Cypriot Model small boat with figure: Cypro-Archaic II (600-480BC)

Probably missing two figures, remains of barnacles or other sea mollusk growths. Mended from several pieces. The principal mend is across by the boatman’s feet, rising each side in a Y shape, a strip of restoration follows each branch. Modern paint concealing the mends has been removed. Terracotta. Possibly originally with painted detail. (DJ 269 AN 249)

The boat was probably intended as a votive offering at a coastal shrine, much like the model ships now hung in some churches. The adhering mollusk sea-shells might suggest it was in a tomb or shrine later invaded by seawater or in a wrecked ship or deliberately cast into the sea, perhaps in a site that has now become land due to tectonic uplift.

A figure, probably the steersman, reclines by the sternpost, and might represent the donor, thus putting him under the protection of the deity. On the thwarts across the front are scars probably indicating two(?) missing figures of rowers, the large foot well suggesting they faced backwards. Within the projecting prow is an object hard to identify: possibly an animal head. Below it, on the underside is a vertical flat projection, probably a cutwater. Small model boats with figures have mostly been found at Salamis or the nearby Famagusta area on the East coast. Many boat models have also been found at the port city of Amathus, though most of those represent larger ships not containing figures.

A TL test by Oxford Authentication dates the piece as 850-1250 CE, but this must be wrong. Stylistically it is like Archaic examples, and Byzantines didn’t make models like this. The restorations might have been dried or hardened in an oven, affecting the apparent test result.

(DJ 269 AN 249)

Cf. V Karageorghis 1995, Pl LXXV (7)– LXXVII, p.128-131; V Karageorghis 2006 p186, 189.