McGee, Samantha2019-05-202019-05-202018-06https://hdl.handle.net/1794/24584Submitted to the Undergraduate Library Research Award scholarship competition: (2019). 150 p.Cyprus’ location just beneath the Anatolian peninsula has made the island a meeting ground of many of the iconic Mediterranean powers of history, including Greece, Egypt, Assyria, and Persia. There has been a great deal of research on the way Cyprus was influenced by external forces, as well as how these cultural influences were engaged and manipulated on the island. Yet more research is needed with a primary focus on the local identity and use of Cypriot material culture. Therefore, this thesis seeks to reorient the focus of the study of Cypriot antiquities towards their internal context by analyzing the local significance of three Cypriot sarcophagi with relief sculpture from the first half of the fifth century BCE. These three objects are similar in date and form, and they are from three different cities: Amathous, Golgoi, and Palaipafos, providing context for inter-island diversity at a time of extreme political and cultural turmoil in Cyprus. I explore how the context of these sarcophagi’s iconography within Cyprus, and the use of sarcophagi as items of funerary ritual, impacted the understanding of these objects in their local communities. The Amathous sarcophagus uses local imagery, both mythological and elite, to create a demonstration of power, the Golgoi sarcophagus includes scenes indicative of cosmopolitan elite status, and finally, the Palaipafos sarcophagus has imagery that arguably relates to Homeric epics, and presents a heroic narrative. Overall, these sarcophagi are all varying local responses to island-wide events that would have impacted their local communities; and these impacts are evident in the iconography used to demonstrate the elite status, heroic qualities, and political power of the deceased.enCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USThesis / Dissertation