Salamis: the British Museum Turner Bequest excavation of 1896

In 1896 the third season of the British Museum Turner Bequest excavations in Cyprus worked a Mycenaean-period necropolis near Enkomi, at Salamis, and a tumulus about 10 metres high later known as Tomb 3^1,2,3. The work began towards the end of March. Alexander Stuart Murray supervised it through early May, Percy Christian took over after Murray left, and Arthur Hamilton Smith joined later and carried it on until September^1,2.

The 1899 catalogue of the Cyprus Museum records the necropolis and lists tomb groups with pottery, gold, ivory, bronze, porcelain and other material¹. It says that tombs 1 to 36 were selected for the Cyprus Museum during Murray's supervision¹. Paul Perdrizet reported that Murray and Smith found nearly 100 tombs in a restricted area⁴.

Karageorghis dates the regular excavation of the tumulus to August 1896 and names Smith as responsible for it. The British expedition found Tomb 3 plundered; its excavators also found a large inscribed ostrakon, in an unspecified context, now preserved in the British Museum³. When the tomb was investigated again in 1964, the 1896 plan guided the search for the dromos³.