David George Hogarth

In 1888 David George Hogarth wrote the daily narrative of the first excavation season of the Cyprus Exploration Fund at Kouklia, the site of ancient Palaepaphos, and then travelled the Paphos district and the Karpas peninsula to find sites for the Fund's later seasons. Frank Maier calls him "the father of systematic excavation at Palaipaphos" and the "driving spirit" of the dig, although Ernest A. Gardner was its formal director⁶.

Hogarth was born at Barton-upon-Humber on 23 May 1862²⁰. The title page of his 1889 book describes him as "late Craven Fellow in the University of Oxford"³. Valerie Tatton-Brown has him as a student at the British School at Athens in 1886-7, when he began working with Gardner⁹. He says himself that he was commissioned in December 1887, while he held a Craven Travelling Fellowship³.

The 1888 season

The Fund grew out of a report by Dr Guillemard of continual discoveries in Cyprus, legitimate and illegitimate. The High Commissioner had resolved to discourage private exploration but would help a recognised scientific body, and the party of Gardner, Hogarth, M. R. James and, later, the architect R. Elsey Smith went out as students of the British School at Athens¹. The party dug tombs at Leontari Vouno in January 1888; the account of that work is signed by James¹.

Hogarth made a short visit to Kouklia to hire ground and check rumours that others meant to dig there. He and James then brought the foreman Gregorios Antoniou and a camp-guard, Reshid Tchaoush, to the village by 1 February. The full stock of tools came only on 9 March. The Commissioner assigned generous boundaries on 2 February and about six weeks later restricted the concession to plots already agreed with their owners. Work began on 3 February with fifteen men¹. Maier reports that the surviving photographs of the 1888 excavation were taken by R. E. Smith, with Hogarth appearing in one of them, while Maier and Karageorghis credit a figure in their book to a photograph by Hogarth^6,7. Maier also notes the later finding that the "portico" of 1888 was probably an artefact of backfilling⁶.

In May Hogarth dug a vineyard at Amargetti. Ten of the thirteen inscriptions found there carry the formula Opaon Melanthios and one reads Apollon Melanthios. He proposed the ancient name Melanthus for the place and read Opaon as an attribute of Apollo. Two inscriptions that Luigi Palma di Cesnola had given to Old Paphos were shown to come from Amargetti^1,15. He packed up on 23 May¹.

Devia Cypria

With digging deferred by heat and the wheat harvest, Hogarth spent the summer exploring the Paphos district and Karpas, "accompanied always by Gregorio Antoniou of Larnaca, who had acted as our foreman at Kuklia". He credited Gregorio with an "intimate knowledge of his fellow-islanders (gained both legitimately and illegitimately)"³. He bought small antiquities on the way, among them intaglios, jars and a terracotta mask, and the book that resulted, Devia Cypria, appeared in 1889³. In it he wrote that Cesnola "seldom directed his excavations in person" and that the collection "was amassed by the labours of his dragoman Besh-besh, both by excavation and by purchase"^3,15. His notes on possible dig sites at Salamis were used by J. A. R. Munro and H. A. Tubbs in 1890¹². Max Ohnefalsch-Richter reviewed the book, and Schmid says he was dissuaded from printing a harsher version¹⁴.

A footnote in the book says the Fund had heard indirectly of a German plan to dig at Kouklia and let it pass as vague. Ohnefalsch-Richter disputed this in 1893, wrote that the source "can only mean myself", and claimed to hold a letter from Hogarth on the point; Schmid says Hogarth's diary names Archibald Sayce as the source^13,14. Hogarth also visited Polis tes Chrysochou twice and concluded the agreement with J. W. Williamson that gave the Fund his excavation rights there; Munro and Tubbs dug at Polis in 1889¹¹.

The finds and the later career

In August 1888 Hogarth returned to Kouklia, divided the finds with the Government's representative under Ottoman law, repacked the cases and shipped them from Larnaca. They reached England at the end of September, to be shared among the British Museum, the Ashmolean and the Fitzwilliam^1,7. Amargetti material reached the Ashmolean by allocation of the Fund's committee; AN1888.1508, a male votary with a dedication to Apollo Melanthios, is one piece¹⁷. Hogarth himself gave the Ashmolean a Late Cypriot IIIA bronze shovel in the 1890s (AN1896-1908.C.123), which the museum's record gives as from Koroveia-Nitovikla¹⁷.

His later work lay elsewhere. He worked at Alexandria in 1895 for the Egypt Exploration Fund, excavated at Zakros and the Psychro cave in Crete in 1900-1, at the Artemision at Ephesus in 1904-5, at Asyut for the British Museum in 1906-7, and at Carchemish from 1911¹⁰. Gregorios Antoniou supervised workmen for him at Ephesus, and Hogarth praised his "organising capacity, diligence, vigilance, and probity"⁹. In the First World War Hogarth served in the Arab Bureau in Cairo, and afterwards he directed the Ashmolean, where he was Keeper from 1909^10,21. He died at Oxford on 6 November 1927²¹.