Charles Anthony King-Harman

The Antiquities Law of 1905 was formally passed while Sir Charles Anthony King-Harman was High Commissioner of Cyprus. Kiely and Merrillees say his predecessor, William Haynes Smith, "managed to steer the 1905 antiquities law into being", and that King-Harman's part was its formal passage². Stylianou-Lambert and Bounia place it simply "under the governorship" of the High Commissioner, whose name they print as King-Hartman³. The law made antiquities the absolute property of the government and required collectors to furnish lists to the Museum Committee, which could also acquire monuments and give grants³. On 28 November 1905 the Committee decided to build a new museum outside the walls of Nicosia and appointed Efstathios Konstantinidis curator³.

King-Harman was born in 1851 and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, taking a BA in theology in 1873. He served as private secretary to the Governor of the Bahamas from 1874 to 1879, then came to Cyprus as private secretary to Robert Biddulph, the High Commissioner, until 1881, and was Assistant Chief Secretary there from 1881 to 1883. In 1888 he married Biddulph's daughter Constance. After governing Sierra Leone from 1900 to 1904 he returned to Cyprus as High Commissioner¹.

In March and April 1909 W. J. Farrell, visiting for the British School at Athens, discussed the terms and working of the law with him¹. Merrillees records that the move from the first Cyprus Museum to the second took place under his auspices, supervised by George Jeffery, and judges that he "seems to have been more preoccupied with money matters than Cypriote antiquity"¹. His term ended in 1911, and he died in 1939¹.