Arthur Hubert Stanley Megaw

For twenty-four years, from 1936 to 1960, every foreign mission that sought to dig in Cyprus, and every dealer who sought to sell, had to deal with Arthur Hubert Stanley Megaw, known as Peter¹. He was born in 1910, in Dublin according to Powell, and was aged 26 when he took the post⁴. Catling records that he was educated in Ireland and at Cambridge, where he read architecture with art history, and that from 1931 he was at the British School at Athens as a Macmillan student, assistant director and, in 1936, acting director after the death of Blakeway, publishing on Byzantine churches¹.

Becoming Director

The post fell vacant when John Hilton was dismissed in April 1936 and the Colonial Office advertised it again. Stanley-Price reports that Sir George Hill had thought Megaw the strongest candidate in 1934, when he was unavailable as Assistant Director in Athens². He was interviewed in Cyprus from 1 March 1936. Stanley-Price adds that he reportedly angered the Governor by calling on Rupert Gunnis first, and that he told Hilton he accepted the post with "considerable trepidation"². In office his formal manner irritated Porphyrios Dikaios and the foreman Bowler, who left in 1939². He married Elektra Mangoletsi in 1937¹.

One department

Catling describes what Megaw made of the Department: a single administration covering monuments, the Cyprus Museum and the district museums, control of excavations by the Department and by foreign missions, supervision of the antiquities trade and of private collections, and publications. He also set up career structures for guards, foremen and craftsmen. Dikaios, as Curator of the Cyprus Museum, carried most of the museum and excavation work¹.

The trade was handled through licences. Powell reports that Megaw posted notices urging the public to buy only from licensed dealers, licensed three dealers, and regularly checked their stock before approving objects for export, believing it in the Department's interest "to stimulate the trade in antiquities through the authorised channels"⁴. The Department's files hold the private-collection declarations of 1935 and 1936, the licence of the Nicosia chemist George Basil Palma, renewed for 1938, and Palma's letters to Megaw of 1937 and 1938³.

The foreign missions of the 1950s worked under his permits. Maier lists the Penn Museum and Dumbarton Oaks at Kourion, Schaeffer's joint expedition at Enkomi, du Plat Taylor and Seton-Williams at Myrtou-Pighades, Iliffe and Terence Mitford at Kouklia, and Weinberg and Stewart on the Early Bronze Age cemeteries⁵. J. R. B. Stewart had applied to Megaw in 1939 for leave to dig at Vounous⁴. When Jean Bérard asked to work at Nea Paphos, Megaw doubted the value of soundings in the Graeco-Roman levels and proposed that the Kouklia Expedition make them; the French Mission was finally licensed⁵.

His own excavations

Megaw dug as well as licensed. With Andreas Dikigoropoulos he excavated three basilicas at Ayios Georghios tis Peyias, on Cape Drepanon¹. From 1957 he excavated Saranda Kolones at Kato Paphos, which proved to be a Crusader castle; the work ran to 1959 and resumed in 1966^1,7.

Catling gives 1960 as the end of his directorship, at independence¹. His fieldwork went on. Kiely calls the Saranda Kolones campaigns for the British School at Athens, led by the former Director, the first British excavation of the post-independence period⁸. From 1974 to 1979 he directed the Dumbarton Oaks excavation of the Kourion basilica in the Episcopal Precinct⁹. The final publication appeared in 2007⁸.

Catling lists a CBE in 1951 and the Frend medal of the Society of Antiquaries in 1995, for his work on the churches of Cyprus, and notes the Kanakaria volume he wrote with Hawkins¹. Megaw died on 28 June 2006, shortly after his 96th birthday¹.