Cypriot Bichrome ware

For a long time, Bichrome Ware was considered to be a key marker for the beginning of the Late Bronze Age.

A large amount of imported Cypriot bichrome ware was found at Tell Kazel, on the Syrian coast, during the excavations that began in 1985.

From that time onwards, the ports of Salamis and Kition (Larnaka) in Cyprus became big centres of trade, from which many exports went into the Levant.

This is a wheel-made pottery featuring rich and symmetrical painted decoration of parallel lines, bands, concentric circles, rhombi, checked, meanders, rosettes, lotus flowers, papyruses and various other floral and geometrical motifs.

They feature unique schematised bichrome type representations of bulls, birds, fishes and additional decorative forms.

[4] By this time, the artists of Cyprus were most heavily influenced by the art of mainland Greece, but Cypriot idiosyncrasies, such as the pitchers with figural spouts still existed.

The human figure made more regular appearances in art than in previous ages, and sculpture became popular on large and minuscule scales.

The project of the origin of the then assumed Second Millennium Palestinian Bichrome Ware was undertaken as part of the PhD thesis of Michal Artzy.