The Trade in Cypriot Antiquities since 1996

The Trade since 1996

Bichrome jug with a man, a bird and a tree, Cypro-Archaic, about 750 to 600 BC, from the Cesnola Collection (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 74.51.509)

In 1996 an amendment to the Antiquities Law ended the licensed export of antiquities from Cyprus. Since then no new lawful supply has left the island, and the market abroad has lived on what was exported over the previous 150 years, sold again as old collections and estates come up. The entries in this part of the section describe that market: how it is tiered, what moved online, where its objects come from, and the smaller trades within it, in coins and metal finds, in fakes and replicas, and in objects from the sea, each set beside the illicit material that reaches the same venues.

How to use these entries

The entries are in two groups. The market since 1996 covers the twenty-first-century trade as a whole, the internet era, the heirs and old collections that supply the market, and museums as sellers. Particular trades covers coins and metal-detected finds, fakes, replicas and restoration, and antiquities raised from the sea.

The licensed export that ended in 1996 is covered in licensed export from the Republic of Cyprus, 1974 to 1996, and how the Department of Antiquities watches sales abroad, with the withdrawals and returns of recent years, in policing and monitoring. What Cypriot antiquities sell for, and why looting the island now barely pays, is set out in the economics of looting. The laws that apply to a sale today, from the 1970 UNESCO Convention to the import rules of the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, are in law and provenance.

The market since 1996