The relief shows a chimera, a mythical creature composed of a lion, a she-goat, and a snake. It was customary to represent the goat as a protome emerging from the lion's back. Here she faces in the same direction as the lion and has one foreleg raised. The chimera was shown in this manner on coins of the Greek city of Sikyon during the fifth century B.C, and it is interesting to note that, according to one ancient writer, the traditional founder of Golgoi was a man named Golgos from Sikyon.
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Credit Line:The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76
Accession Number:74.51.2320
From Cyprus; found in “the ruins of Golgoi” (Cesnola 1885), not the sanctuary of Ayios Photios, Golgoi (Cesnola 1877)
Cesnola, Luigi Palma di. 1877. Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples. A Narrative of Researches and Excavations During Ten Years' Residence in That Island. p. 159, London: John Murray.
Cesnola, Luigi Palma di. 1885. A Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Vol. 1. pl. LXXXV.560, Boston: James R. Osgood and Company.
Cesnola, Luigi Palma di. 1903. A Descriptive Atlas of the Cesnola Collection of Cypriote Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Vol. 3. pl. CXXXIV, 2, Boston: James R. Osgood and Company.
Myres, John L. 1914. Handbook of the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus. no. 1858, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Masson, Olivier. 1961. Les Inscriptions Chypriotes Syllabiques: Recueil Critique et Commenté. no. 298, pl. XLVIII.2, Paris: E. de Boccard.
Masson, Olivier. 1968. "Kypriaka IV–VIII." Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 92(2): pp. 380–86, fig. 7, pl. XXII.
Masson, Olivier. 1971. "Kypriaka IX: Recherches sur les antiquités de Golgoi." Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 95(1): pp. 311, 316.
Tatton-Brown, Veronica. 1984. "Sculptors at Golgoi." Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus (RDAC) p. 172, n. 22a, pl. XXXIII:4.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1986. Vol. 3: Atherion-Eros. "Chimaira," p. 254, no. 94, pl. 206, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Karageorghis, Vassos, Joan Mertens, and Marice E. Rose. 2000. Ancient Art from Cyprus: The Cesnola Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 332, p. 206, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Stylianou, Andreas and Patrick Schollmeyer. 2007. "Der Sarkophag aus Golgoi." Dynastensarkophage mit szenischen Reliefs aus Byblos und Zypern: Der Sarkophag aus Amathous als Beispiel kontaktinduzierten Wandels, 2. p. 207 n. 98, pl. 51b, Mainz am Rhein: Philipp von Zabern.
Hermary, Antoine and Joan R. Mertens. 2013. The Cesnola Collection of Cypriot Art : Stone Sculpture. no. 443, pp. 316–17, Online Publication, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
