Palaipaphos, or Old Paphos, was home to the most venerable sanctuary of Aphrodite in the ancient Mediterranean world. Also known as Kouklia (‘darling girl’), the site lies in the vicinity of the beach where she first appeared, birthed from the sea at Petra tou Rhomiou. The present volume marks the first in the series inaugurated by the Swiss–German project in 1977, Ausgrabungen in Alt-Paphos auf Cyprus, to present the remains of the Aphrodite Sanctuary, recovered since 1888, in systematic fashion (previous entries having dealt with the north-east city gate, the Persian siege ramp located there, Cypriot-Syllabic inscriptions from the site, the Iron Age cemetery at Palaepaphos-Skales and lamps). A good general summary of the site may be found in F.G. Maier, Guide to Palaipaphos (Kouklia) (2004).

The sanctuary itself is dominated by two monumental complexes, one dating to the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200 b.c.) and the other to the Roman period (late first/early second century a.d.). Cult activity at the site was ongoing, spanning some 1,600 years, until the Late Empire. While the specific deity venerated from earliest times at Old Paphos is unknown, she was likely a manifestation of the ‘Great Goddess’, easily assimilated to Aphrodite in time, and facilitated by the latter's association with Astarte in the East (p. 161; her cultic representation remained aniconoic). In keeping with Cypriot and Near Eastern religious traditions, the cult buildings were never developed into canonical Graeco-Roman temples, but rather consisted of temenos enclosures and halls, constructed of profoundly impressive monolithic dressed ashlar masonry in the Late Bronze Age. However, these remains suffered greatly from late-antique and medieval depredations, which quarried the building stone as well as burned it, along with most decorative and dedicatory stone sculpture, for lime. While future volumes in the series will be dedicated to the architectural history of the Sanctuary of Aphrodite, the authors, along with F.G. Maier, the project director, supply enough background and history of the exploration of the sanctuary in Chapters 1 and 2, accompanied by four folding plans, to establish context for the work which follows.

For the gap in the architectural history of the sanctuary, between its Late Bronze Age and Imperial Roman phases, elements of which may have disappeared in the post-antique ravaging of the site, is, in fact, filled by the plentiful votive and other sculptural fragments (numbering over 9,000) which were recovered. These testify to continuous and surely intensive cultic activity in the intervening periods. Primarily consisting of small terracotta statuettes, sculpture in limestone and marble is also attested, along with bone and ivory, virtually all bronze having vanished into the melting pot (their presence attested, however, by nearly 50 inscribed statue bases).

The difficulties in presenting this material are laid out in Chapters 1 and 2. Due to the shallow deposition of soil across the flat terrain of the sanctuary, intact, primary deposits of archaeological stratigraphy are largely absent (as illustrated in the section drawing reproduced in folding Plan 4). The votive pits (bothroi) which would have once contained them were inevitably disturbed and their contents scattered. Therefore, all of the votive material was strewn throughout secondary use, mixed deposits of later date. In spite of this, the authors present the context from which the objects were recovered in a series of tables (pp. 8–10, along with folding Plans 2–3; some 8,600, or 96% of them having been recovered in deposits associated with the recent excavation of a Roman peristyle house just west of the Late Bronze Age sanctuary). The catalogue of 1,895 selected pieces is presented in Chapters 3 and 4, organised chronologically and by size and subject. Typologies follow those established elsewhere (cited in extensive footnotes and bibliography) and were refined internally by the assemblage itself. The majority are terracotta examples of small handmade female figurines with upraised arms (the so-called ‘Goddess with Raised Arms’), but mould-made figurines, males, animals and trees are also represented. Numerically, most objects date to the Archaic and Early Classical periods, with few examples dating to the Late Bronze Age, two to the Cypro-Geometric period and only a handful to the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Chapter 5 includes interpretative synthesis and summary of the material and its significance, from the small votive terracottas to the very fragmentary larger scale stone sculpture. Extensive indexes of votives in the Old Paphos museum and excavation storage magazines, and of those in European Museums, follow in Chapter 6, along with photographic illustrations of the catalogue in 44 plates (including Plates 1–8 in colour, to illustrate notable examples, including the painted detail with which most were finished).

This is a highly useful volume, the result of much labour, for documenting and reassembling under less than optimum circumstances the array of votive dedications from one of the most renowned sanctuaries of antiquity. Spanning as it does the Late Bronze Age to the Roman period, and like Cyprus in general, straddling orient–occident, the Sanctuary of Aphrodite bridges both time and space across significant chronological and cultural thresholds.