Image Details

Hershel Shanks

In the 1950s Cypriot archaeologist Vassos Karageorghis uncovered the remains of Salamis’s second-century A.D. Roman gymnasium and baths, located on the seaward-side of the colonnaded palaestra (exercise ground). Karageorghis continued to excavate at Salamis until 1974, when his work was halted by the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus. However, a Turkish team headed by Ankara University archaeologist Coskun Özguner has continued to excavate the area around the gymnasium. In 1999, when Özguner uncovered a Roman-period building—probably a villa with baths (shown here, compare with aerial photo)—Karageorghis decried the action as a breach of scholarly ethics.