CHELONES
Cyprus.
On the S coast of the
Karpass peninsula, about 5 km due SE of the village of
Rizokarpasso. The ruins of a small town, now covered
by sand dunes, extend along the shore to the E of the
modern storehouses. A small bay, still used by fishermen, may have been used as an anchorage. Nothing is
known of the ancient name.
Nothing is visible above the surface of the ground. A
sanctuary on the shore at the E end of the town produces fragments of terracotta figurines dating from the
archaic to the Graeco-Roman period. On present-day
evidence the site was in existence from archaic to Early
Byzantine times, when it was abandoned after the first
Arab raids of A.D. 647.
Opposite the storerooms, there are a large rock in the
sea known as Aspronisi and two or three other wave-washed reefs now forming part of the recently constructed fishing shelter. Farther E there are a few more
reefs with a group of small upright rocks known as
Gynaikopetres. These are probably the Karpasian islands
mentioned by Strabo (
14.6.3), who gives the distance
from Karpasia, on the opposite coast, as 30 stadia, an
exact calculation as the crow flies.
Hogarth noticed to the W of the town the remains of
what he believed to have been a slip for the launching
of ships and suggests that the mariners of antiquity
sometimes drew their vessels across the land to Karpasia or vice versa in order to avoid the dangers of Cape Dinaretum.
On the summit of Rani, a hill to the S of Chelones,
are remains of a settlement with a wall protecting it from
the S, the other three sides being practically inaccessible. At the NW end of the summit there is a large
underground cistern supported on square piers. This
fortified site may have been a lookout camp for Chelones. Both sites are unexplored.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
D. G. Hogarth,
Devia Cypria (1889)
79-80; A. Sakellarios,
Τα Κυπριακά I (1890); M. Ohnefalsch-Richter,
Kypros, the Bible and Homer (1893) 27.
K. NICOLAOU