Demetrios Pierides

Two of the foreigners who studied antiquities at Larnaca in the nineteenth century credited Demetrios Pierides in print. Robert Hamilton Lang named him his "instructor" and "coadjutor in all connected with antiquities"³. Alexander Palma di Cesnola thanked "my dear friend" Pierides, who had studied Cypriote monuments "for about half a century"⁹. Pierides lived from 1811 to 1895, and the collection he began in 1839 later passed to his sons.

He was born in Larnaca, the eldest son of Pierakis Corella (Korella), dragoman of the Venetian consulate, and of Mariou of the Caridi family; the sons took the more Greek surname Pierides^1,2. His father was beheaded in July 1821 together with Archbishop Kyprianos³. Two years later the boy was sent to London under the Rev. Joseph Wolff and Lady Georgiana Wolff, studied at the Central British and Foreign School Society, and is said to have taught Greek to the Duke of Sutherland. Kapodistrias appointed him to teach English on Syros³. Ulbrich and Kiely add that he tutored several British aristocratic families⁵.

Back in Cyprus in 1839, he worked at the Ottoman Bank in Larnaca⁶, and the family dates the collection to the same year¹. From the early 1840s until at least the mid-1860s he also worked for the British consulate, first as chancelier and then as dragoman. In 1849 Niven Kerr nominated him vice-consul and called him the most qualified and reliable Cypriot; the appointment was annulled^4,5,10. The same year he copied inscriptions for the Spratt and Graves survey party³. Later publications under his name were extracts of his letters to Charles Newton printed by Vaux in 1863, two papers for the Society of Biblical Archaeology in 1875 and 1876, and a pamphlet, The Cyprus Museum (Larnaca, 1883)^3,8. Peristianis, writing in 1922, called him the first archaeologist and epigraphist of the island². Georges Perrot wrote in 1878 that Pierides had worked with Lang on the staters of Alexander³.

He wrote Melchior de Vogüé nine letters between 1863 and 1866, and in 1865 sold him three Phoenician inscriptions for 750 francs, shipped to Marseille for the Louvre⁶. Marangou quotes his remark that Luigi Palma di Cesnola was "a general and not an archaeologist"³.

Gifts, sales and the Drouot sale

In 1855 Pierides gave 29 sculptures from Idalion to the British Museum on Newton's recommendation^4,10. From 1864 he sent consignments to Newton on approval, among them Dali sculpture and pottery, and three groups were bought for the museum in 1867, 1868 and 1869^4,10. Newton accepted £25 for the first group. In December 1867 Pierides declined £28 for thirty terracottas, and in 1869 Newton had no money for them, so Pierides asked that they go to Charles Hale, the American consul at Alexandria¹⁰. Pierides, Lang and Sandwith supplied the museum's first Cypriot purchases in 1868 and 1869⁷. Ulbrich and Kiely state that he "dealt in antiquities"⁵.

He also dug. At the Salt Lake sanctuary of Artemis Paralia he worked from 1865 with Colnaghi, who wrote that spring that he had "taken on Mr Pierides with me"¹⁰. Newton refused Pierides's offer of his own share of the terracottas¹¹. In 1868 Pierides reported that he had "lately taken eight or ten days at the same place, without any success"¹⁰.

On 10 February 1873 the Hôtel Drouot in Paris sold antiquities "provenant des fouilles ... par M. Pierides", with Hoffmann as expert. Its preface said no further sale was possible because the Ottoman government had just forbidden new searches⁸. Kiely and Merrillees count 261 lots and about a thousand pieces. Charles-Louis Frossard bought a Late Cypriot Base Ring jar there, labelled "Fouilles de M. Pierides. Ch.-L. Frossard 1873". It passed through Frossard's descendants to Joseph Altounian in 1928, was sold at Artcurial on 17 September 2019, and is now on permanent loan to Kykko Monastery from David Johnson¹⁰. Its findspot is not recorded.

Other buyers included Berlin and the Louvre. In 1870 about forty terracottas went to Carl Friederichs for Berlin, and in 1885 and 1887-88 he supplied the Louvre, which received an export licence for seven inscriptions in 1885 and about 58 terracottas through Edmond Pottier¹⁰. Cypriot lace that he donated was bought by the South Kensington Museum at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition⁵.

The museum and the sons

Pierides sat on the first Cyprus Museum committee in 1882³ and is described as a founder and benefactor of the museum². He belonged to the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica, the Society of Biblical Archaeology and the Christian Archaeological Society of Athens¹. He died in 1895. He left pottery and limestone heads to his son Zeno (1839-1911) and the Mycenaean vases to Giabra (1852-1928)¹.