In the Levant / Twenty Fifth Impression

by Charles Dudley Warner

From 1870 to 1872 the General's attention was directed to the southwestern portion of the island, and he laid open the necropoli of Marium, Paphos, Alamas, and Soli, and three ancient cities whose names are yet unknown. In 1873 he explored and traced the cities of Throni, Leucolla, and Arsinôe, and the necropoli of several towns still unknown. In 1874 and 1875 he brought to light the royal cities of Amathus and Curium, and located the little town of Kury.

It would not be possible here to enumerate all the objects of art or worship, and of domestic use, which these excavations have yielded. The statuary and the thousands of pieces of glass, some of them rivalling the most perfect Grecian shapes in form, and excelling the Venetian colors in the iridescence of age, perhaps attract most attention in the Metropolitan Museum. From the tombs were taken thousands of vases of earthenware, some in alabaster and bronze, statuettes in terra-cotta, arms, coins, scarabæi, cylinders, intaglios, cameos, gold ornaments, and mortuary steles. In the temples were brought to light inscriptions, bas-reliefs, architectural fragments, and statues of the different nations who have conquered and occupied the island. The inscriptions are in the Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Greek, and the Cypriote languages; the last-mentioned being, in the opinion of the explorer, an ancient Greek dialect.

At Curium, nineteen feet below the surface of the ground, were found the remains of the Temple of Apollo Hylates; the sculptures contained in it belong to the Greek period from 700 to 100 B.C. At Amathus some royal tombs were opened, and two marble sarcophagi of large dimensions, one of them intact, were discovered, which are historically important, and positive additions to the remains of the best Greek art.

After Golgos, Paleo Paphos yielded the most interesting treasures. Here existed a temple to the Paphian Venus, whose birthplace was in sight of its portals, famous throughout the East; devotees and pilgrims constantly resorted to it, as they do now to the shrines of Mecca and Jerusalem. Not only the maritime adventurers and traders from Asia Minor and the Grecian mainland crowded to the temple of this pleasing and fortunate goddess, and quitted their vows or propitiated her favor by gifts, but the religious or the superstitious from Persia and Assyria and farthest Egypt deposited there their votive offerings. The collector of a museum of antiquity that should illustrate the manners and religion of the thousand years before the Christian era could ask nothing better than these deposits of many races during many centuries in one place.

The excavations at Paphos were attended with considerable danger; more than once the workmen were obliged to flee to save their lives from the fanatic Moslems. The town, although it has lost its physical form, and even its name (its site is now called Baffo), retains the character of superstition it had when St. Paul found it expedient to darken the vision of Elymas there, as if a city, like a man, possessed a soul that outlives the body.

We spent the afternoon in examining the new collection of General di Cesnola, not so large as that in the Metropolitan Museum, but perhaps richer in some respects, particularly in iridescent glass.

In the summer of 1875, however, the labors of the indefatigable explorer were crowned with a discovery the riches of which cast into the shade the real or pretended treasures of the “House of Priam,”—a discovery not certainly of more value to art than those that preceded it, but well calculated to excite popular wonder. The finding of this subterranean hoard reads like an adventure of Aladdin.

In pursuing his researches at Curium, on the southwestern side of the island, General di Cesnola came upon the site of an ancient temple, and uncovered its broken mosaic pavement. Beneath this, and at the depth of twenty-five feet, he broke into a subterranean passage cut in the rock. This passage led to a door; no genie sat by it, but it was securely closed by a stone slab. When this was removed, a suite of four rooms was disclosed, but they were not immediately accessible; earth sifting through the roofs for ages had filled them, and it required the labor of a month to clean out the chambers. Imagine the feverish enthusiasm of the explorer as he slowly penetrated this treasure-house, where every stroke of the pick disclosed the gleam of buried treasure! In the first room were found only gold objects; in the second only silver and silver-gilt ornaments and utensils; in the third alabasters, terra-cottas, vases, and groups of figures; in the fourth bronzes, and nothing else. It is the opinion of the discoverer that these four rooms were the depositories where the crafty priests and priestesses of the old temple used to hide their treasures during times of war or sudden invasion. I cannot but think that the mysterious subterranean passages and chambers in the ancient temples of Egypt served a similar purpose. The treasure found scattered in these rooms did not appear to be the whole belonging to the temple, but only a part, left perhaps in the confusion of a hasty flight.

Among the articles found in the first room, dumped in a heap in the middle (as if they had been suddenly, in a panic, stripped from the altar in the temple and cast into a place of concealment), were a gold cup covered with Egyptian embossed work, and two bracelets of pure gold weighing over three pounds, inscribed with the name of “Etevander, King of Paphos.” This king lived in 635 B.C., and in 620 b. c. paid tribute to the Assyrian monarch Assurbanapal (Sardanapalus), as is recorded on an Assyrian tablet now in the British Museum. There were also many gold necklaces, bracelets, ear-rings, finger-rings, brooches, seals, armlets, etc., in all four hundred and eighty gold articles.

In the silver-room, arranged on the benches at the sides, were vases, bottles, cups, bowls, bracelets, finger-rings, ear-rings, seals, etc. One of the most curious and valuable objects is a silver-gilt bowl, having upon it very fine embossed Egyptian work, and evidently of high antiquity.