Amathus: Cesnola's tomb clearance

The tomb clearance at Amathus by the consul Luigi Palma di Cesnola in 1874 to 1876 produced a sculptured limestone sarcophagus, reported in 792 fragments, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and a silver bowl, now in the British Museum^1,2,3.

The digging, 1874 to 1876

Cesnola was an American consul digging on his own account². A letter of 11 August 1874 from Amathus describes a dig of some weeks, and on 29 August he wrote to Birch of work at Amathus and Kourion, mentioning the large stone vases on the acropolis¹. In the deposition he gave on 4 March 1875, the digger Theocharis Koutsocheris said he had been ordered to dig at Amathus in 1874, where many stone-built tombs were found and Cesnola lived in tents⁴. Hermary and Mertens describe the digging as part of Cesnola's arrangement with the Metropolitan Museum, which anticipated new excavations for its benefit, conducted mainly at Amathus and Kourion in 1874 and 1875⁵. Cesnola himself told Hitchcock in April 1875 that he had extensive fields full of tombs left unopened for want of a purchaser, and wrote that he was paying for the digging himself and was free to offer the finds to others^1,4. John Ruskin paid for part of the 1875 digging^1,4.

A necropolis near Amathus was reported on 24 March 1875. Masson places the finding of the sculptured sarcophagus at the start of 1875, and it was being reassembled at Larnaca in April. A white marble female anthropoid sarcophagus followed on 21 June 1875, according to a drawing Cesnola sent to Birch¹. Marangou, following Barnett, has Cesnola arriving in June with about 40 workers, where his own account puts him in Amathus with 20 workers for four weeks⁴. Barnett held that Georges Colonna Ceccaldi did the Amathus digging and that Cesnola arrived only in June 1875. Masson rejects this: Cesnola is known to have admitted no European to his digs, and Colonna-Ceccaldi had left Cyprus in October 1871. Hermary adds that Colonna-Ceccaldi was only entrusted with publishing the objects^1,4,6.

Work continued in spring 1876. On 4 April 1876 Cesnola reported rare white-glazed vases and Egyptian cylinders and scarabs from tombs at Amathus¹. Masson dates the fatal fall into a tomb of Justus Siegismund, a young German philologist visiting the tombs, to March 1876, in Cesnola's absence^1,7. Gjerstad captions a tomb plan as excavated by Cesnola in 1876². Cesnola left Cyprus for good in early summer 1876¹.

What the tombs held

Cesnola says he examined nearly a hundred tombs built of finely cut stone in the north necropolis, with one to four chambers and one to ten sarcophagi each, all already opened and rifled; Gjerstad thought the number exaggerated^2,7. He writes that tombs were found by sinking shafts to the built chambers and that his men worked nine days at one tomb, digging in three places before they located the entrance⁷. His men entered a two-room tomb with fifteen broken, plain sarcophagi through a hole cut by earlier robbers⁷. In the oven-shaped tombs along the shore he found broken glass, lamps of the first and second century AD, large amphorae and occasional Greek-inscribed stelai, and no valuable gold; the rock-cut tombs east and west of the city had all been opened long before⁷. On the acropolis he dug at several places on the crest down to bedrock and found no sculptured remains of importance⁷.

Cesnola reports that the sculptured sarcophagus lay broken in the inner room of a built tomb, with two plain sarcophagi, one marble and one limestone, in the adjacent chambers⁷. Hermary and Mertens date the sculptured sarcophagus to the first quarter of the fifth century BC and the marble anthropoid sarcophagus (Myres 1366) to the late fifth century BC⁵. Marangou quotes Cesnola's account of raising the great sarcophagus with ropes and hand force in nine hours, then dragging it on a cart by eight oxen and fifty men⁴. Masson says the tomb had four chambers, as do Hermary and Mertens following Myres; the tomb Gjerstad's expedition drew has two^1,5.

In a copper caldron in a tomb, Cesnola reported an iron dagger, fragments of a shield engraved with a row of animals and the remains of a silver bowl, the Amathus Bowl, with fragments of sixty terracotta vases, sixteen alabaster vases, opaque glass, green glazed Egyptian-style amulets, two terracotta Astarte figures and some thirty copper objects⁷. Myres treated the April 1875 date and the tomb as Cesnola's statement, found his account of the bowl tomb exaggerated in depth, and noted that his plan matched a large tomb north of the acropolis still accessible in 1894⁸. Myres argued that the bowl is, at latest, of the early reign of Psammetichus, and left its place of manufacture open⁸. The Lemesos volume dates the bowl and shield to the late eighth or early seventh century BC⁶.

Gjerstad found Cesnola's statements rather exaggerated, especially on the difficulty of excavating the tombs, but confirmed through old villagers of Ajios Tychonas that the large sarcophagus was found at Amathus. No plans of the tombs were published by Cesnola; Gjerstad's expedition drew one of the two still accessible in 1930². Hermary calls the nineteenth-century work at Amathus clandestine and unscientific, and says it is impossible to tell how many tombs Cesnola's agents opened⁶.

Where the finds went

After the digging all the finds were loaded on carts and sent to Larnaca, and Marangou quotes Cesnola that a boat under the American flag took the finds⁴. The Amathus sarcophagus (74.51.2453, 228 cm long) and the marble anthropoid sarcophagus (74.51.2452) are in the Cesnola Collection of the Metropolitan Museum, purchased by subscription; Hermary and Mertens say the second part of the collection, including the Amathus sarcophagus, was bought after negotiations in November 1876^3,5.

The bowl was said to have been with Ruskin. Ralph Brown bought it in 1931 with remainders from Ruskin's house, and Sidney Smith presented it to the British Museum⁸. Marangou says the bronze shield was apparently also offered by Ruskin to an educational establishment and later sold to the British Museum⁴. Cesnola's letters to Samuel Birch, including the drawing of the marble sarcophagus enclosed in a letter of 24 June 1875, are in the British Museum Archives⁴. Cesnola published the work in chapter X of Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples (1878), pp. 249 to 292⁷.