Salamis and Enkomi: Alessandro Palma di Cesnola's excavations

The greater part of the Lawrence-Cesnola collection came from the digging that Alessandro (Alexander) Palma di Cesnola began in 1876 at Salamis with money from Edwin H. Lawrence, who was to have the collection offered to England before any other country^1,2. Cesnola says he aimed at first to assemble a representative collection of Cypriot vases and glass, and he calls his first excursion to the ruins in 1876 unsuccessful and costly¹. In November 1877 a workman brought him finds from Salamis, among them three terracotta statuettes, one with a Greek inscription, said to come from a tomb. Cesnola then sent all his men there, took a house in a village near the ruins and continued until the British occupation¹.

He describes sinking separate shafts in the ruins and following foundations or pavements, and digging tombs with small parties of three or four men, paid fixed daily wages and separate sums for finds¹. He reports a well about two miles from Salamis full of fractured statuettes in layers, about two hundred of which he put together; that they belonged to a temple and were deposited in the early Common Era is his interpretation¹. Between Salamis and Constanzia he found in 1877 a carved stone group, which he took for personifications of the two places¹.

In 1878 Lazaris Philippi supervised the men digging for Cesnola at Enkomi, and stopped the work on 2 October². Cesnola was found guilty under the 1874 law and fined four liras, which Wolseley remitted; antiquities seized at Enkomi and Ormidia were confiscated, and some eventually went to the Cyprus Museum². The Lawrence collection was sold in four auctions between 1883 and 1892, and the number of pieces from Salamis cannot be isolated². Cesnola published his account as Salaminia, in 1882 and in a revised edition in 1884^1,3.