The Antiquities Laws of 1905 and 1935

Two statutes governed Cypriot antiquities under British rule. The Antiquities Law of 1905 made undiscovered antiquities the property of the Government, required a permit to dig, and allowed an antiquity to leave the island only with the High Commissioner's written permission. The Antiquities Law of 1935 replaced it, gave the new Department of Antiquities the powers of the old Museum Committee, and for the first time licensed the dealers. Neither law ended private ownership or export: both registered what people held, controlled what left, and gave the excavator, the finder and the Museum defined shares. This page reads the two laws in their own words and follows the amendments that closed the trade between 1964 and 1996, which the entry on legal export narrates in full. The unlicensed digging the laws were written against is the subject of illicit digging under British rule. The image at the head of the page is sections 32 and 33 of the 1905 law as printed in The Statute Laws of Cyprus (p. 47; scan published by CyLaw; out of copyright).

The Antiquities Law of 1905: ownership, finds and the finder's share

Law 4 of 1905 came into operation on 25 August 1905 and repealed the Ottoman regulation of 1874 that Britain had kept in force since 1878 [1, p. 40; 3]. Its first rule was ownership. "No antiquity shall, by reason merely of its being discovered on land in the ownership of any person, be the property of that person", and "all undiscovered antiquities of a movable character ... are hereby declared to be the property of the Government, subject to the provisions of this Law" [1, p. 40]. The qualification mattered, because the law then gave the finder and the landowner a share. Everyone already holding antiquities had to send the Museum Committee a list within six months; anything found later that had not been listed could be seized by order of the District Court and confiscated [1, p. 40].

A person who found an antiquity outside a licensed excavation had to report it and hand it in at the nearest police station within five days, on pain of a fine of up to fifty pounds or six months' imprisonment and the loss of his interest in it [1, p. 41]. The find was then divided on the Ottoman model: "one third part thereof shall be taken by the Government, one third part by the owner of the land where the antiquities have been discovered, and ... one third part by the finder"; a finder on his own land took two thirds [1, p. 41]. Section 31 then let any listed antiquity, or any antiquity received as a share, be sold or given "freely ... within the limits of the Island", provided the Museum Committee was told [1, p. 47].

Export under sections 32 and 33, and sales under section 42

Section 32 governed export: "No antiquity shall be exported from the Island without the permission in writing of the High Commissioner", with a fine of up to one hundred pounds or twelve months' imprisonment, and forfeiture, for anyone who exported without it [1, p. 47]. Section 33 set the test. Permission could be given only if the antiquity had been shown to the Museum Committee and the Committee was satisfied "that it has been declared or acquired under the sections enumerated in section 31, and that there are in the Museum exhibits of the same kind and quality, or the Committee does not require it, or that the Committee has lost its right to acquire it" [1, p. 47]. A lawful export under the 1905 law therefore required two things: a lawful title (a listed object, or a share of a find or an excavation) and the Museum's judgement that it did not need the piece.

Section 42 gave the Museum Committee its own power to trade. It could "acquire, by purchase, barter of duplicate specimens or otherwise, Cyprian antiquities, sell, exchange, or otherwise dispose of duplicate specimens of antiquities, when it is in the interest of the Museum or Museums", provided that it was "satisfied that they are really duplicates" [1, pp. 49, 50]. Stanley-Price calls the resulting test of a duplicate "vague, and ultimately subjective" [3]. That power is the legal basis of the Cyprus Museum saleroom. Section 50 added an incentive to inform: a court could pay up to half of any fine to the person whose information had secured the conviction [1, p. 51].

The power to sign export permits passed to the Curator, Menelaos Markides, in 1912; Porphyrios Dikaios received the same power in 1932, and John Hilton, as the incoming Director of Antiquities, in February 1935 [3]. Markides kept the number of export permits below twenty a year [3].

Excavation, the division of finds, and the repair of 1927

The 1905 law was weakest on excavation. Section 26 stated that "no right in any antiquity the product of any excavation permitted under this Law shall vest in the excavator"; the Committee might give the excavator "any duplicates of antiquities found" or "any antiquities not required by the Committee", but it was not bound to [1, pp. 45, 46]. An excavator could not know in advance what he would be allowed to keep. J. L. Myres held that the law had facilitated illicit traffic while deterring scientific excavation by its restrictions, and in 1915 he wrote that he could "find no sign in London, Paris or New York, that the present Antiquity Law has seriously affected the supply of Cypriot antiquities of high quality" [3].

The repair was the Antiquities (Amendment) Law, 1927, signed by Governor Ronald Storrs on 29 January 1927. It added to the conditions of an excavation permit a clause "as to the grant to the person to whom the permit is given of a share, to be fixed by the Museum Committee with the approval of the Governor after the conclusion of the excavation, of any antiquities discovered", and allowed the Committee to "grant to the excavator the agreed share of any antiquities found by virtue of any stipulation contained in the permit" [2, p. 6]. The amendment followed the Swedish proposal to excavate on condition of a substantial share of the finds [3]. A share granted under it was the excavator's property and could be exported under section 32. The partage was in this sense a transfer of title by the state.

The Swedish partage of 1930

The largest share ever granted under the 1905 law went to the Swedish Cyprus Expedition, which excavated across the island from 1927 to 1931. Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf came to Cyprus in 1930 in part to supervise "the division of the finds, which was very important, since it was to determine how much of the material which we had found was to accrue to Sweden" [4, p. 225]. The principle, as Einar Gjerstad set it down, was that "find-units, i.e. tomb-groups and deposits, were not to be split up, but were to accrue as a whole either to Cyprus or Sweden", and that "Sweden was to receive a representative series of finds from all epochs and of all kinds of objects. On the basis of these terms Sweden received about two-thirds of the nearly 18 000 finds", together with "all the sherd-material of any scientific value" [5, p. 411]. Objects judged unique stayed in Cyprus, most of the gold stayed with casts sent to Stockholm, and the roughly 2,000 terracottas from Ayia Irini were divided although they came from one deposit [5, p. 411]. Leriou calls the two-thirds share "a grand exception to the then current Antiquities Law" [4, pp. 225, 226]. It was lawful title and lawful export, granted by the Museum Committee under the amended statute, and the Swedish share is now in the Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm.

The Antiquities Law of 1935

The Department of Antiquities began work on 1 January 1935, with John Hilton as its first Director, succeeded in 1936 by A. H. S. Megaw, who served until 1960 [4, p. 226]. The statute that defined its powers, "A Law to Consolidate and Amend the Law relating to Antiquities", Law 41 of 1935, was signed by Governor H. R. Palmer on 30 December 1935 and repealed "The Antiquities Laws, 1905 to 1928" [6]. Its main provisions were these.

Section 3 restated state ownership: "all antiquities lying undiscovered at the date of the coming into operation of this Law in or upon any land shall be the property of the Government" [6]. Section 4 required anyone who "accidentally discovers an antiquity" to "forthwith give notice of his discovery" and hand it in to the mukhtar of the nearest village, to an officer appointed by the District Commissioner or to the Curator of a museum, under penalty of six months or fifty pounds, in which case "the finder shall not be entitled to any payment therefor" [6]. Section 5 replaced the finder's third with a price. If the Director wished to acquire the find for a museum, "he shall pay to the finder such sum as appears to him to be the fair market value for the same"; if not, he could offer it to the British Museum on the same terms; the finder could instead, with permission, "deposit such antiquity among the duplicate antiquities exposed for sale at the Cyprus Museum" and receive the price "without any deduction"; and if no museum wanted it, "the Director shall deliver it to the finder and shall give him a permit authorizing him to retain, sell or otherwise dispose of the same either within or without the Colony" [6].

Section 14 forbade anyone to dig "whether on his own land or elsewhere for the purpose of discovering antiquities without a licence in writing", and made it an offence to buy or deal in what had been so dug [6]. At the end of a licensed excavation the Director took for the Museum, without payment, what was "required for the scientific complement of the Museum", and then divided the rest "aiming as far as possible at giving the holder of the licence ... a half share of the result of the excavation" (s. 16(1)(c)) [6]. The excavator's share survived the 1935 law.

Three sections created the regime of dealers and collectors that lasted to 1996. Section 25: "No person shall deal in antiquities unless he is the holder of a dealer's licence granted by the Director." Section 26: "No person shall export any antiquity from the Colony without a licence to export first obtained from the Director", with a penalty of a year's imprisonment or one hundred pounds and forfeiture; section 27 let the Director prohibit the export of any antiquity "the retention of which in the Colony he considers desirable in the public interest" [6]. Section 31 required everyone holding antiquities to send the Director a list within four months, provided that the Government "shall have no claim" to any listed antiquity even if it "has been obtained or acquired in contravention of any provision" of the repealed laws, and required any disposal of a listed piece to be notified within fourteen days [6]. Megaw applied the dealers' sections by licensing three dealers, checking their stock, and approving pieces for sale and export [7, pp. 46, 47]; the dealers and the declared collections are described in licensed dealers and registered collections.

The two laws compared

The amendments to 1996

Independence in 1960 carried the 1935 law into the Republic as the Antiquities Law, Cap. 31, and later laws amended it rather than replacing it [9]. Three changes ended the trade it had permitted. In 1964 the share system ended: "it was not until 1964 that the 'share' system ended and all antiquities discovered through excavations were vested in the Cyprus Museum without any payment made whatsoever" [8]. The same period changed the finder's terms. Section 5 as it now reads, with the amending laws of 1964, 1973 and 2014 noted against it, provides that if the Director decides to acquire a movable chance find he pays the finder a sum "υπό τύπο φιλοδωρήματος" (by way of a gratuity) that he considers reasonable in the circumstances; the 1935 subsections giving the British Museum a call on the find and the finder a permit to sell or export it are no longer in the text [9]. Dealing and export under licence continued. In Fehlmann's words, "until 1996, the export of antiquities from the Republic of Cyprus was permitted as long as the Department of Antiquities had provided a licence" [10, p. 156]. After the amending law of 1996 (Law 4(I) of 1996) the law provides in section 26 that "no person shall deal in antiquities", and in section 27 that an export licence may be granted only for temporary exhibition or for the study and scientific analysis of excavation material [8], [9]. Unlicensed excavation now carries up to five years' imprisonment or a fine of 45,000 euros, or both (s. 14) [9]. The declarations of private collections in 1973 are treated in collecting under the silent accord.

The evidence against: lawful title for illicitly dug objects

The strongest objection to reading these laws as a lawful channel is that they gave title and export papers to objects that had been dug illegally. Section 31(2) of the 1935 law said so in terms: the Government would have "no claim" to a listed antiquity even if it had been "obtained or acquired in contravention" of the earlier laws, and "no proceedings shall be taken by the Government against any person in respect thereof" [6]. Section 5 sent unwanted chance finds back to the finder with a permit to sell them abroad, and the 1905 law let any listed object be sold within the island [1, p. 47], [6]. Hardy's count for the Louvre's Cypriot collections formed before 1963 finds 214 of 319 objects, 67 per cent, "neither scientifically excavated nor found through survey or by accident", "despite the colonial system of partage" [11, p. 466]. The export system could also be abused from inside: Rupert Gunnis, as a member of the Museum Committee, signed permits for his own exports, and the Museum's file of sale certificates stops in 1928 [3].

The factual premise is sound: section 31(2) was a deliberate settlement of existing holdings, and an object lawfully exported under either law may have come out of the ground unlawfully. The record also shows what the laws did with that material. They required it to be listed, so that the Museum knew what was held and could inspect it; they made its sale reportable; and they allowed it to leave only after the Museum had examined it and declined it. Under Markides that meant fewer than twenty export permits a year [3]. The settlement of 1935 turned unknown holdings into listed ones under the Director's supervision, which is the condition of every later registration of Cypriot collections. The abuse that is documented was an official's misuse of the permit power, and the Museum Committee answered it in May 1932 by requiring carbon copies of export permits with the prices paid [3]. The distinction to keep is the one the statutes themselves keep: they governed title and export, which is how an object left the island lawfully; they could not make lawful the digging that had produced it.

What this means for an object on the market today

An antiquity that left Cyprus between 1905 and 1935 left lawfully if it went with the written permission required by section 32, signed by the High Commissioner or Governor or, from 1912, by the Curator; one that left between 1935 and 1996 left lawfully if it had a licence from the Director under section 26 (Cap. 31 in the Republic). The papers to look for are the permit or licence itself, a Museum sale certificate, a lead seal, and evidence that the object was on a list declared under section 4 of the 1905 law or section 31 of the 1935 law; lawful and illicit in the record and the article on export licences and labels explain what each looks like. Such papers establish title and export under the law of the time; they do not record a find-spot, and for a chance find or a declared piece none may ever have been written down.