Kourion: Ohnefalsch-Richter's excavations for Warren, Brown and Lady Brassey

The 1899 Catalogue of the Cyprus Museum credits Max Ohnefalsch-Richter with opening rich Hellenic tombs on level ground east of the acropolis at Kourion, near the church it calls Ag. Hermogenis¹. Kiely and Merrillees identify that ground with the Ayios Ermoyenis cemetery². The catalogue groups the work under 1883–84 and names Col. Warren, S. Brown and others as its patrons¹; Kiely and Merrillees identify Brown as Samuel Brown². Taylor reports that Lady Brassey arranged with Falkland Warren to fund excavation at Kourion, and that the work is believed to have been carried out by Ohnefalsch-Richter³.

Kiely and Merrillees caution that the 1883–84 date might refer collectively to work for several clients, not to continuous work for Brown. They also separate this project from Ohnefalsch-Richter's role as government overseer for the Williamson and Chard digging of 1883, a separate campaign (Kourion: Williamson and Chard)². They describe the tombs opened in this cemetery as ranging from Cypro-Classical to Roman². They associate a tomb cleared in 1883 and reported by Conze with the cemetery; its contents included ordinary pottery and lamps, silverwork, a candelabrum and human bones, and no tomb number is given².

The catalogue lists a silver krater, Cyprus Museum C. M. 4884, and an early terracotta, C. M. 3145, among the finds¹. It also records a silver ring with a carnelian scaraboid showing Athene with an akrostolion as part of S. Brown's collection¹. Kiely and Merrillees give the ring's British Museum registration as GR 1889,11–11,1, but say it can no longer be identified in the collections and may have perished². They cite a letter from Hugh Sinclair, Keeper of the Cyprus Museum, to the Chief Secretary dated 28 November 1883, which describes the official division of the finds². Taylor reports that about 800 Cypriot antiquities were sent privately to Lady Brassey in Britain, though her collection also held material from other sources, so the surviving objects cannot all be assigned to this excavation³.