How many Cypriot artifacts exist outside of Cyprus?

The dawn of Cypriot archeology dates back to the 19th century, with the first large-scale excavations taking place in the 1960s. This article will not dive into the specifics of these excavations but rather aim to answer the question: how many Cypriot artifacts exist outside of Cyprus?

For most other cultures it is close to impossible to estimate these types of questions. Greek artefacts have been dug up for hundreds of years across Europe for example, estimating their number is difficult. For Cyprus however, the question is more tractable.

Note that our estimates throughout this article will give a range from conservative to possible, and will be based on the best available data.

Oldest Known Exports of Cypriot antiquities

One might think the earliest exports would be in the 19th century, maybe the 18th or even the 17th. However the oldest larger-scale exports actually date back to 1500 BCE! It is important to remember that Cyprus was an activate trading partner to much of the Levant and Aegean.

Cypriot antiquities were dug up and found in collections throughout these regions long before any interest was shown towards Cypriot archeology. For example in 1824, Alfred Friedrich von Dumreicher, a collector of Egyptian antiquities seemingly came across two Base-Ring Ware Jugs in Egypt, and donated them to the Royal Kunstkammer in Copenhagen. The number of Cypriot antiquities found this way is almost certainly in the low hundreds but could be in the thousands when taking Israel and Egypt into account.

19th Century Exports

Cyprus has always been an active island, whether ruled by the Venetians or Ottomans, it was home to many international traders and diplomats. These wealthier and often more scholarly diplomats sometimes showed interest in the islands material culture.

While no large-scale archeology was taking place on the island, local villagers are well documented in digging up tombs, temples and other sites not for scholarly reasons but to obtain hard-sought after building materials. This was so common in fact that later 19th century archeologists would often inspect the stone pieces of contemporary buildings for signs of ancient inscriptions. Upon finding these they would know an archeological site was likely nearby.

Based on Cesnolas book, the number of Cypriot antiquities found in this manner were likely in the low thousands. However most of these would have stayed on the island, been reused, or even destroyed. The number exported is likely then in the low hundreds.

Luigi Palma di Cesnola, an Italian diplomat and archeologist, was one of the first to conduct large-scale excavations on the island. He was also the first to export Cypriot antiquities in large numbers. His collection was sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1872. The number of antiquities in this collection is estimated to be around 35,000.

Upon trying to ship them abroad, 5000 were lost in the sinking of the Napried, likely near the coast of modern Lebanon. Around 30,000 items made it abroad, and many of these were sold.

The lesser known Cesnola, his brother Alessandro, also conducted large-scale excavations on the island. It is difficult to know exactly how many pieces he dug up and later exported, however we have these quotes from him in the book Salaminia:

• He dug up 4000 terracottas, of which 2000 were lamps
• He dug up 4000 glass pieces
• At least 200 statuettes were reconstructed and "thousands" of pieces were found
• 2000 alabaster vessels, this number seems exaggerated

Along with his father in law Henry Lawrence, their collection numbered over 14,000 pieces.

The Cesnola brothers therefore successfully exported over 44,000 pieces in total.

Note that in the 1877 bookby Luigi Palma di Cesnola he writes about how his digs aroused other diggers to start their operations across Cyprus. He hints that thousands of artefacts were dug up and were not in his posession, but rather that of his fellow Consuls. It is not clear how many of these were later exported but the number is likely in the high hundreds.

The legal framework for these digs was complex and left over from Ottoman law, which was highly flexible depending on your political capital. These laws were kept inplace when the British took over the rule of the island in 1878. Loosely the law said that a third of antiquities found on land went to the land owner, one third to the digger and the last third to the Government.

However diggers would purchase or lease the land, therefore getting 2/3rd of the pieces, and often barter with the Government or lie to the Government to keep even more pieces of the pie for themselves.

Along with the Cesnola brothers, diggers such as Robert Hamilton Lang, Dominic Colnaghi, Thomas Sandwith, Henry Christy, Demetrios Pierides, Max Ohnefalsch-Richter and others excavated thousands of antiquities for export.

By the end of the 19th century, we likely have around 50 to 70 thousand Cypriot antiquities outside of Cyprus. Note that many of these were sold by Sotheby's as well as privately in the 19th century. Many of the buyers were also museums where these pieces remain, but we'll return to that.

Many of the Cesnola pieces were sold to museums worldwide, but several thousand were sold through Sotheby's in auctions throughout the late 19th and early 20th century.

1905 to 1935

Many foreign expeditions took place across Cyprus in the early 20th century. In 1905 the British Government enacted a new legal framework titled the Antiquities Law. This law made all discovered antiquities property of the Government. The law also provided a framework for excavation licenses, and under condition 16c stated that the excavator was entitled to a half-share of antiquities found.

A large-scale example of this were the Swedish expeditions of the late 1920s to early 1930s. Around 18,000 objects were excavated, and rather than taking 9,000 as the law allowed, they were given 12,000 with only 6,000 remaining on the island.

It is safe to say that during this period a minimum of 12,000 antiquities were exported with up to 20,000 being a much more likely number.

Legal Export from 1930s to late 1970s

The Government of Cyprus had several licensed dealers on the island. Starting in 1935 the Government introduced a more formal legal framework around the sales of antiquities and their export called "The Antiquities Law", which differed from the 1905 one.

This required dealers to register with the government, as well as export licenses to be issued by that government for antiquities to be permanently exported outside of Cyprus. The first licenses were issued in 1935, with the number dramatically slowing down by 1978.

We do not have access to many licenses, however we can judge the volume of export by looking at these snapshots:

• 3rd March 1935 - License Number 550
• 5th February 1937 - License Number 28
• 24th March 1937 License Number 49
• 27th July 1937 - License Number 716
• 17th March 1939 - License Number 330
• 17th March 1939 - License Number 344
• 6th November 1953 - License Number 2655
• 21st April 1959 - License Number 3371
• 5th Jan 1960 - License Number 5006
• 20th October 1964 - License Number 4887
• 30th December 1965 - License Number 5172
• 11th June 1966 - License Number 5265
• 24th Jan 1969 - License Number 5754
• 5th October 1972 - License Number 6403
• 1st February 1973 - License Number 6455
• 16th Jan 1978 - License number 7070

We can see that the total number of issued licenses is around 7000. Having seen a few dozen licenses I can attest that some contain only a single antiquity, while some contain up to 60 pieces. Conservatively we can say that each license contained 5 pieces on average, giving us 35,000 pieces exported. The range could be extended to 21,000 to 70,000 pieces assuming 3 to 10 pieces per license.

Note that sherds and broken bits were often counted as a single piece.

Total Number of Exports

In total we have:

• several hundred to a few thousand antiquities before the 19th century.
• 50,000 to 70,000 antiquities exported in the 19th century.
• 12,000 to 25,000 antiquities exported in the early 20th century.
• 21,000 to 70,000 antiquities exported from the 1935 to the late 1970s.

This totals to a minimum of 83,000 antiquities which were legally exported under pre-existing frameworks, with a more likely number being around 110,000 and an upper estimate of 165,000.

I believe it to be important at this point to mention that something being legal doesn't make it morally correct. Especially when trying to analyse complex politically sensitive events which occured many generations ago, when views and priorities were different. I am not attempting to justify the export of these antiquities, but rather to document it. For example Cesnola operated under the laws of the time, however his digging was massively damaging to the islands archeology and is seen as a dark chapter in Cyprus's archeological history.

Number in Public Collections

So how many of these pieces remained in collections? In the 19th and early 20th centuries it was common for pieces to be donated to museums, and quite often the museums themselves were purchasing antiquities from these exporters. Famously many of the Cesnola pieces are at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

It is also important to know that public museums have many pieces which were acquired directly from source countries, and therefore not from the legal exports we have been discussing. For example the British Museum has a large collection of Cypriot antiquities, many of which were donated by the Cyprus Exploration Fund.

It is difficult to get a full picture as there exist so many museums across the world, however we can take a look at the most popular collections.

• MET: ~3,000 pieces
• British Museum: ~8600 pieces
• Ashmolean: ~7,000 pieces
• Louvre: ~4,500 pieces
• Pitt-Rivers: less than 1,000 pieces
• Russian Museums: Difficult to estimate but they seem to have less than 1,000 pieces
• Berlin Museums: Difficult to estimate but they seem to have less than 1,000 pieces
• Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna: several hundred pieces
• Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto: 300 pieces
• Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Genève: several hundred pieces
• Medelhavsmuseet Museum: 1,500 pieces

with smaller museums often having a hundred or more pieces each.

The total number of antiquities in public collections is difficult to survey quickly, and will be left for future research. Early estimates seem to indicate a lower estimate ot 30,000 pieces with an upper estimate of 60,000 pieces.

So what happened to the other 50,000 to 130,000 pieces? We know the number of repatriated pieces to be in the low hundreds to low thousands, so where are the rest?