The Hadjiprodromou Collection: A Registered Famagusta Collection Looted after 1974

The Hadjiprodromou collection was one of only two substantial private collections of antiquities in twentieth-century Famagusta, the other being that of the chemist George Basil Palma [2, p. 409], and one of the largest formed on the island between 1963 and 1973. Its owner, Christakis Hadjiprodromou, declared it to the Department of Antiquities in 1973, when every object in a declared collection was recorded on a card with a description and a photograph. A year later the Turkish invasion left his house in Famagusta inside the occupied north. The collection was looted from 1975, and some of it was in a London saleroom by April 1976. Because the objects were registered and numbered, the owner could recognise and claim them, and the pieces he recovered were bought from him by the A. G. Leventis Foundation and given to the Cyprus Museum in 1981. The case is the best-documented archaeological loss from the north. It is also less simple than it is usually told: the collection was formed from objects dug up illicitly before 1974, and not all of it left the island after it. The picrolite cruciform figures at the head of this page, from the Chalcolithic cemetery at Souskiou and now in the Paphos District Museum, are of the kind that made up the best-known part of the collection.

Formation of the collection, 1963 to 1973

Hadjiprodromou collected in the decade when the Republic could not control large parts of its own territory. From the intercommunal fighting of 1963 until 1974 the Turkish Cypriot enclaves were outside the reach of the Department of Antiquities, and tombs in and around them were dug for the market. The Department's answer was to let Cypriots buy what was found so that it stayed on the island. Vassos Karageorghis, its Director, described the policy in a letter printed in Antiquity in 1976: "During the period 1963–1973 a number of important private collections of Antiquities have been formed in Cyprus, with the silent accord of the Department of Antiquities, which considered this to be the best policy to follow in view of the anomalous political conditions prevailing in Cyprus" [1, p. 233]. The background to that policy is set out in collecting Cypriot antiquities today and the legal export of Cypriot antiquities.

The Hadjiprodromou collection came from the diggers themselves. Robert Merrillees, writing on the collectors of Famagusta, reports Karageorghis's account that Hadjiprodromou "acquired his own collection between 1963 and 1974 not from registered antiquities dealers but from the 'producers', that is, individuals who dug them up accidentally or illicitly". Merrillees adds that the find-places attached to such objects record "not necessarily the archaeological findspot but the location of the seller or purchase" [2, p. 409].

The collection was strong in the Chalcolithic period. Karageorghis described it as comprising "a large number of Chalcolithic objects, mainly painted vases and stone figurines" [3, p. 54]. Its picrolite figurines and pendants were believed to come from tombs in the Chalcolithic cemetery of Souskiou-Vathyrkakas near Palaepaphos, in the south-west, which "before 1974 ... suffered at the hands of looters" [3, p. 58]. It also held later material: the objects bought back in 1981 include Bichrome IV jugs, a terracotta flute-player, a terracotta dog, a limestone temple-boy head, a Red Polished III askos and a bronze head from a hoard found by clandestine digging at Sinda in 1971 (see the purchases register). Karageorghis put the whole at "approximately 2,000 items" [6].

Registration in 1973

The declaration of collections was completed at the end of 1973. In Karageorghis's words, "All these collections have been registered (there is a card with a description and photograph of every single item). This gigantic work ended in December 1973" [1, p. 233]. Each Hadjiprodromou object therefore had a collection number and a photograph on file in Nicosia: the cruciform figurine bought back in 1981 is "ex-Hadjiprodromou Collection no. 889", and other pieces in the same batch carry the numbers 19, 34, 475, 887, 895 and 1322 [3, pp. 54–58, 71–75].

Registration made the objects legal property in the owner's hands. It did not make their digging lawful, and the two questions are kept apart throughout this section. What the cards did was give the Republic a record against which a stolen object could later be identified. Karageorghis made that point in the same letter, writing after the invasion: "We have complete records of all antiquities which have been left in the occupied part of Cyprus; one day we will be able to claim them back, we hope" [1, p. 234].

Looting after 1974 and the Christie's sale of 27 April 1976

Famagusta was occupied by the Turkish army in August 1974. According to Karageorghis, 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]. By the time he wrote to Antiquity, the losses had already reached the market: "The recent theft of Chalcolithic objects in the Hadjiprodomou Collection (Famagusta) and the appearance of these objects for sale in London is an extremely disturbing fact and raises fears about other collections and Museums" [1, p. 234].

The sale that identified the collection was Christie's London auction of Classical, Egyptian, Cypriot and Western Asiatic Antiquities on 27 April 1976. Efthymia Alphas of the Department of Antiquities records that it "included 78 Cypriot antiquities, including 28 picrolite pendants of the Chalcolithic period. No acquisition history accompanied these objects. Investigations showed that some belonged to the collection of Christakis Hadjiprodromou" [4, p. 35]. Karageorghis gives the catalogue pages as 20 to 22 and plates 4 to 6, and notes that the sale was not made up only of his pieces: two further picrolites in it "were not from the Hadjiprodmou Collection, but their Cypriot origin is not in doubt" [3, p. 58]. The consignor has never been published.

The route is consistent with what Karageorghis later wrote of the London trade in general: that London dealers had access to "the 'centres of production' which are mainly the occupied area of northern Cyprus", usually through intermediaries [5]. In 1999 Sophocles Hadjisavvas, speaking for the Department at a symposium in Cambridge, said that "in one case it is known that an auction house in London offered antiquities stolen from a registered collection, although most of the un-provenanced antiquities offered are probably from illegal excavations" [7, p. 29].

The owner's claim and the buy-back of 1981

The registration numbers let the owner act. "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'. Those objects restored by one means or another to their legal owner were finally bought by the Foundation from the collector and were presented to the Cyprus Museum" [3, p. 54].

The objects were entered in the Cyprus Museum's register on 4 May 1981 under fifteen numbers, 1981/V-4/1 to 15. The Foundation's catalogue of 1990 illustrates at least 26 objects from the batch, among them the cruciform figurine of light green picrolite, 7.3 cm high, Cyprus Museum 1981/V-4/9 [3, p. 54], and thirteen anthropomorphic picrolite pendants registered together as 1981/V-4/8 [3, p. 58]. The batch is entered in the purchases register as a single row. Its seller was the lawful owner, not a dealer, and the Foundation paid him for objects that were identified as his and had been stolen from him. It is the one recorded case in which the Foundation paid for objects that had already been identified and returned, as against objects that could only be recovered by purchase (see the state as buyer).

The Foundation was not the only buyer. Karageorghis wrote in 1992 that "there are, of course, also instances of blackmail, as in case of some pieces from the Hadjiprodomou collection of antiquities which was in the now occupied town of Famagusta. Several pieces passed into the hands of the 'secret market' which was beyond detection and were bought by the State from 'intermediaries' in order to save them" [5]. No list of those State purchases has been published.

Later recoveries

The count of recovered objects stayed small. In an interview published in 1983 Karageorghis said that "the outstanding Hadjiprodromou Collection of Famagusta has been completely dispersed; only 40 or 50 of approximately 2,000 items have been recovered" [6]. A doctoral study of Bronze Age figurines gave the figure as 40 objects "returned to Mr Hadjiprodromou" [10, p. 78].

Identifications continued for decades, each one through the Department's photographs:

The Foundation's report for 1999 to 2008 recalls that "a large number of Cypriot artefacts looted from the Hadjiprodromou collection in Famagusta during the 1974 Turkish invasion and subsequent occupation were repatriated, some by the Foundation itself for donation to the Archaeological Museum. More items have since come to light, purchased from dealers by the Foundation and described here" [7, p. 29]. Whether the objects then illustrated, including the deer, came from the Hadjiprodromou collection is not stated. The horse-and-rider of 2016 had been advertised at £2,500 with the history "Ex German private collection of Mr. H. Wagner, Berlin. Previously on the European market and purchased at auction in the 1970s/1980s" [4, p. 36]. The kernos had been photographed in Turkey "on its way to the European antiquities market", sold at Sotheby's in July 1982 under "Various Properties" and offered again in 2014 with the collection of Stanley J. Seeger [4, p. 37]. The cradle figurine returned from Munich in 2015 is pictured on the cover of the Department's 2017 workshop volume [11]; it is the one connection between this collection and the Munich seizure of 1997.

What remained in the north

Karageorghis's statement of 1990, that "it is believed that all items were stolen and exported illicitly abroad" [3, p. 54], is not the whole record, and he himself wrote otherwise twenty years later. In the preface to the Phylactou catalogue of 2010 he described the collection as "now inaccessible in the occupied area of Cyprus" and wrote: "We know that a large number of objects were stolen after the Turkish invasion of 1974 and have since found their way to the illicit market. The remaining part of this collection is now kept in the Monastery of Saint Barnabas, near Salamis" [8, p. 9].

Two specialist catalogues point the same way. Giampaolo Graziadio's corpus of Aegean-type pottery lists two vessels as "Ex Hadjiprodromou Collection? Salamina, Ay. Barnabas Monastery", with the question mark in the original [9, cat. nos. 77–78]. Daisy-Kate Knox's study of Bronze Age figurines states that "the whereabouts of the vast majority of the extensive Hadjiprodromou collection, formerly housed in Famagusta, ... are currently unknown", that some pieces are on display in the museum of the monastery of the Apostle Barnabas, and that "the rest are presumed to have been disposed of on foreign art markets" [10, p. 78].

On this evidence the collection divided three ways: a few dozen objects recovered through London and later through Munich, a part kept in the north at St Barnabas, and a larger part whose fate is not known. No published count has been made of what is at St Barnabas, and no published comparison of its display with the Department's cards. The museums of the north are treated in museums and excavation stores in the north.

The evidence against the rescue account

The Hadjiprodromou collection is sometimes presented as the example of a lawful collection destroyed by the invasion. The record supports half of that. The collection was lawfully held and registered, it was stolen from its owner, and objects from it were sold in London without a history. But its contents had been dug up without permits before 1974: by Karageorghis's account its objects came from "the 'producers'", people who "dug them up accidentally or illicitly" [2, p. 409], and its best-known group, the picrolites, is believed to come from a cemetery in the south that was looted before 1974 [3, p. 58]. The bronze head from Sinda in the 1981 batch came from a hoard "discovered as a result of clandestine excavations in the village of Sinda in the Famagusta District" in 1971, which "was ultimately sold and reached the Hadjiprodromou Collection" [3, p. 66]. The clearest archaeological loss from the occupied north was, in its origin, the product of illicit digging in the south. The reasons the Department accepted such collections, and the criticism of that policy, are in the state as buyer and lawful and illicit in the record.

The second objection concerns the money. The 1981 objects were identified, claimed and returned to their owner, and were then paid for. A purchase from the lawful owner is not a payment to the trade, but the sum went to objects the Republic had already recovered, and the State's own purchases from "intermediaries" [5] were payments into the market that had taken them. The amounts have not been published.

What the case means for an object on the market today

A Chalcolithic picrolite figure or painted vase with no history before the late 1970s may be one of the missing Hadjiprodromou objects, and the Department of Antiquities can check it against the photographs it has held since 1973. The collection numbers, where they survive as marks on the objects, run at least from 19 to 1322. An object that the Department identifies is stolen property, whatever its later sale history: the kernos of 2016 had two published Sotheby's sales behind it [4, p. 37]. An object of the same type that does not match the cards is not by that fact from this collection, since Souskiou and the other Chalcolithic cemeteries were also dug for the market before 1974. The documents that settle the question are a registration card, an export licence, or a sale record that predates 1974, and the purchases register shows which pieces from this collection are already in the Cyprus Museum.