Polis Chrysochous, the modern town in a fertile river valley on the northwest coast of Cyprus mentioned in the scholarly catalogue’s title (but not in the exhibition’s), was, from 1983–2007, the location of excavations by Princeton University’s Cyprus Expedition directed by one of this show’s curators, William A. P. Childs, professor emeritus of art and archaeology. Called “city flowing with gold (chrysos)” since the nineteenth century, the titular City of Gold overlays two rich ancient forebears, which might themselves be considered cities of gold: Marion, a city-kingdom, settled by the eighth century BCE and destroyed in 312 BCE by troops of Ptolemy I Soter, founder of the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt; and Arsinoe, established on the ruins of Marion in the early third century BCE by Ptolemy II Philadelphos of Alexandria (and named after his notorious sister-cum-wife Arsinoe II), which survived into medieval Christian times. The exhibition compellingly contextualizes—archaeologically, culturally, and historically—selected finds from Polis, extending from the Bronze Age down to the sixteenth century CE. The catalogue’s dedication to Erik Sjöqvist, a Princeton professor (1951–69), who earlier was a member of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, which dug in Polis during 1929, underscores the town’s documented excavation history, extending back to the work in Marion’s tombs, begun in 1885 by the German Classical scholar Max Ohnefalsch-Richter. Because the exhibition foregrounds this “documented” history, examples of the extensive finds resulting from both earlier and later tomb looting and undocumented excavation at Marion have been excluded, save for undocumented objects purchased at various times by Cypriot museums themselves.

Contrasting with Princeton’s excellent ancient art exhibition a decade ago (J. Michael Padgett, ed., The Centaur’s Smile: The Human Animal in Early Greek Art, Princeton; Princeton University Press, 2003), which included many objects from private and other collections that lacked documented legal provenance or acquisition dates, City of Gold’s contents are in accord with the UNESCO Convention of 1970, which informs the acquisition guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors. The exhibition’s overall emphasis on the archaeological context of displayed works also contrasts with the more purely historical and art-historical presentation of the splendid Cypriot collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, amassed by the museum’s first director, Luigi Palma di Cesnola, who had engaged in undocumented excavations on the island from the mid-1860s into the 1870s (Vassos Karageorghis with Joan R. Mertens and Marice E. Rose, Ancient Art from Cyprus: The Cesnola Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000).

The first exhibition devoted to the archaeological site of Polis as a whole throughout its history, City of Gold contains many previously unpublished works, and thus, together with the catalogue, provides a valuable synoptic overview, generally not achieved with the narrower focus of individual excavation reports. Through the microcosm of this single location, the show offers insight into the art and archaeology of the island of Cyprus as a proverbial crossroads of the Mediterranean, reflecting influences from Egypt, Greece, and the Ancient Near East, subjugation to Persian, Roman, Byzantine, and Caliphate rule, and the arrival of Crusaders. A concurrent exhibition at the Louvre Museum (October 28, 2012–January 28, 2013; Jannic Durand, Dorota Giovannoni, and Dimitra Mastoraki, eds., Chypre entre Byzance et l’Occident, IVe–XVIe siècle, Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2012) is devoted to the island’s Christian period during the last centuries covered by the Princeton show and similarly reflects such heterogeneity.

The superb installation by Daniel A. Kershaw makes the show readily accessible to both university audiences and the broader public and visually emphasizes the findspots—from pagan tombs to Christian churches (as the exhibition’s subtitle might have read), and also secular public and private buildings—of many of the 110 objects on display. Loans have been drawn from several Cypriot museums, including the Pierides Museum in Larnaka, reflecting the extensive collaboration of the island’s Department of Antiquities, and also from the Louvre and British Museums. The exhibition curators, including the museum’s ancient art curator, J. Michael Padgett, have all worked at Polis, and they have subtly incorporated the loans into an unfolding display saga by featuring thought-provoking interconnections with the installation’s illustrated wall texts and enlarged site photographs.

In the dramatic initial gallery, a blown-up historic black-and-white photograph showing an ancient tomb interior (fourth-century BCE tomb at Polis-Kaparka, Swedish Cyprus Expedition, Tomb 22) is mounted on the dark blood-red wall facing the entryway. And a pair of diagonally disposed blood-red stepped statue bases creates a passageway converging toward a spotlighted marble torso of a youth placed before the photograph. This fragmentary Parian marble Kouros of ca. 510–500 BCE (London, British Museum 1887.8–1.1; cat. no. 1), found by Ohnefalsch-Richter in 1886 standing in the dromos (entry ramp) of a multichambered tomb at Marion (Polis-Necropolis II, Tomb 92), must have been an expensive Greek import to Cyprus, which has no native marble. Thus this gallery’s design evokes a tomb’s dromos, a space employed in Cyprus for the placement of sculptures. And the aforementioned stepped bases bear fine fourth-century BCE Cypriot tomb statuettes of limestone and terra cotta, including a seated mourning woman with her himation pulled over her head in Greek fashion (Paris, Louvre AM 89; cat. no. 2).

A vitrine, introducing typical Marion tomb finds, contains gold and silver jewelry. These pieces—produced on Cyprus itself between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE—include a locally fashionable pair of gold-plated metal spiral earrings with terminals in the form of female heads and a gold-beaded necklace with an amphora-shaped pendant (Polis Chrysochous, Local Museum of Marion and Arsinoe [hence LMMA], MMA 139 and MMA 372; cat. nos. 11 and 15).

While this exhibition downplays the reputed Greekness of Marion mentioned by ancient authors, Marion’s affinity for imported Greek, and particularly Attic, pottery is nonetheless suggested by a few examples from tombs, including a splendid Chian chalice with a sphinx of ca. 580 BCE (Nicosia, Cyprus Museum 1944/1–28/2; cat. no. 32); the well-known Athenian white-ground oil bottle (alabastron) with female figures of ca. 510–500 BCE, signed by the potter Pasiades (London, British Museum 1888.8–1.61 [B 668]; cat no. 21); and an engaging fifth-century “rattling” cup decorated with lustrous black and coral-red gloss, which once contained clay pellets inside its foot (Polis Chrysochous, LMMA, MMA 203; cat. no. 36).

Locally produced Cypriot pottery is presented throughout, from Drab Polished ware of the Bronze Age (cat. no. 24) down to Roman red-slipped terra sigillata (cat. no. 86) and medieval sgraffito ware (cat. nos.106–107) from Arsinoe. Jugs embellished with terra-cotta figures on their shoulders are associated with Archaic and Classical Marion: a sixth-century BCE example, said to have been found there, features a female shoulder figure herself carrying a tiny jug (Polis Chrysochous, LMMA, MMA 212; cat. no. 6).

A late sixth-century Archaic Cypriot limestone funerary lion from Marion (Polis Chrysochous, LMMA, MMA 277; cat. no. 23)—which graces campus exhibition banners (though its face is reconstructed in plaster)—guards the transitional space, displaying tomb pottery, that leads toward the central gallery. Significantly, this sculpture’s carved dedication to Kilikas by his brother is inscribed in the Cypriot syllabic script employed locally for writing Greek, even on the fifth- and fourth-century Classical silver coinage of kings of Marion (cat. nos. 40–43).

The exhibition overall is not rich in monumental Cypriot limestone sculpture: the large central gallery features interesting, predominately terra-cotta objects, many of them dedicated as votives in Marion’s sanctuaries. An exotic-looking Cypriot sixth-century terra-cotta statuette of a woman with a hooked “Semitic” nose wearing a nosering and multiple earrings (Polis Chrysochous, LMMA, MMA 86 [head]; Princeton Cyprus Expedition R11662/TC4681 [head], R11666/TC4683 [body]; cat. no. 57), for example, was found in a votive pit in the sixth-century BCE sanctuary at Polis-Peristeries. According to its label, “To destroy the statuette’s power before burial, its head was twisted and pulled out of its unnaturally small body.” An enlarged excavation photograph on an adjacent wall plaque shows the statuette as discovered, packed inside a fragmentary pithos (storage jar).

Colorful “maps” with deep sea-blue water on wall plaques throughout the exhibition are, in fact, impressive satellite photographic views. And deep blue is employed as an exhibition design element. The central gallery is dominated by a huge photographic reconstruction (cat. frontispiece), shown against a deep blue background, of fragments associated with an amazing late sixth-century Egyptianizing colossal male statue wearing a kilt (H: ca. 3 m), which could have been a votive or a divine image. Most pieces were found in the temple of Marion’s fourth-century BCE Maratheri sanctuary, while the head, possibly sporting a pharaonic beard and wig, was built into the city wall. The fragmentary terra-cotta head and a clenched fist (Polis Chrysochous, LMMA, Princeton Cyprus Expedition R2087/TC300 [fist], R496/TC5 [head]; cat. no. 71) are alone displayed in an adjacent vitrine; this head graces the catalogue’s front cover.

Hellenistic Arsinoe’s once-impressive architecture is documented by remains of a third-century BCE porticoed building excavated by Princeton. A technically interesting reconstruction of a limestone Ionic column capital (Polis Chrysochous, LMMA, Princeton Cyprus Expedition R37/AS17 et al.; cat. no. 84), assembled from fourteen non-joining fragments embedded into a digitally printed three-dimensional form (W: 98.5 cm.), conveys this building’s quality to exhibition visitors. Significant traces of the capital’s original red, blue, yellow, and green paint are visible.

The final gallery—a deep grayed blue—is constructed to resemble a three-aisled, apsed Christian basilica: two of Arsinoe’s Late Antique sixth-century Cypriot churches (at Polis-Petrerades) have been excavated by Princeton. At the apse end, two actual Corinthian capitals of imported marble (Polis Chrysochous, LMMA, Princeton Cyprus Expedition R6385/AS123, R30155/AS852; cat. nos. 108–109) top blue “columns” of this basilican gallery. Also exhibited here are diverse finds from Arsinoe of Roman to medieval Christian times, notably including a Roman first-century CE mold-blown glass wine beaker inscribed in Greek “Euphrosyne” ([goddess of] good cheer) (London, British Museum 1890.8–8.1; cat. no 91); a fragmentary bronze grape-vine-wrapped lamp stand, dating between the fourth and the seventh centuries CE, found in a Christian Basilica at Polis-Petrerades (Polis Chrysochous, LMMA, Princeton Cyprus Expedition R38489/BR1442; cat. no. 99); and a fragmentary limestone block preserving a fresco of ca. 1400 CE showing a bearded male head with a halo (Polis Chrysochous, LMMA, Princeton Cyprus Expedition R33666/AS1015; cat. no. 110).

While the first and last galleries both immerse visitors in evocative display environments, physically constructed archaeological or architectural scale models have purposely not been employed in the installation. Instead, a narrated animated film, playing in a sectioned-off viewing area, presents virtual reality reconstructions of works of architecture excavated by Princeton at Polis—Marion’s sanctuaries at Peristeries and Maratheri, and Arsinoe’s Hellenistic porticoed building and a Late Antique church at Polis-Petrerades. Moreover, in the film, some exhibition objects, like the (reconstructed) Egyptianizing colossal statue, are shown in their original contexts through incorporated scanned images. Ideally, a university museum exhibition ought to have a close relationship with the curriculum. While past students have excavated at Polis, this virtual reality film was itself created by students in a seminar during the Spring 2012 semester, led by exhibition curator Joanna S. Smith, from Princeton’s Department of Art and Archaeology, and Szymon Rusinkiewicz, a computer science professor.

During the nineteenth century, eye-opening displays of undocumented finds from Cyprus at the Louvre Museum (1863) and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1873) were vastly influential in putting the archaeology of this island on the map. Princeton’s exploration of the documented excavation history of Polis Chrysochous inspires fresh appreciation of the fruits of Cypriot archaeology in a different age.