The US Memorandum with Cyprus and the Designated List: American Import Restrictions on Cypriot Antiquities

Since 1999 the United States has restricted the import of Cypriot antiquities, first by an emergency action on Byzantine church material and from 2002 by a bilateral agreement with the Republic of Cyprus, renewed every five years since. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) keeps a Designated List of the classes covered, and by 2022 that list had grown to take in nearly every kind of object made on the island between the first settlers and the end of Ottoman rule. The restrictions are often read as a ban on Cypriot antiquities in America. They are a rule about one moment in an object's life: the date it left Cyprus. A piece exported before its class was designated may still be imported, and nothing in the agreement touches what was already in the country, which for Cypriot material is a very large stock. The statue at the head of this page, a limestone votary holding a cup and a dove, is one of the Cypriot sculptures that Luigi Palma di Cesnola took to New York in the 1870s and that remain in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Objects of its class are on the Designated List, and the list has no bearing on it.

The statute and the first restrictions

The Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act of 1983 (CPIA), 19 U.S.C. 2601 and following, is the American law that puts the 1970 UNESCO Convention into effect [1]. It lets the United States restrict the import of designated categories of archaeological and ethnological material at the request of another state party, either by a bilateral agreement or, where the material is in jeopardy from pillage, by an emergency action. The State Department's Cultural Property Advisory Committee reviews each request, and CBP enforces the result at the border and publishes each country's list in the regulations at 19 CFR 12.104g [1; 10].

Cyprus asked first for help with its church art. Its request was received in 1998; the Committee found "the situation in Cyprus to be an emergency" and recommended restrictions on "certain Byzantine ritual and ecclesiastical ethnological material", and the determination was made on 4 March 1999 [2, p. 17530]. The emergency rule took effect on 12 April 1999 and covered Byzantine material "ranging in date from approximately the 4th century A.D. through approximately the 15th century A.D." [2, pp. 17529-17530]: icons, frescoes, mosaics and liturgical objects, the classes looted from the churches of the occupied north after the Turkish invasion of 1974. It was church art, a different trade from the trade in ancient pottery and sculpture, as set out in church art and antiquities.

The archaeology followed. On 16 July 2002 the two governments entered into an agreement on "archaeological materials representing the Pre-Classical and Classical periods of Cyprus, ranging in date from approximately the 8th Millennium B.C. to approximately A.D. 330" [8, p. 42636]. Customs published the rule and the first Designated List as T.D. 02-37, effective 19 July 2002 [3, p. 47447]. It covered the material most often found in collections: Neolithic and Bronze Age pottery, Iron Age painted wares, terracottas, limestone sculpture, bronzes, glass and gold.

Amendments and renewals, 2006 to 2027

Each agreement runs for at most five years and may be extended for further periods of five years if the reasons for it still hold [8, p. 42636]. The 2022 rule sets out the history in one place, and the table below follows it.

The renewals of 2007, 2012 and 2017 followed exchanges of diplomatic notes, and the third carried the restrictions to 15 July 2022 [7; 8, p. 42637]. The 2022 renewal rested on a fresh finding by the State Department, made on 1 April 2022, that "the cultural heritage of Cyprus continues to be in jeopardy from pillage of certain archeological and ethnological material currently covered", and that it was also in jeopardy for the later periods then added [8, p. 42637]. As of October 2026 the restrictions run to 13 July 2027. The Committee's notice of September 2026 proposes an extension of "the Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Cyprus Concerning the Imposition of Import Restrictions on Categories of Archaeological and Ethnological Material of the Republic of Cyprus" and gives the State Department's page of current agreements as the place where the agreement and its Designated List are published [9; 11]. The outcome of that review is not known at the time of writing.

The coins entry of 2007 gave a reason. CBP wrote that the subcategory was added "in response to a request from the Government of the Republic of Cyprus", and that "Coins constitute an inseparable part of the archaeological record of the island, and, like other archaeological objects, they are vulnerable to pillage and illicit export" [5, p. 38471].

What the Designated List covers

The list in force is the one reproduced in full in the 2022 rule. Its opening sentence sets the range: "archaeological material from Cyprus ranging in date from approximately the 11th millennium B.C. to A.D. 1770, and ethnological material from Cyprus ranging in date from approximately the 4th century A.D. to A.D. 1878" [8, p. 42638]. The end date of the ethnological part is the year British administration began; the ethnological classes are church objects, emblems of the state, architectural material, documents and manuscripts, and traditional clothing and textiles [8, pp. 42638, 42640].

In plain terms, the archaeological part covers almost everything a collector of Cypriot antiquities is likely to own. The ceramic section reads like a key to the island's wares, period by period: Combed, Red Lustrous and Red-on-White pottery of the Neolithic and Chalcolithic; the hand-made bowls, jugs, askoi and vessels "with figurines attached" of the Early Bronze Age; Red Polished, White Painted, Black Slip and Red-on-Black of the Middle Bronze Age; and so on through the Iron Age wares to Byzantine and medieval glazed pottery and Ottoman material [8, p. 42638]. Then come terracotta figures, limestone and marble sculpture, seals, tools, weapons, gold jewellery, glass and faience, ivory and bone, and the coins [8, pp. 42638-42640]. The coins are listed by issuer and date: the issues of the kingdoms of Amathus, Kition, Kourion, Idalion, Lapethos, Marion, Paphos, Soli and Salamis "dating from the end of the 6th century B.C. to 332 B.C."; Hellenistic issues to about 30 BC; Roman provincial issues to AD 235; and later "Byzantine, Medieval Frankish, Lusignan, Venetian, and Ottoman types that circulated primarily in Cyprus" to 1770 [8, p. 42640].

Because the classes were added at different times, each has its own designation date. The dates matter because they are the cut-off for the rule in the next section.

The date of export decides

The CPIA does not make it unlawful to own, inherit, give or sell a Cypriot antiquity inside the United States. It controls entry. Under 19 CFR 12.104c, designated material "will be permitted entry" if the importer files one of three things at the time of entry [10]:

1. a certificate or other documentation from the Government of Cyprus "certifying that such exportation was not in violation of the laws of that country";
2. satisfactory evidence that the material "was exported from the State Party not less than 10 years before the date of such entry", and that neither the importer nor a related person "contracted for or acquired an interest" in it more than one year before entry; or
3. satisfactory evidence that it "was exported from the State Party on or before the date on which such material was designated" [10].

"Satisfactory evidence" is defined: sworn declarations by the importer and a statement from the consignor or seller giving the date of export, or the belief and the reasons for it [10]. Material that enters without meeting these conditions is "subject to seizure and forfeiture" [1, s. 2609].

The first route is now closed for anything on the market. Since the 1996 amendment of the Antiquities Law, Cyprus licenses the export of antiquities only for temporary exhibition or scientific study, so it issues no certificate that would let a piece be sold abroad; the earlier licences are described in licensed export, 1974 to 1996. The working route is the third. A Bronze Age jug that left Cyprus in 1960 with a Department of Antiquities export permit, or that was bought at the Met's sale of 1928, is designated material, and it may still enter the United States, because its export came before July 2002.

The rule therefore turns on the date of export, and the age of the object plays no part in it. A Red Polished jug made in 2000 BC and exported in 1965 falls on the permitted side of the line. A jug of the same type taken out of Cyprus in 2010 does not, whatever its age. A separate provision, 19 U.S.C. 2611, also exempts designated material that has been in the United States for long enough: three years in a museum that bought it in good faith and published or exhibited it, ten years with public exhibition or fair notice to Cyprus, or twenty years where the claimant bought it for value "without knowledge or reason to believe that it was imported in violation of law" [1, s. 2611]. That is a defence against forfeiture under the CPIA; it does not cure a stolen title.

Two other bodies of American law sit beside the CPIA and do not depend on its dates. The first is stolen-property law. An object dug up in Cyprus without a permit belongs to the Republic under Cypriot law, and a knowing dealer in such an object can be prosecuted for handling stolen property; the Manhattan District Attorney's returns to Cyprus were made on that footing. The second is civil title: in the Kanakaria case the federal courts held that a buyer who paid in good faith could not keep mosaics stolen from a church in the occupied north, because a thief cannot pass good title [16]. Both are described in the guide to selling Cypriot antiquities in the US, and the mosaics in the Kanakaria mosaics.

The coins case

The inclusion of coins was challenged by a collectors' and dealers' association, after Customs detained a small group of Cypriot and Chinese coins it had imported through Baltimore in 2009, and the challenge failed: in Ancient Coin Collectors Guild v. U.S. Customs and Border Protection the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held in 2012 that the restrictions on coins had been lawfully imposed [12].

Seizures and returns under the restrictions

Few Cypriot cases under the CPIA have been announced, and the clearest is a single jug. In April 2022, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, "CBP's cultural property team at the National Targeting Center identified a shipment of potentially illicit antiquities from Cyprus and referred the shipment to HSI Newark for further investigation" [14]. With the Penn Museum and the Cyprus Department of Antiquities, the agents identified an Iron Age oinochoe of about 800 to 600 BC, which was returned at the Cyprus Embassy in Washington on 20 April 2023; the same release records the return of two Cypriot coins, one dated to 385 BC, and a fragment of an 18th-century fresco [14]. The release does not name the importer or say where the shipment came from.

The larger American returns came through other law. On 24 March 2025 the Manhattan District Attorney's office returned twelve antiquities to Cyprus, among them a plank figurine of the second millennium BC and a flask of the third millennium BC that had "allegedly" been smuggled out of Cyprus and had passed through an unnamed New York dealer linked to Robin Symes, the London dealer the office describes as a "previously convicted" trafficker, who died in 2023 [15]. The office's announcement names no charge and no statute. The withdrawals and voluntary returns of 2025 and 2026 from American salerooms, including the eighteen objects withdrawn at one house in February 2026, are tabulated in policing and monitoring and are not repeated here. None of the announcements says when the objects left Cyprus, and none alleges a breach of the import rules.

The agreement also has limits that the Republic has met in practice. When the Cyprus Museum in Jacksonville, North Carolina, closed and its collection was offered for sale, the Cypriot government invoked the 1970 Convention and the bilateral agreement to try to stop the sale, and the sale went ahead, as the article on the Jacksonville collection records. A rule about imports does not reach objects already in the country.

The evidence against this reading

The case for reading the restrictions as a narrow rule about export dates has to meet four objections.

The first is the official finding itself. To renew the agreement, the State Department has to find that Cypriot heritage is "in jeopardy from pillage", and it did so again in 2022, for the classes already covered and for the later periods it added [8, p. 42637]. That is a finding by a government department after review by its advisory committee, and it is the strongest official statement that looting of Cypriot material continues. It is a finding of risk, though, and the rule gives no figure for how much material is being dug or exported now, or for what share of the American market it forms.

The second is the cases. The shipment flagged in 2022 was "potentially illicit" in CBP's words, and the jug identified in it was returned to Cyprus [14]; the plank figurine and the flask returned in 2025 had passed through a chain that reached Symes [15]. Real looted Cypriot objects do reach the United States, and some are caught. The announced Cypriot cases are few, however: a single jug identified at the border under the import rules, and a dozen objects returned in a stolen-property case, against a lawful stock in America that runs to tens of thousands of objects.

The third is the coins. Coins and metal-detected finds are the one class of Cypriot material where recent digging plainly pays, and they move in small parcels that are easily posted. The list covers "coins of Cypriot types", and a collector may not know where a given coin was found; the coins case turned on objections of this kind, and the court upheld the restriction [12]. For a coin, the practical effect is that an importer needs the same evidence of export date as for a jug, and that evidence is harder to find for small, unrecorded objects.

The fourth is the breadth of the list. Since 2022 it covers almost every class of portable antiquity from the island, so the burden of proof at the border falls on nearly every Cypriot object an American buyer might import from London or Geneva. In practice an importer who cannot document the date of export cannot bring the piece in, whatever its real history.

Set against the record, these objections show that the restrictions are a working control at the border and that the risk they address is real. They do not change the rule itself, which leaves earlier lawful exports free to move and leaves the stock already in America where it is.

The lawful stock the restrictions leave untouched

The largest body of Cypriot antiquities in the United States arrived long before any restriction. The Met's catalogue of 2000 states that "of the thirty-five thousand objects that Cesnola removed from Cyprus, about six thousand remain in the Metropolitan Museum", and that "in 1928 a large portion of the Cesnola Collection was auctioned by the Museum and scattered among other museums and private collections in the United States... there is no complete record of the destination of the pieces"; 2,300 objects went to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, many had earlier gone to Stanford, and others were sold "over-the-counter" to private buyers [13, p. 23]. Cesnola left Cyprus in 1876, "two years before the annexation of the island by Great Britain and the prohibition of all unauthorized archaeological activity" [13, p. 23]. Whatever is said of his digging, his exports predate every rule discussed here by more than a century.

The same applies to the great lawful divisions of the twentieth century. The two thirds of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition's finds that went to Stockholm under the 1930 division, the duplicates sold by the Cyprus Museum's own saleroom, and the export licences granted to 1996 all left the island before July 2002; the channels and their numbers are set out in how many Cypriot antiquities left lawfully. An object from any of them that comes to the United States with paper showing that history falls within the third route of 12.104c. The restrictions catch only material exported after its class was designated, which since 1996 means material exported without a licence.

This is also why the market reads the restrictions together with the 1974 date-line. An American buyer, or a museum following its association's rules, asks for a history before 1970 or a documented lawful export; the import rule asks for evidence of export before 2002 for most archaeology. A Cypriot object with an old, checkable history clears both. An object with none clears neither, and is presumed recent, as described in the 1974 presumption.

What the restrictions mean for an object on the market today

For a Cypriot antiquity already in the United States, the agreement does not stop its sale, gift, inheritance or donation, and no federal licence is needed to sell it within the country. The questions for such a piece are whether it was ever stolen, and what record there is of how it left Cyprus.

For an object to be brought into the United States, the test is the date it left Cyprus. Pottery, sculpture and other archaeology to AD 330 needs evidence of export before mid-July 2002; coins before mid-July 2007; Byzantine church material before April 1999; and the later classes before July 2022 [10]. The evidence is usually a Cypriot export licence, a Cyprus Museum sales receipt, an old saleroom catalogue or invoice, or dated family papers or photographs; the kinds of paper are described in Cypriot antiquities export licences and labels and lawful and illicit in the record. A clean recent sale in London or Paris is not enough on its own unless the history behind it reaches the date of export.

An owner, heir or buyer who is unsure whether a piece meets the rule, or who holds a piece with only part of its history, should contact us: we can help to identify the object, read its labels and papers, and work out which date applies. The guide to selling Cypriot antiquities in the US sets out the American rules for owners step by step.