Marion: the Cyprus Exploration Fund excavations

Two tombs dug by the Cyprus Exploration Fund at Marion in 1890 gave a gold signet ring engraved with Athena and an owl (Tomb 66) and a gold necklace of rosettes, stars and buttons (Tomb 67); both are now in the British Museum^1,2. John Arthur Ruskin Munro used the tombs of the eastern and western necropoleis to argue for their dates¹. The Fund's interest in Polis was sparked by Ohnefalsch-Richter's work and the problem of locating ancient Marion².

The 1889 season

Permission to dig came from the Government, requested in January 1889 by E. A. Gardner, Director of the British School at Athens; land permissions were obtained from the owners, largely through John William Williamson, whose excavation rights the Fund bought^2,3. Munro and H. Arnold Tubbs opened tombs south and southeast of Polis at sites A, B, K, H.-D., M, T and the Oven site³. Gregorios Antoniou was foreman and Sophocles Stavrinides was government overseer². Ulbrich and Kiely date the work from mid-January to mid-April and count 154 tombs; Childs gives February to April and over 200 tombs investigated, 165 with recorded objects^2,3.

Under the 1874 Law no one could dig at two points at once, and the Fund was reminded of this when it asked to start at Limnitis before finishing at Polis⁴. After Polis the team dug the Limniti sanctuary, where they found a temenos and favissa with terracotta figures up to lifesize³.

The 1889 tombs were mainly of the Cypro-Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods, with much imported Attic pottery, tomb plans, and Cypro-syllabic and Greek funerary inscriptions; the report treated terracottas, jewellery and metalwork only summarily³. Tomb 7 at Site A held a Euboean plate with a seated sphinx and swan, now British Museum 1890.7–31.22². In Tomb 10 at Agios Demetrios two skeletons lay on either side of the door, which Munro took to be a man and his wife; the finds included a jasper scarab ring and ram-headed bracelets, and the bracelets are now British Museum 1890.7–31.6–7². The Fitzwilliam Museum holds a silver and jasper scarab ring from Tomb 10 (GR.165.1890)⁵. The preliminary report appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies 11⁶.

The 1890 season

Munro worked alone in 1890, from near the end of June through July. Williamson negotiated the contract, and Cecil Smith was most active in procuring the funds^1,2. Munro chose Site T because it promised fine objects, and he wrote that the previous year's results were of little scientific value^1,2. When he asked for a further season his stated aims were to resolve problems in Greek and Cypriote pottery history and to acquire antiquities for museums².

The work was done by shafts sunk under contract with landowners, paid by the number of shafts. Munro recorded tomb form, condition and contents, with plans, and plotted tomb locations with Xs on an overall plan of Polis; his plans did not give object positions within tombs^1,2. Joanna Smith considers that he paid more attention to contextual detail than Ohnefalsch-Richter, noting reuse and burial episodes².

At Site T in the eastern necropolis, 56 small tombs were cleared within three weeks, mostly undisturbed and chiefly of the last decades of the sixth and first part of the fifth century BC according to Munro. They held mainly plain and Cypriote pottery, black-glazed ware and iron knives, with some black-figured vases and jewellery¹. Tomb 40 contained a silver Lion's-head coin of c. 480–400 BC, attributed by M. Six to Soli, which Munro used as chronological evidence¹.

In the western necropolis, in a courtyard and Mehemet Halofta's field and a second yard, he opened 24 tombs of greater variety, many of them robbed, with slab doors, niches and slab-built or stone sarcophagi. He judged most to be of late date, the earlier burials being of the fifth and fourth centuries¹. Tomb 57, robbed, yielded an Attic white-ground lecythus with a parting scene and a red-figured lecythus showing Aphrodite on a swan, which he dated not long after the middle of the fifth century BC¹. Tomb 66 was undisturbed; its signet ring is British Museum 1891.8–6.86, and Munro judged the style not earlier than the fourth century, probably early Hellenistic^1,2. The Tomb 67 necklace has a central pendant of a flower surmounted by two winged figures holding cocks (Erotes, in Childs) and is British Museum 1891.8–6.88, 89–92^1,2. Tombs 70 and 80 each contained a silver drachma of Alexander the Great, and Munro suggested they might belong to the probably brief period between the destruction of Marium in 312 BC and the foundation of Arsinoe¹. A door block of Tomb 60, inscribed in the Cypriote syllabary, was the only inscribed stone found by excavation in 1890¹.

Reading the necropoleis

Munro dated the eastern necropolis to about 520–420 BC, as a rough but probable date, and held it earlier than the western, which he took to be mainly Hellenistic. He linked the eastern necropolis mainly with Marium and the western with Arsinoe, confirming Dümmler, but allowed that both were used by both cities¹. Against Furtwängler he argued that older Cypriote pottery continued through the fifth century and later kinds into Ptolemaic times¹. He corrected his 1889 reading of the western tombs, finding the earlier evidence more confused than supposed¹. Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter thought he probably went too far in the other direction and modified his first conclusions somewhat in his second report⁷. Munro came to think of Polis as the "best tomb site at present known in Cyprus"².

Division of finds

The division of the 1889 Poli finds with Mr. Thompson was carried out in April 1889; under the 1874 Law the excavator normally received two thirds and the Government one third^4,6. The Fund acquired antiquities especially for the Ashmolean, Fitzwilliam and British Museums². Munro noted more than one bronze candelabrum from Poli in the Cyprus Museum, Nicosia¹. The inscriptions of Onasagoras and his wife, acquired by Munro at Polis in 1890, were reunited in the British Museum¹. The 1890 results were published in Munro's report in the Journal of Hellenic Studies 12, pp. 298–331¹.