Mycenaean pottery and 'objects of no value': Finds management and issues of division during the British Museum excavations in Cyprus in the late 19th c. AD

Angelos Papadopoulos examines the management, division and export of finds during the British Museum excavations in Cyprus in the 1890s, focusing on Late Bronze Age tombs at Kourion and Enkomi. He begins with the establishment of the Cyprus Exploration Fund in 1887 after the High Commissioner halted private digging, and with the contemporary scholarly interest in the Mycenaean question shaped by Charles Newton, who linked finds from Mycenae with material from Rhodes and Cyprus.

Under the Ottoman antiquities law still in force, finds were divided in three parts between the landowner, the excavator and the government. By purchasing the land or securing the landowner's rights, the British Museum claimed two-thirds of the finds. Papadopoulos traces how this worked at Kourion Site D in 1895, excavated by the local agents Charles Christian and John Williamson under the supervision of the British Museum curator Walters, and at Enkomi, where Percy Christian excavated alongside Alexander Murray and Arthur Smith.

Archival correspondence shows that the division and shipment of finds were contentious. At Enkomi, the first division of thirty-one tombs was decided by tossing a coin. In a later division, gold and silver objects were held back in a safe rather than presented, and in June 1897 Percy Christian requested permission to export two cases of antiquities described as "practically of no value" for friends in England. Complaints in Cyprus reached the Legislative Council, where the Chief Secretary admitted that the division method favoured the British Museum because Arthur Smith knew the value of the antiquities in each tomb far better than Benjamin Travers, the Commissioner of Famagusta.

Although the 1900 publication claimed that tomb groups were kept intact, recent archival and storeroom research by Despo Pilides and Thomas Kiely shows that tomb groups were separated between London and the Cyprus Museum, while lesser finds and so-called duplicates were given away or sold. The excavators prioritised gold, Egyptian imports and Mycenaean pottery, especially pictorial kraters showing themes such as hunters with hounds, archers and the master of horses. Papadopoulos concludes that reuniting these dispersed tomb groups is necessary before scholars can rely on vessel counts to study trade, chronology and status.