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Selected and rare materials, excerpts and observations from ancient, medieval and contemporary authors, travelers and researchers about Cyprus.
 
 
 
 
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GIOVANNI MARITI
Travels in the Island of Cyprus
page 37

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IV] Of ^e °f Larnaca 33 supposed that the glaze was made with sea sand and lime mixed in boiling oil : if it be so, the island must indeed have produced olives abundantly. Towards the western end of the town at a distance of 100 paces from the last houses there is a property belonging to the MM. Pory, a French family long domiciled in Cyprus : in one of the fields was found a subterranean chamber, full of figurines and terra cotta lamps only, so it is supposed to have been a shop where such things were made. The Turkish government forbids excavations, and MM. Pory, fearing that they could not without risk allow the search which curious persons were making there, had the shop again filled up with earth, and its position is now unknown to all but a few who are well acquainted with the place. In 1766 Sr Zambelli, a Venetian merchant, in opening the foundations for the house which he was building to the north of Larnaca on rising ground just outside the town, found many tombs of soft marble, large enough to hold a body at full length. They bore no inscriptions, but in some were several skulls, and round them little vases of terra cotta, full of such small bones that one might think they were those of birds. The Turks affected to have a claim upon Sr Zambelli as though he had disturbed the bodies of deceased Moslem here buried, but they were made to see that the tombs were much older than their time, and that the bodies in them were not arranged in their fashion, so they held their peace, finding that they could not exact money, as they were probably prepared to do had their suspicions been verified. To the north-west of Larnaca, a few paces outside the town there is a small mosque called by the Moslem "Arab," and by the Greeks " St Arab " : both sects hold it in great veneration, the one deeming it dedicated to one of their Dervishes, the other to some saint. The Turks respect the mosque, or rather little chapel which they say was built by the said Arab, and the Greeks devoutly visit the sepulchre, a subterranean c. M. т. 3

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