Idalion: Luigi Palma di Cesnola's excavations at Dali

Luigi Palma di Cesnola said that by the end of his third year at Dali he had opened about 10,000 tombs, a figure that rests on his word alone.¹ He began exploring in 1866, in what he called a mere amateur way.² Official Ottoman permission to excavate at Idalion is documented for 1868, and Cesnola says that Minister Edward Joy Morris secured the firman through the Porte.^1,3 He gives the period of his digging in the fields west of Dali as 1867 to the end of 1875, at intervals.¹

Cesnola writes that he surveyed the fields around Dali for two weeks and leased about thirty acres, with the help of Mr. Cosma, whom he describes as a local notable and dragoman of the Dutch Consulate; he says he did so because he believed an extensive necropolis lay south and west of the village.¹ Lang praised the discoveries of Hasan of Dali, made under Cesnola's guidance.⁴ Notes copied by Froehner report a month of digging with 50 men and about 100 tombs, without a firm date.⁵

In his account Cesnola describes deeper oven-shaped tombs with platforms for burials, which he considered Phoenician, and shallower tombs containing glass and lamps, which he considered Graeco-Roman. He reports pottery, glass, terracotta lamps and gold ornaments, and a copper bowl from one tomb.¹ Hermary and Mertens report that 48 of 92 limestone works sold in Paris in March 1870 were described as heads found at Dali, and that the Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired Cesnola's Cypriot collection in 1874–1876.³