Glossary Collecting and the antiquities trade
US-Cyprus Memorandum of Understanding
Also called: MoU, CCPIA
An agreement between the United States and Cyprus, first signed in 2002, restricting US imports of designated Cypriot archaeological and Byzantine material.
The US Convention on Cultural Property Implementation Act of 1983 lets the United States impose import restrictions on designated categories of archaeological material at the request of another state party to the 1970 UNESCO Convention. Cyprus was among the first to ask: an emergency restriction on Byzantine ecclesiastical material came in 1999, and a Memorandum of Understanding covering pre-Classical and Classical archaeological objects was signed on 16 July 2002.
The agreement has since been amended to add Byzantine material and coins, and renewed several times, most recently in 2022. Restricted objects may enter the United States only with a Cypriot export licence or evidence that they left Cyprus before the restrictions applied. Objects of northern types with no history before 1974 are the case it was designed to address (Looting in Occupied Northern Cyprus).
Related terms
- 1970 UNESCO Convention
The 1970 international treaty on preventing the illicit import, export and transfer of cultural property; its year is the trade's usual provenance benchmark.
- Export licence
An official permit allowing an antiquity to leave its country of origin; in Cyprus, issued by the Department of Antiquities from 1935.
- Repatriation
The return of cultural objects to their country or community of origin, whether through legal action, negotiation or a voluntary gift.