulders and very early CyproGeometric pottery (ca. 1000 B.C.), a thick layer of green soil with bands of water-laid sediment, then sherds of the thirteenth century B.C., and this fragment at a depth of 5.09 m. Still deeper were a Cypriote imitation of a late Mycenaean kylix, a Syrian jug, and a red lustrous bottle of the fifteenth or early fourteenth century, where this sherd belongs. The festoon pattern is the Late Minoan III A simplification of pendant designs popular in the Palace Style; it is used in zones by itself, with simple loops or incurved or ogival forms, sometimes filled with flowers and stars, and occurs at a number of Cretan sites in the period just before the fall of Knossos.49 Another sherd from the same well may be Minoan. 18. P 638, Well 2. Lost. From the shoulderof a jug? Length 0.055 m. Finely temperedgray clay, fired hard;
49The antecedents of the pattern in Late Minoan II are clear, A. Evans, The Palace of Minos 4 (1935): pp. 285288, 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-East House), pl. 37 b (North-West House), pl. 45 a (House of the High Priest) ; cf. M. Popham, "The Destruction of the Palace at Knossos and its Pottery," Antiquity 49 (1966): pl. III B, and Papers of the British School at Athens 62 around Knossos, A. Evans, The Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos (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 della Scuola 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 Unpublished Objects from the Palaikastro Excavations (1923), figs. 63.2, 76. The Mycenaean pattern is coarser and more spread out (A. Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery [1950], Motif 38, no. 9 [British Museum A 790.1]; the Toumba tou Skourou sherds seem clearly Minoan.

(1967): fig. 5, no. 13; thereare relateddesignsin the tombs

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS

311

FIG.

31. Fragments a large globularflask, P 937, of III early or middleLate Minoan A.

was progressively simplified so that by Late Minoan III A, which this seems to be, the jointed leaves were reduced to abstract ripples jutting out on one side of the vertical column. It is usually used on smaller pieces, a beaked jug from Knossos, a double jar from Katsamba, and on large pieces is usually in several zones set off by bands.53 Mrs. Hankey has placed this example in mature Late Minoan III A. 23. Large globular flask made of two shallow bowls clappedtogether rim to rim. P 937, J 10, Well 6 (fig. 31). Six fragments, of which four mend into two big pieces; another from the base. Base diameter0.082 m, height 0.154 m; the second fragment: 0.164 by 0.124 m. Pink-orangeclay, fine buff slip, red-brownglossy paint. The overlap of the shallow bowls is clear inside; wheel marks concentricto each side of the vase; finely tooled ring foot. The design is a net of linked spirals with tangent curves. There seems to be no obvious parallel for this big globular flask, since most flasks of the type are patBlack Slip III and one Base Ring I sherd.51 There terned with circles on each face containing rosettes, was White Slip II and Apliki ware with the frag- chevrons or crosses, with foliate bands, lilies, spirals ments from the Aegean, which should therefore be or scalloping up the sides; however, all the big early examples were made in Crete, at Knossos and probfourteenth century at the earliest. ably at Kydonia (Chania) as well, and this is prob22. Six fragments (four joining) of a large Late Mi- ably Cretan too. One of the best-known early exnoan pithoid jar, either a three-handled or one with jar a tilted spout (?).52 P 936, J 10, Well 6 (fig. 30). amples came from Maroni in Cyprus in 1897, perMaximumdimensions0.228 m by 0.126 m. Pink-brown haps even larger than this once was. These globular clay with quartz grits, flaky on the inside; buff slip, 53For Reedpattern, Popham, black paint. The profile has a curious double bulge, at M. Destruction, 8.1, and fig. the shoulder and just below the central bands. Two Papers of the British School at Athens62 (1967): fig. 5, bands at the bottom, two bands framing, four stripes no. 8; the Knossosbeakedjug, ibid.,pl. 85 d; the designis around the middle, and an uninterrupted upper zone of close to the traditional Ripplepattern;cf. S. Alexiou,Hysvertical reed patternapplied with a corkscrewingmotion terominoikoi Taphoi LimenosKnosou (Katsamba) (1967), of the brush. At the neck, a broad band and at least pl. 9; H. and M. Effenterre, Mallia,L'Agora,CentrePolithree fine stripes. Thera tiqueI (1969), pl. LXIV, nos. 85, 86; S. Marinatos, II III (1970), p. 54, fig. 33; on a Lite Minoan cup fromthe The reed design had been common on both cups and Unexplored Mansionat Knossos,M. Popham,H. Sackett, larger vases in Crete since Middle Minoan III, and Jour. Hellenic Studies: Archaeological Reportsfor 19721973,p. 56, fig. 21, top, left, fig. 24 bottomcenters;cf. also 51This sherd was not inventoried and is now lost from J. N. Coldstream, L. Huxley,Kythera(1972), pl. 78, no. G. are versions A. Furumark, 44, pl. 72, no. 61. The Mycenaean along with its context. Skouriotissa, 52 I am grateful to Mrs. VronwyHankeyfor her work on The Mycenaean Pottery (1950), Motifs 16, 78, but the patthis piece,andon all the Mycenaean Nos vases (below, .1-5); tern is rare on the Greekmainland; C. W. Blegen,Procf. of and to J. Harwardfor his carefuldescription the sherds. symna (1937), fig. 402, no. 824.
Late Minoan III A.
FIG. 30. Fragments of a large Minoan pithoid jar, P 936,

312

E. D. T. VERMEULE,

FLORENCE

WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

FIG.33. Fragment of a stirrup jar with octopus decoration, 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, worn black and pale brown paint. E. Vermeule, The Mound of Darkness (1974), fig. 44.

FIG. 32. Fragments of a large stirrup jar with octopus

decoration, P 389, Late Minoan III B.

flasks are limited to early and middle Late Minoan III A.54 The last in the series of Minoan imports at Toumba tou Skourou consists of parts of two stirrup-jars decorated with octopuses, a familiar type in thirteenthcentury Cyprus. 24. Nearly one hundred fragments of a large Late Minoan III B stirrup jar, on and under the surface of House B scattered for more than twenty meters along the sou.th edge of the site; possibly some pieces collected by the Cyprus Survey as well. P 389, House B, K 13, 54See Y. Tzedakis, "Minoan Globular Flasks," Papers of the British School at Athens 66 (1971): pp. 363-368, pls. 62-65, all Late Minoan III A; the big flask from Maroni in Cyprus is among the earliest; cf. Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum 1.ii, p. 110, fig. 193, or M. Popham, Papers of the British School at Athens 62 (1967) : p. 345, pl. 84 d; at sixteen inches in height it compares fairly well with the restorabledimensionsof the Toumba tou Skourou flask which may, however, be rounder. 55 For a general discussion of these octopus stirrup-jars in Cyprus, H. Catling, V. Karageorghis, "Minoika in Cyprus," Papers of the British School at Athens 55 (1960): pp. 118 f., FIG. 34. Mycenaean pilgrim flask, T. 11.93, P 602, Amarna period. Drawing by Elias Markou. 121, nos. 22-33.

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS

313

FIG.

36. Mycenaean pilgrim flask, decoration on the sides, T. 11.94, P 603.

FIG. 35. Mycenaean pilgrim flask, T. 11.94, P 603,

Amarna period. 25. P 392, House B, K-L 13 (fig. 33). Maximum dimensions 0.061 m by 0.055 m. Hard red-gray clay, coarse buff slip, worn brown paint. Two bands at the top, parts of two tentacles from the animal's left side. A smaller vase than the last.

exported everywhere, and of no particular significance; a brief catalog is attached only to complete the Aegean record of this part of Morphou Bay. The first group was a set of small vases found in the fourth chamber of Tomb II, where an older burial was pushed aside to make room for a young woman whose head had been flattened in infancy by a cradle board, and who died apparently from an osteoma in her middle twenties. This young woman also had a set of ivory toilet boxes or pyxides, and a lapis lazuli cylinder seal, perhaps representing the degree of easy comfort which Cyprus enjoyed in the fourteenth century with its continuing peaceful trade with Mycenaean Greece. The burial is dated by the Mycenaean rather than the Cypriote pottery (Base Ring II), and belongs in the so-called Amarna period, the middle of the fourteenth century; the pieces have obvious parallels at Tell el-Amarna in Egypt

These stirrup jars are known from a number of sites, such as Enkomi, Episkopi, Dhenia, Pyla-Kokkinokremnos, Akanthou-Moulos, or Kouklia-Mantissa, and were certainly storage containers for a brisk trade in liquids between Crete and Cyprus in Late Minoan III B. The house in which they were stored was otherwise some kind of factory for large pithos storage jars, perhaps a showroom for Cypriotes who came to take them away in wagons.
It is curious that there is more Minoan than My-

cenaean pottery at Toumba tou Skourou; this is the reverse of the experience at most Cypriote sites. It has been discussed in some detail because it is unusual to see so much of it from early periods, and might have some bearing on the development of the Aegean-looking script of Cyprus. The Mycenaean pottery is, in contrast, absolutely standard, of types

FIG. 37. Mycenaean stirrup jar, T. 11.103, P 612,

Amarna period.

314

E. D. T. VERMEULE,

FLORENCE

WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

1:1

1,

FIG. 39. Mycenaean straight-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-buff clay, fine buff slip, red-orange paint. FS 189. Typical design of concentric rings on each face, running quirks and wavy lines up the sides, turning into chevron flowers on the shoulders.57 2. Pilgrim flask. Tomb 1.94, P 603, chamber 4.5 (figs. 35 and 36). Height 0.12 m, diameter ca. 0.082 m. Buff clay and slip, red-orange paint. Ring foot missing. Concentric circles on each face, chevrons on neck, arcfilled chevrons, slashes and ladders on the sides. FS
189.58

3. Stirrup-jar. Tomb II.103, P 612, chamber 4.14 (figs. 37 and 38). Preserved height 0.11 m, diameter 0.112 m.

It
FIG. 38. Mycenaean stirrup jar, T. 11.103, P 612.

Drawing by Elias Markou.

itself, and at many other sites around the east and in Greece.56
56 Mrs. Hankey, who specializes in the Mycenaean pottery FIG. 40. Mycenaean alabastron, T. II.100, P. 609. from Amarna, has dated this group to the Amarna period, Drawing by Elias Markou. Late Helladic III A:2, and noted the minor variations from the norm. See Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum 57Mrs. Hankey associates R. Merrillees, Miscellanea Wil1.i, A 990-999; W. F. Petrie, Tell el-Amarna (1894), pls. xxvi-xxx; A. Furumark, The Chronology of Mycenaean bouriana1 (1972): p. 121, fig. 20; cf. Catalogue of Vases in Pottery (1950), p. 113; V. Hankey, The Mycenaeans in the the British Museum l.i, A 998.8. 58 Mrs. Hankey places it early in the series; the arc deEastern Mediterranean (1973), pp. 128-136; V. Hankey, P. Warren, Bull. Institute of Classical Studies of the Uni- sign, A. Furumark, The Mycenaean Pottery (1950), Motif 25.9 is derived from the "bivalve shell." versity of London 21 (1974): pp. 142-152.

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 19781

THE

AEGEAN

AND

CYPRUS

315

FIG.

41. Mycenaeanpilgrim flask on a high foot, P 935, Amarna period.

FIG. 42. Mycenaeanvase fragments: top, left, P 623; right,

Fine green-buff clay, stained buff slip, dark brown-black paint. Flat disc, beveled rim on spout, concave spout, low globular body, lower body and foot missing. Spiral on disc, loops around handle bases, flowers on shoulder, groups of three and four fine bands around body. FS 178, FM 82.59 4. Straight-sided alabastron. Tomb II.100, P 609, chamber 4.11 (figs. 39 and 40). Height 0.078 m, diameter 0.113 m. Red clay, pink-buff slip, dark red-orange paint. Rim and neck painted solid with reserved stripes, handles solid, diaper net pattern on shoulder, band framed by stripes at top and bottom of sides, four concentric circles under the base. FS 94, FM 57:2. There are similar pieces at Enkomi.60? Another vase of the Amarna period was found in a baulk at a high level, which was generally archaic; perhaps it was rolled around by the bulldozer. There was no detectable fourteenth-century architecture on
59 Mrs. Hankey points to the oddity of the lack of broad bands separating the groups of fine lines, but has parallels at el-Amarna. ooP. Dikaios, Enkomi 3 a (1971): pls. 207.41 (218), 210.49 (133, Tomb 10), 211.21 (122, Tomb 10); from Amarna, cf. Catalogue of Vases in the British Museum 1.i, A 991.2; from Sesebi, R. Merrillees, Miscellanea Wilbouriana 1 (1972): p. 125, figs. 33-34 (V. Hankey notes the prints are upside down).

P 628; middle, left, P 794; right, P 799; bottom, left, right, P 672. P 274; rg, .

Xv

FIG.

43. Fragments of a Mycenaean open krater with pictorial decoration, P 667.

316

E. D. T. VERMEULE, FLORENCE WOLSKY

[PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC.

FIG.

with sherdfrom a cup decorated 45. Uninventoried a spiral.

FIG.44. Fragment from the shoulder of a Mycenaeanstirrup jar, P 798, Late Helladic III B-C. Drawing by Henry Petersen.

diaper net patternon shoulder,two broad bands framing

four fine stripes below.

the site, which makes this a curiosity, but it goes well enough with the material from Tomb II and Well 2.
5. Pilgrim flask on high foot. P 935, I 9 (fig. 41), in melted mudbrick. Preserved height 0.18 m, diameter 0.135 m. Creamy-buff clay inside, pink outside, pale buff slip, weak red paint. Concentric circles on each face, on the sides a vertical row of dots flanked on each side by a vertical column of arcs, a late version of the foliate band. The spreading foot and tall stem are unusual. FS 187, FM 64.25.

There are numbers of these standard export jars throughout the eastern Mediterranean, with comparable pieces at Enkomi, Klavdhia, Kourion and Maroni on Cyprus.61 The other Mycenaean fragments are small.
7. Fragment of a three-handled jar. Surface bulldozer debris. P 628, J 22 (fig. 42, top, right). Maximum length 0.032 m. Green-gray clay, finely tempered, glossy dark brown paint. Part of a diaper net pattern preserved, 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 Vasorum Antiquorum,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, Mycenaean Pottery in the Levant (1951), pl. VIII.6 (Cyprus Museum 1664); J. L. Benson, Bamboula at Kourion (1972), pl. 32.B 1107.

From the same period, with the Minoan fragments from Well 2, comes part of the handle zone and shoulder of a Mycenaean three-handled jar.
6. Fragmentary three-handled jar. P 623, K 15, Well 2 at -3.63 to -4.11 m (fig. 42, top, left). Maximum height 0.05 m, width 0.045 m. Buff clay and slip, dark brown streaky glaze paint. Handle zone painted solid,

VOL. 122, NO. 5, 1978]

THE AEGEAN AND CYPRUS

317

9. 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, burnished surface, brown paint. Part of a band. B: maximum length 0.026 m. Pink clay, grayish core, burnished 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. Fine buff clay and slip, red paint. Rim banded, above a zone of N-pattern. FS 227/231, FM 60.2.

18.149. Late Helladic III B-C. This is the end of the Bronze Age life of the site. If the bulldozer had not swept away most of Toumba tou Skourou we might be far better informed about the nature of a town which seemed to have been a regular port of call for Minoan ships coming from the Cyclades between about 1520 and 1370 B.c. The surviving material is so fragmentary and worn, it is hard to feel much aesthetic admiration for it; but historically it has considerable importance, and contributes in its own small way to a gradual illumination of the old problem, of why Cyprus writes an Aegean script.63

62Cf. P. Dikaios, Enkomi 3 a (1971), pls 91.14 (2807/1), 111.1982/2 and 3, 1986/3. 63 This survey does not include the Late Cypriote III E. Vermeule, The Mycenaeans in the Eastern Mediterranean, Decorated Ware (Mycenaean III C:1) which is plentiful at pl. VI.2.62 the site but never stratified, only found in pits, particularly 13. Two joining rim fragments of a Mycenaean open outside the north perimeter of the mound, where it was krater. P 667, A 10 (fig. 43). Length at rim 0.065 m. pushed by the bulldozer. There was an uninventoried sherd from a cup decorated Pink-buff clay, red paint. The design is probably part with a spiral, from Square G 6, Locus 13, a mass of eroded of the back of a spotted bull. mudbrick at the east end of the site: pink fabric with white 14. Fragment from the shoulder of a stirrup-jar. P 798, slip and dark paint, perhaps Minoan (fig. 45). This was J 19 (fig. 44). Lost. Length ca. 0.08 m. Pink clay, lost with the other sherds at Skouriotissa. In the Cyprus gray at the core, brown-orange paint. Part of a hand- Survey Collection (C.S 251) from Toumba tou Skourou some series of flowers, made of four chevrons with a there are several other sherds which appear to be from the solid filled arc, fine concentric arcs and fringes. FM Aegean, decorated with spirals.