This Week in Cypriot Archaeology: 29 June–5 July 2026

A Late Bronze Age juglet found in a British online auction was handed back to Cyprus, and the Department of Antiquities entered its lost, stolen and illegally exported antiquities in UNESCO's new Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects. In the occupied north, conservation began at the church of Ayios Demetrianos at Larnakas tis Lapithou.

Heritage crime

A juglet of Base Ring I ware, dated to Late Cypriot I/II (about 1450 BC), reached the Cyprus High Commission in London on 23 June, the Department of Antiquities announced on 1 July. Archaeological officers who track the online trafficking of Cypriot antiquities had spotted it in an internet sale on 6 April. The Department consulted the auction house, Halls Fine Art Auctioneers, and the lot was withdrawn. The Department thanked the house and the possessor for returning the juglet voluntarily, and the Cultural Section of the High Commission for arranging the handover.

Base Ring is the thin-walled, hand-made pottery of Late Bronze Age Cyprus, with a dark lustrous slip that imitates metal; its jugs and juglets were exported widely to Egypt and the Levant. The Halls juglet is the latest in a run of withdrawals from regional and online salerooms in Britain and the United States since late 2025. A Black-on-Red jug withdrawn at Watsons Auctioneers reached the same High Commission on 7 March 2026.

The Department has also placed details of Cypriot antiquities that are lost, stolen or were illegally exported in the Virtual Museum of Stolen Cultural Objects, an online museum that UNESCO built with the support of Saudi Arabia. Its aim is to show the human cost of the illicit trade in cultural goods through digital stories and testimony. The Deputy Minister of Culture, Vasiliki Kassianidou, announced Cyprus's part in it on social media and said that the effort to repatriate every illegally exported Cypriot antiquity continues.

Conservation

A nine-month conservation programme began at the church of Ayios Demetrianos, the main church of Larnakas tis Lapithou, the UN Development Programme said on 3 July. The village lies south of the Kyrenia range, inland from Lapithos, in the area occupied by Turkey since the 1974 invasion. The European Union and contributions from the community fund the work, which the UNDP supervises technically. Sotos Ktoris, co-chair of the Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage, said that work is under way at the same time at more than 70 cemeteries and religious sites, and that the same contract covers maintenance at Ayios Charalambos in Agridaki, also in the Kyrenia district. A dedication in Greek to Athena and in Phoenician to the goddess Anat was found at the village.