Enkomi: the British Museum excavations of 1896

Between late March and September 1896 the British Museum opened 100 tombs in the cemetery at Enkomi; Tomb 1 was opened on 28 March¹. Tomb 93, opened by a workman named Movolauw on 28 August in Solomis' field, held the richest gold: diadems, mouthpieces, a necklace, rings and a lattice bowl^1,2. Crewe gives about 1430 g of gold for the tomb in total².

Money, agents and workers

The dig was paid for from Miss Emma Turner's 1892 bequest, which let the British Museum begin its own excavations in Cyprus after earlier lack of Treasury funding^1,3. Agents contracted by the Museum, J. W. Williamson and Charles Christian, arranged the practicalities while local workers did the digging; the agents sent regular lists of the Museum's share of finds as they were divided^1,3,4.

The campaign ran in three phases. A. S. Murray, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities, led the dig to early May; Percy Christian, a Cypriot resident, was in charge from May to July and wrote the notebook entries for Tombs 38–100; A. H. Smith, an assistant in the Department, oversaw the work from July to September¹. The tombs lay in the fields of Hadji Suliman, Evangelis, Panayia and others¹. Marangou reports Zanettos's account that the owner of one field allowed digging without compensation and refused two shillings offered at the end⁵.

The tombs

Tomb 12 was broken into when an ox stepped into it while ploughing; it held a mass of broken pottery with chariot, bull and ship scenes¹. The British Museum excavated one tholos tomb (Tomb 71), with Tomb 48 probably a chamber tomb, and four built tombs (1, 11, 12 and 66)^1,2. Tomb 1 was a square built chamber with a skeleton, two gold spiral rings and a lapis lazuli intaglio¹. In the muddy Tomb 45, Christian describes pumping out mud and washing it in pans with running water¹. Tomb 83, in Panayia's field, was a deep cave-like tomb divided into parts A, B and C, and Tomb 92, in the same field, was a very deep tomb opened by Miras Pitron¹.

Tomb 66, a large built tomb on the boundary of Hadji Suliman's and Evangelis' fields, was found intact with lamps and bronze pins driven into the walls². Crewe argues that the built tombs were constructed in Late Cypriot II, either LC IIB or early LC IIC, and notes that the only objects of definite LC I date from Tomb 66 are three Tell el-Yahudiyeh juglets, overlooked in the 1900 publication². Arthur Evans used a porcelain scarab with the name of Queen Tyi from Tomb 93 as dating evidence⁶. He wrote in 1900 that Murray had consistently argued for a chronology bringing the pure Mycenaean style down to the "Age of the Tyrants", a view Evans disputed⁶. The 1899 Cyprus Museum catalogue lists the top of a limestone head of Cypriote style among the finds from Tomb 30⁷.

Recording and publication

Late Cypriot Goldwork calls the standard of excavation and publication unfortunately low, citing Tomb 47, which Christian described in a letter but which was only briefly published⁴. Crewe notes that local pottery and mundane items were often not collected and that small jewellery lost its tomb number before registration². Crewe observes that the 1900 publication illustrated only a representative sample of the more important British Museum finds and that no tomb was completely published². The field notebook, with the entries of Murray, Christian and Smith, is in the Department of Greece and Rome at the British Museum, and Veronica Tatton-Brown published a transcription in 2003¹.

Dividing the finds

According to Crewe, finds from two thirds of the tombs went to the British Museum and the rest to the Cyprus Museum. Murray's record of Tombs 1–36 "selected for the Cyprus Museum" is printed in the 1899 Cyprus Museum catalogue^2,7. Smith arranged for Williamson to dispose of the plainer pottery and glass and to divide the proceeds between the Government and the excavators⁴. The British Museum holds a gold nugget of about 15 oz (1897.4–1.529), the lattice bowl containing ten gold diadems (1897.4–1.1291) and the fine gold necklace (1897.4–1.604) from Tomb 93, and the lapis lazuli intaglio with a lion and tree from Tomb 1 (GR1897.4–1.1)¹. From Tomb 66 the Department of Greece and Rome registered 139 objects².