Herbert Kitchener

Before he was Lord Kitchener of Khartoum, Herbert Kitchener was the Royal Engineers lieutenant who surveyed Cyprus for the new British administration and, in 1882, was named the first Curator of the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia. He was born on 24 June 1850 near Listowel, County Kerry, was educated in Switzerland and at Woolwich, and was commissioned in the Royal Engineers on 4 January 1871². From 1874 to 1877 he surveyed western Palestine with C. R. Conder for the Palestine Exploration Fund². Nicholas Stanley-Price cites this work, and a paper Kitchener gave to the British Association in 1878 pleading for the preservation of the Capernaum synagogue, as his archaeological credentials⁵.

He was sent to Cyprus in 1878 to survey the newly acquired protectorate². In 1879 he sketched a plan of the walls at Kition-Bamboula that were spared when Hugh Sinclair's engineers levelled the mound; the finds saved were few¹¹. In March 1880 he wrote to Charles Newton at the British Museum offering to act as its "representative" in Cyprus and proposing an ordinance that finds made by officials be reported to him. Newton doubted that it would work and thought Kitchener short of time, though he said his advice would be welcome³. Newton's report of 8 July 1880 thanked Colonel Warren, Mr Cobham and Lieutenant Kitchener for "zeal and intelligence in collecting and preserving the antiquities now presented to the museum"¹⁷. In October 1881, with Kitchener confirmed as Director of the Survey, Newton recommended him to the Trustees for exploration in Cyprus. Nothing came of it³.

The 1882 tomb excavations

The South Kensington Museum had the money, and it accepted Kitchener's suggestion to excavate on its behalf³. Its trustees told Kitchener and George Gordon Hake to "collect from an aesthetic and decorative and not the archaeological point of view"^3,4. Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, as relayed by Salomon Reinach, put the start at 1 January 1882, with the plain of Salamis and the necropolis by the monastery of St Barnabas, then Gastria, then Episkopi, the site of Kourion¹². A permit for Kitchener, for the South Kensington Museum, is recorded in Marangou's study of Cesnola¹⁴.

Hake, an official in the Chief Secretary's office without archaeological training, did most of the fieldwork and explored about 45 tombs between St Barnabas and Enkomi. Kitchener was present for part of the time, and wrote to his sister Millie that he had found a boar rattle⁷. Newton declined the finds for the British Museum, probably for lack of archaeological information. Most of what the South Kensington Museum kept passed to the British Museum in the early 1980s, and other pieces went to regional museums³. One of them is a Polychrome (VII) jug with a figurine holding an oinochoe from Kourion¹⁶. British Museum accessions 1980,10-1.1-210 and 1982,7-29.1-596 hold Hake and Kitchener finds from Salamis, Gastria and Curium⁶.

The Cyprus Museum

On 10 May 1882 a letter signed "An Archaeologist" appeared in the Cyprus Herald proposing a museum in Nicosia, and a second followed on 24 May. Stanley-Price thinks it reasonable to see Kitchener as the author; the letters were unsigned⁵. On 15 June 1882 a petition signed by the Cadi, the Archbishop and the Mufti reached the High Commissioner, Sir Robert Biddulph. The museum was approved, a Committee was named, and Kitchener was appointed Curator and Honorary Secretary⁵. It was to be kept up by subscriptions and donations, and the Government lent a room⁵.

Ohnefalsch-Richter later claimed the founding for himself, but Stanley-Price finds this improbable: no contemporary evidence supports it, and his name is absent from the Committee until December 1883⁵. When Kitchener left in 1883, letters from the Greek and Turkish communities credited him with the museum^5,9. One outline of his career dates his promotion to captain and dispatch to Egypt to 4 January 1883, while Stanley-Price has him leaving the island in March^2,5. Sinclair, his successor as curator, wrote some forty years afterwards that Kitchener had "started the idea" but made hardly any progress with it⁵.

His map of the island, published by Stanford in 1885, became the base for Ohnefalsch-Richter's map of cult places¹⁸. Kitchener became Baron Kitchener of Khartoum after Omdurman in 1898, commanded in the Boer War, was Commander-in-Chief in India from 1902 to 1909, and was consul-general in Egypt. He became Secretary of State for War in 1914 and died on 5 June 1916 when HMS Hampshire struck a mine off Orkney².