Firman

Before the Ottoman antiquities regulations of 1869 and 1874, permission to dig in Cyprus was granted by an individual firman. A well-drafted firman could exempt the finds from customs duty, which in effect authorised their export, so the terms of each document mattered more than any general law.

Luigi Palma di Cesnola dug under firmans in the 1860s and 1870s. Told in 1871 that his firman obliged him to send half his finds to Constantinople, he bought the land at Athienou where his diggers were working, so that as landowner he could keep them. The half-share rule was a term of his personal firman; the 1869 regulation itself imposed only a ban on export.