Opportunist Raids in the Occupied North, 1974 to 1977

The Turkish invasion of 1974 left the north of Cyprus without the authority that had protected its antiquities. Houses, shops and churches were abandoned as their Greek Cypriot owners fled or were driven south; the district museums of Famagusta and Kyrenia and several registered private collections passed out of the Republic's reach; and for some years the new administration in the north had neither the staff nor the means to guard what had been left. The Council of Europe's rapporteur, writing in 1989, called the looting of this period "early opportunist raids during the unsettled period following 1974" [1, p. 131]. That phrase is accurate, but it is general, and the record behind it is short. For antiquities, as distinct from church art, three things in these years are documented with dates, owners and numbers: the looting of the Hadjiprodromou collection in Famagusta from 1975, the appearance of some of its pieces at Christie's in London on 27 April 1976, and the seizure of 217 antiquities from the shop of the mayor of Morphou in 1975. This entry sets those out, separates them from the general statements, and places them beside the lawful export that continued from the Republic in the same years.

The north in the first years after the invasion

The area occupied in 1974 is about 37 per cent of the island [1, p. 129]. Sophocles Hadjisavvas, a former Director of the Department of Antiquities, describes the depopulation of Greek Cypriot villages and of a town the size of Famagusta, and the forced movement of the Greek Cypriot population to the south [1, p. 131]. Turkish Cypriots from the south moved north in the same years. Whole districts were left with their houses furnished, their churches equipped and, in some cases, their private collections of antiquities still on the shelves.

Vassos Karageorghis, Director of the Department of Antiquities, wrote to Antiquity soon after the invasion, in a letter printed in 1976, that "as a result of the Turkish invasion and the occupation of 40 per cent of the territory of Cyprus a large number of such collections, including the district Museums at Famagusta and Kyrenia, have been inaccessible to the legal authorities of the Republic" [2, p. 233]. "Such collections" were the private collections formed in 1963 to 1973 and registered by the Department, every item on a card with a description and a photograph [2, p. 233]. Those cards matter to everything that follows. Because the Department kept them in Nicosia, it could later recognise registered objects when they appeared on the market, and Turkish Cypriot officials could recognise them too, from the list of stolen antiquities the Republic sent to UNESCO [4, p. 150].

The new administration had few resources. When the Turkish Cypriot weekly Olay surveyed the north's antiquities in 1982, it found that the antiquities department in Famagusta still had "not a single vehicle", and that by the time officials reached a reported illegal dig "everything is gone" [4, p. 143]. That describes the early 1980s, but there is nothing to suggest the department was better placed in 1975.

What van der Werff meant by "early opportunist raids"

The phrase comes from the Information Memorandum on the cultural heritage of Cyprus that Ymenus van der Werff, general rapporteur of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, presented on 2 July 1989 after a visit to the island in June. It is quoted by Hadjisavvas: "After early opportunist raids during the unsettled period following 1974, more organised looting of selected targets seems to have taken place between 1977 and 1982" [1, p. 131].

Three features of the passage limit what it can be used for. It stands in a section headed "Damage to immovable cultural property", so it is about buildings and their fixed decoration, chiefly churches, and not about tombs or collections. Its only example is the Kanakaria mosaic. And van der Werff himself was cautious: "It is difficult to say that this was professionally done (though the removal of the Kanakaria mosaics was certainly an acrobatic feat) but it was evidently linked to the highly professional international market in illegally exported art" [1, p. 132]. The memorandum gives no dated case for the opportunist years. "Opportunist" describes a pattern its author inferred fifteen years later, not a set of recorded events. The later phase is the subject of organised looting, 1977 to 1982.

The Hadjiprodromou collection and the Christie's sale of 1976

The best-documented archaeological loss of these years is a private collection in Famagusta formed by Chr. Hadjiprodromou and registered by the Department in 1973. It consisted mainly of Chalcolithic painted vases and stone figurines. "The collection started being looted a year after the occupation of Famagusta by the Turkish army and it is believed that all items were stolen and exported illicitly abroad" [3, p. 54]. Because the pieces were numbered, they could be recognised: "Several objects from the Hadjiprodromou Collection were noted in auction catalogues and were immediately claimed by the owner, others were offered for sale by 'middle-men'" [3, p. 54]. One group appeared in Christie's catalogue Classical, Egyptian, Cypriot and Western Asiatic Antiquities for 27 April 1976, at pp. 20 to 22 and plates 4 to 6 [3, p. 58]. Karageorghis's letter to Antiquity already referred to "the recent theft of Chalcolithic objects in the Hadjiprodromou Collection (Famagusta) and the appearance of these objects for sale in London" [2, p. 234]. The A. G. Leventis Foundation later bought from the owner the objects restored to him and gave them to the Cyprus Museum; a cruciform picrolite figurine 7.3 cm high, ex-Hadjiprodromou no. 889, is now Cyprus Museum 1981/V-4/9 [3, p. 54].

The same catalogue records that the picrolite figurines and pendants in the collection were believed to have come from the Chalcolithic cemetery of Souskiou-Vathyrkakas near Palaepaphos, which "before 1974 ... suffered at the hands of looters" [3, p. 58]. The loss in the north was a theft from a lawful, registered owner. The objects themselves had first come out of the ground through illicit digging in the south before the invasion. The full history of the collection, including the pieces whose whereabouts are now unknown, is in the Hadjiprodromou collection.

The Morphou mayor's shop, 3 October 1975

The second documented case comes from the Turkish Cypriot side. Olay printed in 1982 a letter of 21 March 1977 from Raif Birman, a counsellor in the Turkish Cypriot education and culture ministry, to the Attorney-General: "On 3.10.1975 the investigations were completed regarding the 217 items of antiquity confiscated from the ... shop of the Morphou Mayor, Isfendiyar Rifat. On some of these confiscated antiques were the initial OHL and some numbers which suggested that these belonged to the antique collector from Morphou, Christakis Hadjiloizides" [4, p. 150]. The initials were matched against the list of stolen antiquities the Republic's Department of Antiquities had sent to UNESCO. In the same year a further 72 antiquities were found in the mayor's house; he claimed that he had brought them from the south [4, p. 150].

The mayor, İsfendiyar Rıfat Açıksöz, was also a licensed antiquities dealer. Olay reported that he had been fined for an illegal dig at Polis and cleared by the High Court, and that "no legal measures" had been taken against him over the Morphou objects [4, pp. 150-151]. The Hadjiloizides objects are a different case from Hadjiprodromou: they were seized inside the north by Turkish Cypriot officials, not sold in London, and their present location is not recorded. The case is treated fully in the Morphou mayor's shop.

Museums, houses and visitors: what is said in general terms

Beyond those two collections the record for 1974 to 1977 becomes general. Karageorghis's letter states that jewellery was looted from the Famagusta District Museum, which he dates only as "last summer" [2]. Olay later wrote that figurines kept in the archaeological museum at Varosha had been "stolen and smuggled to London" [4, p. 139], that "a few years ago" antiquities stolen from that museum were on sale in London until the Greek Cypriot side intervened, and that "an antique dealer in Morphou was held responsible" [4, p. 152]. It also referred, without dates, to "the robbery of the coin, stamp, and antique collections from Varosha and other places" [4, p. 143]. None of these passages gives a date, a count or an inventory. Olay's account of museum objects stopped from sale in London resembles the Hadjiprodromou episode of 1976, but no source connects the two, and they should not be merged.

The common statement that tourists and soldiers carried antiquities out of the north in these first years is plausible, and the later seizures at Tymbou airport show that buyers did try to leave with them. But every dated seizure from a departing buyer recorded by Olay falls between 1980 and 1982 [4, pp. 150-151], and none has been found for 1974 to 1977. The early seizures of the Turkish Cypriot authorities that are on record are the 217 and 72 objects of the Morphou case.

Church art in the same years

The opportunist phase was not limited to antiquities, and in church art it was not small. Jacques Dalibard, the restoration architect appointed by UNESCO in 1974, inspected sites in 1975, but in the occupied area "newly pillaged sites, such as the monastery of Antiphonitis, could not be inspected" [1, p. 132]. At the Panagia Kanakaria in Lythrankomi, in the Karpas, the sixth-century apse mosaic was removed "at some point between 1976 and 1979", as the Indiana court found [5]. Church art was the larger and better-documented loss of the decade. It belongs to a different trade, with different objects, prices and buyers; see church art and antiquities and the Kanakaria mosaics.

The evidence for heavier losses than the record shows

The short list above should not be read as a full account. Three things point the other way. First, the north had almost no means of recording what was taken, and the Republic had no access at all; a gap in the record of these years is a gap in observation. Second, Turkish Cypriot sources describe illegal digging as widespread by 1982 around Salamis, Enkomi, Gastria and the north coast of the Karpas, with dealers who had "a contactman in every region" [4, p. 143]; some of that activity probably began earlier. Third, the Republic's own figure for antiquities "illegally transferred" since 1974, the 60,000 first published by Hadjisavvas in 2001, has never been tied to specific years or cases, and Hadjisavvas's 2015 wording counts "ancient and medieval artifacts" together [1, p. 130]. Marc Fehlmann, writing from the Eastern Mediterranean University in occupied Famagusta and rejecting that figure, still accepts that "well-informed gangs regularly plunder archaeological remains in the North" [6, pp. 161-162]. The arguments over these numbers are set out in how much was taken.

What the record does show is the character of the documented cases. They are thefts of registered collections from owners who had fled, and their objects were identifiable because the Republic had registered them in 1973. They were not the product of a systematic campaign against the northern cemeteries, for which no dated case of these years has been found.

Lawful export from the Republic in the same years

On the other side of the line, the lawful trade continued. The Antiquities Law of 1935, carried forward by the Republic as Cap. 31, still allowed objects legally acquired and registered to be exported with a licence from the Department of Antiquities, and it did so until the amendment of 1996. Fehlmann summarises the period: until 1996 export from the Republic was permitted so long as the Department had provided a licence, and thousands of pieces left in that way [6, p. 156]. Licence numbers reached 7070 by January 1978; a single permit of that year covered an entire private collection of 62 objects, 32 of which are now in Leipzig [7]. The Cyprus Museum continued to sell duplicates from its own stock until the practice was abolished in 1991 [8].

These were lawful exports of objects registered in the south, many of them from the collections formed before 1974. They were not, on the record, a route for material from the occupied north, and the Department's registration cards worked against such material: a registered northern object offered for export or sale could be recognised. The volumes and the limits of the evidence are in how many Cypriot antiquities left lawfully and the legal framework in the legal export of Cypriot antiquities.

What this means for an object on the market today

An object from these years can be identified only if it was registered or published before 1974. A piece bearing a Hadjiprodromou number or the "OHL" mark of the Hadjiloizides collection, or matching a Department registration card, belongs to a documented theft, and the Department of Antiquities can check it against its records. An undocumented pot of a northern type carries no such link. It may have left the north after 1974, but it is at least as likely to have left Cyprus through the excavators' shares, the saleroom or licensed export long before, as northern types with lawful histories explains. The evidence of 1974 to 1977 supports a precise claim, that registered collections in the north were stolen and partly sold in London, and not the wider claim that every Cypriot object without papers is loot of those years.

The photograph at the head of this entry shows the abandoned hotels of Varosha, the modern quarter of Famagusta, fenced off since 1974 (photo: Julian Nyča, 2016, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons).