NEA Paphos III

by Jolanta Mlynarczyk

Excavations carried since 1965 at Nea Paphos by the Polish Archeological Mission have produced a number of important discoveries. One of the most spectacular was the so-called Villa of Theseus, a Roman palace, one of the largest in the Mediterranean, probably an official residence of the Roman governors of Cyprus. It comprised a series of figural mosaics, marble sculptures and a quantity of small finds. The so-called House of Aion, another Roman edifice unearthed in 1983/84 has yielded a truly unique set of figural mosaics with mythological themes. All these finds testify to the importance of Nea Paphos the "sacred metropolis of all the cities of the island". Investigations carried out under the Roman buildings have produced rich finds relating to earlier periods. Fragments of Hellenistic streets, drains, houses, workshops, hundreds of artifacts of all kinds allow to draw a picture of the development of the town from the end of the 4th cent. B.C., a probable date of its official founding, down to the Roman period. The present study, the third volume in our series entitled "Nea Paphos" has at its basis almost twenty campaigns of excavations and innumerable field obserevations made by all members of the mission and the authoress herself who participated for several years in the field work. The study reconsiders all the existing archaeological data and all other sources pertaining to the early history of the town, be they epigraphical or literary. Upon this basis it draws a multifacial picture of the town development in the first three centuries of its existence.