Charles Newton

Charles Newton assembled the British Museum's Cypriot collection of more than two thousand pieces without ever digging on the island, and he went there only once, for twenty-six days in the spring of 1879¹. He was born at Bredwardine, Herefordshire, on 16 September 1816, entered the Museum as an assistant in 1840, and served as Vice-Consul at Mytilene from 1852^1,15. After excavating at Halicarnassus he became the first Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities in 1861 and held the post until 1885¹. Other authorities date the start of the keepership to 1860 and the end to 1886^7,8.

Buying through consuls

Newton's years at Mytilene gave him a network of consuls and expatriates that he used from London¹. His first Cypriot contact was Demetrios Pierides of Larnaca. In 1855, still at Mytilene, Newton recommended that the Trustees accept Pierides' gift of limestone figures from Dali^1,2. From 1864 Pierides sent three consignments on approval, two of sculpture and one of Dali pottery, and the Museum paid £53 for all of them¹.

Dominic Ellis Colnaghi, who had been Newton's private secretary at Mytilene, was Consul at Larnaca in 1864 and 1865; Newton regretted his transfer to Turin in a report to the Trustees¹. Thomas Backhouse Sandwith, Vice-Consul from 1865 to 1870, sold the Museum a group of objects for £20 in 1869 and wrote a paper on Cypriot pottery at Newton's instigation; it reached the Society of Antiquaries in 1871 and appeared in Archaeologia in 1877^8,10. Newton also lobbied for Sandwith's promotion to Crete².

The bank manager R. H. Lang reported to Newton from 1861. After the Dali discoveries of 1869 Newton advised him to keep the finds together and to record the plan and findspots. The Museum bought the collection in 1872 and 1873 for £800 against an asking price of £1,600, and Newton's calculation of what sculpture was worth, by condition and duplication, is cited by Kiely as an example of the market shaping Museum policy^1,2. Kiely sets the sums against Newton's classical purchases: £48,000 for the Blacas collection and almost £28,500 for the Castellani, against £53 for Pierides and £20 for Sandwith¹. He describes Newton's collecting as shrewd, at times highly calculating, and strongly classical in bias¹.

Cesnola

In 1871 Newton declined Luigi Palma di Cesnola's offer of 1,277 pieces from Golgoi⁴. He bought smaller lots, £14 10s in 1871 and £300 in 1876¹, reviewed the London exhibition of 1872, and chose the plates for the 1873 album, which carried an introduction by Sidney Colvin⁴. In 1876 he and Samuel Birch recommended buying the Curium collection. The Trustees authorised up to £10,000, Cesnola withdrew, and the collection went to New York⁴.

The two men did not warm to each other. In a private letter of 1877 to Hitchcock, Cesnola wrote that Newton was a man he had "always disliked", and he complained that Newton had been "bought" by Heinrich Schliemann⁴. Cesnola wrote to Newton in 1881 and invited him to lecture in New York⁴. Kiely says Newton believed Cesnola's "treasure" claim until at least 1880¹.

The British occupation and the visit of 1879

Within weeks of the British occupation of 1878 Newton sent a report, dated 25 July, urging that the government reserve ancient sites and finds, harbour dredgings included, and that excavation be conducted by the state^1,8. Stanley-Price writes that the ban on excavation issued in August 1878 "owes much, apparently, to the British Museum"⁵. Newton recommended R. P. Pullan to lead an expedition at about £1,000; the Treasury refused, and on 6 January 1879 Newton proposed tentative digs at Kourion with sappers at £200^1,8.

The Trustees allowed him to go to look at the Limassol collection of Castan Bey, offered at £700 and judged not worth buying¹. He reached Larnaca on 4 April 1879 and left on 30 April. He stayed with Sir Garnet Wolseley at Nicosia and saw Golgoi, Tremithus, Deftera, Limassol, Amathus, Kourion, Troodos, Kyrenia and Dali. He recommended Kourion as the first target of any expedition, and he asked Claude Delaval Cobham to send the contents of the tomb at Aradippou to London¹. A private letter calls the trip "a delightful time"¹.

Cobham, Richter and after

Finds from Aradippou, Kition-Bamboula and Limassol and Amathus reached the Museum in 1880 under the name of Earl Granville³. In 1880 Newton advised against employing Alessandro Cesnola, on grounds of cost and a previous arrest^1,5. When Herbert Kitchener offered in March 1880 to act as the Museum's representative, the response was sceptical. The South Kensington Museum, not the British Museum, later paid for the digs of Kitchener and Hake, and Newton declined any of the finds because the findspots were not recorded¹.

Kiely counts ten small excavations by Max Ohnefalsch-Richter between 1880 and 1883, at Achna, Alambra, Dali, Kition, Goshi, Mari, Ormidhia, Salamis, Xylotymbou and Phoenikais, supervised by Cobham and paid for privately, with Frederic Leighton among the funders; some finds were registered in Cobham's name^1,2. Richter's reports to Newton are lost. Kiely reads the series as an attempt at broad coverage in place and in period¹.

He resigned the keepership in 1885 and was succeeded by Alexander Stuart Murray. Kiely credits him with influence on the Cyprus Exploration Fund of 1887 and on the Turner Bequest excavations of 1894¹. Newton had become Yates Professor of Classical Archaeology at University College London in 1880 and was made KCB in 1887; he died at Margate on 28 November 1894¹⁵.