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Home > Magazines > Archaeology Odyssey > November/December 2002

The Guardians of Tamassos

Rescuing Cyprus’s 2,500-year-old sphinxes and lions

By Marina Solomidou-Ieronymidou

On a cold and rainy morning in January 1997, I received a phone call from Orthodoxos Liasides, the foreman of a maintenance crew working on the monumental tombs of Tamassos, 15 miles southwest of Nicosia. The men were insulating the tombs from the destructive effects of dampness in the soil, and they were digging a trench from which they would apply the protective coating. “Mrs. Marina, you need to come to Tamassos. I think we have found two statues,” he said. “Stop work immediately,” I told him. “Just wait for us. We’ll be there soon.” We arrived at the […]

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Footnotes

1.

See Marian Feldman, “The Iconography of Power: Reading Late Bronze Symbols,” AO 05:03.

Endnotes

1.

See Marguerite Yon, “Les lions archaiques,” Salamine de Chypre 4 (Paris 1973), pp. 19–47; and Annie Caubet, “Stèles funéraires de Chypre au Musée du Louvre,” RDAC (1977), pp. 170–172.