A team of French and Polish archaeologists exploring ancient ruins in Paphos, Cyprus have discovered a ceremonial seating area carved into the bedrock next to the foundation of a now-destroyed religious temple, as reported by the Polish Nauka W Polsce press agency. Individuals gathered for ceremonial feasts would have perched on these bedrock benches, eating the meat of sacrificed animals and drinking large quantities of wine to honor the gods and bring good luck to their village.
“It was a place for open-air religious banquets, the characteristic semicircular outline of which is referred to in archaeology as a stibadium,” explained Jolanta Młynarczyk, an archaeologist from the University of Warsaw who’s been managing the joint Polish-French exploratory project. “Its central point was a circular depression with a drain, used for libations in honor of the deity.”
The archaeologists believe the temple, banquet area, and other related ruins were built sometime between the second century BC and the mid-second century AD, when Paphos was under first Greek and then Roman control.
