In ancient navigation, the safety of a ship depended in no small measure on the stability of her anchors, and this crucial role at sea was not overlooked in the ritual symbolism of maritime communities. Accordingly, there is a general consensus on the fact that the anchors deposited at Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age temples were important carriers of meaning for seafaring groups. Nevertheless, little effort has been made to understand the role of anchors in the conceptual world of the ancient seafarers beyond the fact that they were powerful symbols of maritimity. Borrowed and adapted from linguistics, Conceptual Blending Theory (CBT) provides the theoretical framework to use material culture as a source for the investigation of ancient thought processes. In this paper, I apply the perspective of CBT to the anchors found at the Late Cypriot sanctuary of Kition-Kathari, with comparisons to those from Byblos and Ugarit, and I examine the cognitive implications of anchors as material metaphors and investigate how they embody the blending of the mental spaces of the sacred, the city, and the sea.

在古代航海中，船舶的安全在很大程度上取决于锚的稳定性，而这一在海上的关键作用在海上社区的仪式象征中也没有被忽视。因此，人们普遍认为，沉积在东地中海青铜时代寺庙的锚对于航海群体来说是重要的意义载体。然而，除了锚是海洋的强大象征这一事实之外，人们很少努力去理解锚在古代海员概念世界中的作用。概念混合理论（CBT）借用并改编自语言学，提供了利用物质文化作为研究古代思维过程来源的理论框架。在本文中，我将 CBT 的视角应用于在晚期塞浦路斯 Kition- Kathari避难所发现的锚，并与来自比布鲁斯和乌加里特的锚进行比较，并研究锚作为物质隐喻的认知含义，并研究它们如何体现神圣、城市和海洋的精神空间的融合。