In the heart of the Kyrenia district, in the picturesque Morphou Bay, lies the small village of Agia Eirini (Saint Irene), known in Turkish as Akdeniz. This place, under the de facto control of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, is home to one of the most fascinating archaeological discoveries in the Mediterranean: the so-called Cypriot Terracotta Army.
The discovery, made by the Swedish Cyprus Expedition in 1929, brought to light an ancient sanctuary with more than two thousand terracotta figures dating from between 650 and 500 B.C.
The story of this archaeological treasure’s discovery begins in the summer of 1929 when the local priest, Papa Prokopios, visited the museum in Nicosia. He had captured a looter in his field in the village of Agia Eirini and brought with him one of the stolen objects, the upper part of a 6th-century B.C. terracotta statue.
Immediately, the piece caught the attention of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, led by Einar Gjerstad, who quickly requested excavation rights and began their work in Prokopios’ field in November of the same year.
The excavations revealed a sanctuary that had been in uninterrupted use from the Late Bronze Age, around 1200 B.C., to the end of the Cypriot Archaic period. The most significant phase of the site corresponds to the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., from which most of the figures found date.
Just half a meter below the sand, archaeologists discovered around two thousand terracotta figures lying and standing, arranged in a semicircle, reminiscent of a theater formation. These figures represented priests, warriors, common people, and animals, standing out both for their diversity and their size, with the largest being life-sized.
Archaeologists discovered that the Agia Eirini sanctuary went through several phases of construction and renovation. Originally, it consisted of a complex of rectangular houses made of mud bricks on solid stone foundations.
These houses were arranged around a large open courtyard, where the houses to the west and north probably served as residences and storerooms for the priests, while those in the center and south were used for cult purposes.
The complex housed cult objects such as offering tables, large pithoi (storage jars), libation vessels, a stone cult axe, and terracotta bull figures. The nature of the offerings and the arrangement of the objects suggest that the cult was dedicated to agrarian deities who protected crops and livestock, symbolizing fertility and abundance.
Over time, the ancient sanctuary was covered and buried underground, and a new one was erected on top. This new sanctuary differed from the previous one by being an irregularly shaped open temenos, surrounded by a peribolos (priest’s garden or orchard). Numerous terracotta offerings, mainly bull figures, were found in this new enclosure around an altar covered in layers of ash and charred remains, suggesting the practice of blood sacrifices.
During the Cypro-Geometric III period, the sanctuary underwent another transformation. The walls of the peribolos were raised, and a new rectangular altar was erected, displacing the old offerings to a nearby deposit.
The votive offerings also evolved, now introducing anthropomorphic figures and minotaurs alongside the traditional animal figures, indicating a growing anthropomorphization of the venerated deity, who also began to be seen as a warrior divinity.
The peak of the Agia Eirini sanctuary came during the Cypro-Archaic I period when the temenos was expanded to accommodate more structures. Two of these, in the southern part, probably served as enclosures for sacred trees, a feature reminiscent of Minoan culture. Here, figures with bull masks, interpreted as priests, were found, providing clues about the cult’s rituals, which included music, as suggested by the numerous figurines with tambourines and flutes.
The offerings continued to be mostly terracotta figures arranged in semicircles around the altar, with the smallest ones placed closest to the altar and the largest ones behind, so that all were visible during ceremonies.
At the beginning of the Cypro-Archaic II period, the sanctuary was repeatedly flooded, leading to its eventual abandonment around 500 B.C. However, there was a brief revival of the cult in the 1st century B.C., although on a much smaller scale and with fewer resources.
The deity to whom the sanctuary was dedicated and under what form it was worshiped remains unknown. Archaeologists believe that an oval stone or betyl found in the most recent layers may have been the cult object, being transferred from one phase of the sanctuary to another as it expanded.
The site fell into oblivion until Papa Prokopios unknowingly cultivated corn over the ancient terracotta sculptures. The looters, however, must have known that something valuable was buried there. Their fortuitous discovery thus led to the revelation of one of Cyprus’s and the Mediterranean’s most important sets of archaeological artifacts.
In 1931, half of the objects found were sent to Sweden with the permission of the British colonial government. Therefore, many of the terracotta figures discovered at Agia Eirini are in the Medelhavsmuseet (Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities) in Stockholm, where they are displayed as a testament to the sanctuary’s glorious past, Cyprus’s rich cultural heritage, and the work of Swedish archaeologists. The other half is in the museum in Nicosia on the island of Cyprus.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on July 2, 2024: El Ejército de Terracota de Agia Irini, el mayor hallazgo de esculturas de finales de la Edad del Hierro
SOURCES
Einar Gjerstad, et al., The Swedish Cyprus Expedition
Kristian Göransson, The Swedish Cyprus Expedition, The Cyprus collections in Stockholm and the Swedish Excavations after the SCE
Medelhavsmuseet, Cyprus, 7000 Years of History
Wikipedia, Agia Irini
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