Kourion: Luigi Palma di Cesnola's excavations

Gold, silver and bronze objects from a rich tomb or tombs opened in 1875 came out of this digging; Luigi Palma di Cesnola later published the find, the 'Treasure of Curium', as four chambers under a temple mosaic, and the men who dug it placed it in the plain^1,2.

The digging of 1874 and 1875

Cesnola, American consul at Larnaca, dug at Kourion (his 'Curium') privately, with paid local labourers, in 1874 and 1875^2,3. Marangou reports that he held a firman on condition that he give half of the finds to the Ottoman museum and be accompanied throughout by a Turkish inspector, and that his firman would end on 16 April 1875; Cesnola himself says he was digging without showing the firman to the Governor².

McFadden, quoted by Masson, says Cesnola concocted the Treasure of Curium under the double spur of the need for a career. Marangou has him short of money again, with the Metropolitan Museum trustees to impress after Schliemann's find at Troy, which his letters cite often^2,4. Soren adds that at the temple he was concerned with rivalling Schliemann rather than with scientific recording⁵.

His labourers found Hellenistic dedications at Kourion in the summer of 1874 (nos. 25, 65 and 66 in Mitford's Inscriptions of Kourion, the last two lost)⁶. On 17 September 1874 Cesnola announced the city and the temple². In April 1875 he was at Kourion, and by July at the latest his foremen had opened and emptied several rich tombs in the cemetery plain east of the acropolis^2,4. He says that he camped on the hill for nearly six weeks, taking notes for his book³. He left Cyprus for good in September 1876⁴.

The Temple of Apollo Hylates

At the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates Cesnola dug along the eastern foundations for several weeks and exposed part of the pavement^1,2. Beneath the stone pavement he found a few terracotta warriors and the fragments of a very large inscribed jar, along with mutilated inscriptions¹. In a ravine to the south-east lay a pit of deliberately broken limestone statues, and farther west he found about twenty-five statuettes of a seated youth with amulets, some with Cypriot syllabic inscriptions naming Apollo¹.

Scranton, following McFadden, dated this work to 1876. Soren, using a newly found Cesnola letter, gives 1874^5,7. A fragment of the Trajanic inscription (Mitford no. 108) was dug up by Cesnola in 1874^3,6. Five fragments of a coarse red-ware pithos inscribed as an ex-voto of the potter Polyktetos to Apollo Hylates and Apollo Caesar, about A.D. 110, belong together: three were found by Cesnola in 1874 along the eastern foundations and acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (74.51.2447), and two came from the Pennsylvania dig of 1935, after which all five were presented to the University Museum⁶.

J. H. and S. H. Young, quoted by Masson from 1955, found that his terracottas from the temple are matched by Pennsylvania finds and wrote that in this case at least Cesnola is completely vindicated; Masson calls it a favourable case, and Soren accepts that Cesnola excavated the actual temple^3,5.

The tomb of July 1875

Cesnola describes the plain near the church of Ayios Ermoyenis as full of unplundered tombs at depths of 7 to 40 feet, with roofs mostly fallen in¹. His diggers removed earth from the rock-cut chambers in baskets, and his foreman searched what remained by hand with a knife and his fingers; Cesnola says he never had any of his diggers searched¹.

His letters to Birch of 20 July, 27 August and 2 September 1875 first announce a find in one tomb at Curium, then place it under a temple mosaic and add inner rooms, while the private letter to Hitchcock of 6 August speaks of two tombs⁴. The book of 1878 describes eight granite columns lying over a lotus mosaic that he says a treasure seeker had broken, and below it four rooms: Room C yielded the gold, Room D over 300 silver and silver-gilt articles, and Room E bronze and terracotta. Cesnola says that no human remains or sepulchral vases were found and calls the chambers a temple treasury^1,2.

Two of the diggers gave a different account. Christofis Christodoulou, in an affidavit of 1884, describes a rich rock-cut tomb of three chambers in the plain east of the hill, near the old church, and Theocharis Koutsocheris one of four². It held a large deposit of bones with gold, silver and bronze objects in disorder, enough gold and silver to fill three or four cigar boxes, and pottery that the diggers broke and left in the tomb². Christofis says Cesnola was not present during nearly the whole work on the tomb, whereas Cesnola says he oversaw it and was present^2,3. Christofis also says the mosaic was found already broken and that Cesnola sat nearby on a chair at that place; Marangou cannot confirm that the mosaic existed². A separate tomb, per Christofis, produced the stone cart, two pottery pigs, a marching female figure, a gold ring, a silver ring and a silver plate².

Dümmler and Ohnefalsch-Richter re-examined the spot in 1885 and found undisturbed earth at small depth, and they and Soren and James conclude that the rich tomb as published was invented^3,8. Masson takes a more measured view: Cesnola's story is false and his behaviour deplorable, but the important objects do come from Kourion and its rich necropoleis, deprived of part of their context⁴. In 1885 Cesnola defended himself by writing that everything classified at the museum as from Curium was found there in four rooms, which he first thought a royal tomb and then a votive deposit³.

The finds

Cesnola offered his second collection, of 7,161 items, to the Metropolitan Museum. The British Museum, which had offered 10,000 pounds for the whole collection, lost it after New York telegrams urged delay, and in 1876 the Curium finds, except the gold, went to New York on the Danemark². The pair of gold bracelets inscribed in the Cypriot syllabary for Etewandros, king of Paphos, were stolen from the Metropolitan Museum in 1887; Merrillees thinks them most likely melted down, and the museum holds Tiffany reproductions (74.51.3552 and 74.51.3553)⁹. Mitford dates the bracelets' discovery to July 1875, on Siegismund's testimony, while Christofis says they were found elsewhere in the plain, not in the three-chamber tomb^2,6.

Cesnola's account is in chapter XI, 'Curium', of Cyprus: Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples (1878), pp. 293 to 349¹. Masson reconstructs its changing versions and the diggers' affidavits in his two-part Cesnola et le trésor de Curium of 1984³.