Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Qupperneq 96

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LE NORD
In a place which as early as the Late Cypriote Bronze Age was
a sanctuary with buildings connected with an open temenos, a
new area had been enclosed about the middle of the 7th century
B. C. The centre of this area was constituted by an altar round
which during the period 650—500 B. C. votive statues, most
of them being of terra-cotta, were placed in a semicircle. As
the area repeatedly had been inundated by rain-water mixed with
sand, the statues, about 2,000 in number, had been preserved
nearly exactly in their original position. This enormous find of
sculptures is of fundamental importance for the determination
of the history of the development of Cypriote sculpture during
the periods just mentioned. As the inundations took place at dif-
ferent times and the level of the floor thus successively was
raised, it was possible on a stratigraphical basis to determine in
which order the statues were deposited in the sanctuary. The
sculptures at Ajia Irini could be divided into seven different
styles showing different influence from North Syria, Egypt, and,
later, Greece. Ajia Irini must become the starting-point for any
discussion of the history of Cypro-Archaic sculpture. Also a large
number of other votive objects were found within the holy
area, thus about 300 scarabs. The place is of fundamental im-
portance not only from the point of view of the history of art,
but also as regards the history of religion, as the observations
which could be made during the excavations highly contribute
to throwing a light on many problems of the history of religion
during the earlier periods of Cyprus such as the dependence of
Cypriote religion on Minoan and Oriental influences.50
Vouni.51 The excavations which perhaps were most important,
50 Sjöqvist, Die Kultgeschichte eines cyprischen Temenos, in the Archiv
fiir Religionswissenschaft 1932, p. 315.
51 Preliminary reports on the great excavations are: Gjerstad, The Palace
at Vouni, in the Corolla Arch., Lund 1932; —, Palatset pa Vouni,
in the Studier tillagnade H. K. H. Kronprins Gustaf Adolf 1932. A
polemical contribution by Gjerstad to the debate on the Vouni palace
in the American Journal of Archaeology 1933, p. 589; Westholm,
Vounipalatsets vattencisterner, ledningssystem och hadanlaggning, in
Rörinstallatören 1939. The principal publication found in Swed. Cyp.
Exp. III, p. 111. The palace as well as the surrounding temples are
treated in various connexions in other papers published by the ex-
cavators: Westholm, Nyfunna fragment till koren fran Vouni, in
the Konsthistorisk Tidskrift 1939 and —, Myrons hronsko, ihid. 1940.