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Hathoric Capital from Kition
Unknown · Cypro-Archaic II, 600-475 BC
A monumental limestone capital, over a metre and a quarter high, shows on its front the face of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, with her broad wig and necklaces, rising from a papyrus umbel decorated with leaves, flowers and lotus buds. On top of the wig sits a small shrine in which a cobra rears up; its doorway is flanked by pilasters ending in more Hathor heads and topped by a cavetto cornice with a winged sun disc. Turn to the back and the shrine gives way to a tree of life built of proto-Aeolic volutes, guarded by two sphinxes. Look at the goddess's cow ears, which peep out beneath the wig.
The capital comes from Kition, the Phoenician city on the site of modern Larnaca, and was found near the sanctuary of Astarte on the mound of Bamboula. Made between six hundred and four hundred and seventy-five years before Christ, it combines Egyptian, Phoenician and Cypriot elements in a single votive monument, a good picture of the island's mixed culture. The Louvre bought it at public auction in eighteen eighty-seven.
Did You Know? The capital is carved on both faces, so worshippers walking around it saw the Egyptian goddess Hathor on one side and a Phoenician tree of life with two sphinxes on the other.
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