A research team from the University of Siena discovered a 4000-year-old temple in Erimi, Cyprus.
The temple was discovered in an area that had previously held a craftsman’s workshop.
According to archaeologist Luca Bombardieri, who spoke with Italian news agency ANSA, this is the island’s oldest holy site identified so far.
Bombardieri has been managing the excavations for the past 15 years, which have been carried out in partnership with Cyprus’s Department of Antiquities and the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of an international cooperation effort.
The scientist stated, “It is a large room where a big brazier illuminated a large monolith day and night.” It is essentially a “temple created before the temples we usually know,” erected inside a working setting, and demonstrates “how complex and rich the lives of these people were—craftsmen who lived four millennia before us, just a few centuries before the first cities on the island were born.”
Ancient femicide revealed
The Italian expert also stated that during the most recent excavation expedition, the skeleton of a young woman, around 20 years old, was discovered. Evidence implies that she was murdered and her body “sealed,” maybe to conceal the crime and keep her spirit from “disturbing” the living.
Her killers cracked her skull with a spear or a large stone and laid her on the floor, holding a heavy stone on her breast to keep her still. No expensive objects or grave goods were discovered in the surrounding region, indicating that traditional burial customs were not observed.
Italian scientists believe this might be an old incidence of femicide, probably connected to the young woman’s pregnancy.
The door of the modest house was tightly shut, much like a tomb. This occurrence occurred during the Bronze Age, between 2000 and 1600 BCE.
The femicide “may be connected to other cases recorded in the past in other parts of Cyprus,” according to the Italian archaeologist. The victims were always young women, slaughtered and separated from their communities, even from the deceased, maybe owing to maternity concerns.
The workshop’s importance
With approximately 1000 square metres of workshops, storage rooms, and big dyeing basins, the Erimi workshop took up the whole summit of a hill on Cyprus’s southern coast, near the modern city of Limassol. It was a perfect place for its operation since it was well-ventilated and adjacent to fresh water from a river, and the soil naturally developed plants needed to dye garments the lovely red colour that made them unique and expensive.
Further down the hill, dwellings were crowded together, and the deceased were buried at a suitable distance, the wealthy in vast chamber tombs replete with burial goods, and the destitute in plain pits.
Erimi rose to prominence and power as a result of its wine-colored fabrics.
Perhaps increased money brought opponents, both internal and foreign. The village’s narrative ended suddenly; it was abandoned, and the workshop was locked with all of its valuable items, including the temple and its monolith.
The roof collapsed due to a fire, which may have been started by fleeing locals. Paradoxically, this act of desertion preserved these great weavers’ adventurous past.
“The collapse of the structure, which sealed these remains, allowed archaeologists to rediscover them after four thousand years,” according to Bombardieri. “And to tell the story of an extraordinary community and a village that had almost become a city.”
( Source: Philenews)
