Abstract

A pyxis in a registered private collection in Limassol, said to have been found in a tomb at Amathus. Several pyxides of the same early Geometric period are already known from this site, similarly decorated, but are all rectangular, whereas the one we describe here is crescent-shaped and has on its front a figurine in high relief of a standing female with uplifted arms, the well-known goddess who was introduced to Cyprus from Crete. In Cyprus she was assimilated with the goddess of fertility, whose symbol, in the Near East, is the crescent. Is it possible that the shape of the pyxis may be related with the figurine?