Image Details

In the late 1860s, British consul to Cyprus Robert Hamilton Lang began excavating what he thought was a temple to Apollo at the ancient site of Idalion. In his excavation report, however, Lang did not provide a map showing the location of the temple—and the site was lost to archaeologists for more than a century. Recent excavations have shown that the site is not a temple but an open-air sanctuary. In the sanctuary excavators found a tabun (an earthen oven), copper-working and olive-pressing installations, and numerous leg bones of sheep and goats, used to make burnt offerings to a deity.