A cache of 3,400-year-old gold ornaments found in Cyprus is providing new evidence of how closely connected the ancient Mediterranean had become during the Late Bronze Age.
The discoveries were made in chamber tombs at Hala Sultan Tekke, an important port city near modern-day Larnaca. Excavations carried out between 2016 and 2024 uncovered nine gold forehead bands, or crowns, together with two thin gold mouthpieces that had been placed over the lips of the dead.
A study published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology concludes that the pieces were made by local craftsmen, even though their decoration draws on artistic traditions from Egypt, Mycenaean Greece, the Minoan world and the Near East.
At the time, Hala Sultan Tekke ranked among the largest cities in the eastern Mediterranean. Occupied from about 1630 to 1150 BC, it covered at least 25 hectares and owed much of its prosperity to copper production and overseas trade.
Imported goods reached the city from remarkable distances. Lapis lazuli came from Afghanistan, amber travelled south from the Baltic, while agate arrived from India. Those trade routes also carried ideas, fashions and artistic styles, all of which found their way into the work of Cypriot goldsmiths.
The tombs had collapsed thousands of years ago, burying everything beneath layers of earth and stone. Ironically, that destruction protected the burials from later disturbance.
One gold crown stands out for its unusual decoration. It carries images of bulls topped with solar discs, surrounded by palm branches and rosettes. The design echoes depictions of Egypt’s sacred Apis bull, yet other details point towards Mycenaean influence. Rather than copying foreign styles outright, the jeweller combined them into something new.
The burial in which the crown was found produced another surprise. The ornament belonged to a woman estimated to have been between 35 and 40 years old when she died. Because bull imagery is often associated with male authority, the discovery suggests the symbol may have held a wider meaning than previously assumed.
Some of the heavier crowns bear clear signs of wear, indicating they had been used before being placed in the tomb. Others are so delicate that they were probably made specifically for funerary rites.
The gold mouthpieces remain something of a mystery. Similar objects have been found elsewhere around the Mediterranean, but no clear explanation has emerged for their purpose. They are generally thought to have formed part of burial ceremonies linked to beliefs about the afterlife.
Although the decorative motifs originated far beyond Cyprus, the ornaments themselves appear to have been made locally. The gold may have reached the island from Nubia in Egypt or from the ancient mines of Ada Tepe in what is now Bulgaria.
The tombs themselves were surprisingly plain. They were cut into clay and marked only discreetly, perhaps to avoid attracting looters even in antiquity.
Only a small part of Hala Sultan Tekke has been explored so far. With most of the ancient city still buried, archaeologists expect many more discoveries to emerge from a site that played a key role in Bronze Age trade across the eastern Mediterranean.
Header Image Credit : Rainer Feldbacher and Peter M. Fischer
Sources : Oxford Journal of Archaeology – https://doi.org/10.1111/ojoa.70012
