John William Williamson

John William Williamson (1856 to 1932) put his name to a newspaper notice offering gold ornaments, glass and pottery for sale in Limassol, and later packed the British Museum's finds from its Cyprus digs. He and Charles Christian were the two expatriate businessmen in Limassol whom the Museum hired as local agents¹. Given calls him a Limassol engineer and publisher³; Goring makes him agent of the English-Cyprus Copper Mine Company at Limni⁶; Reinach calls him editor and proprietor of the Cyprus Herald⁷. In 1883 "Messrs. Williamson & Co." and Major Chard dug tombs at Kourion, with Max Ohnefalsch-Richter acting as Government Inspector⁵. Marangou reports that the Cyprus Herald of the time carried attacks on Luigi Palma di Cesnola, and that a notice in the same paper offered Williamson's collection for sale¹¹.

In 1886 he and Charles Christian joined Charles Watkins in a syndicate at Polis tis Chrysochou. Williamson put up the money to buy the landowner's plot⁹. Ohnefalsch-Richter dug 441 tombs for the three men that year, and the finds were sold at auction in Paris in 1887, apart from a few pieces for the British Museum and the Government's third⁵. Hogarth, by contrast, places the syndicate's partial excavation in the early months of 1887¹². A gold sheep-headed pendant that Williamson found in his vineyard there is in the British Museum (1896.10-15.2)⁹. In 1889 he sold his excavation rights to the Cyprus Exploration Fund for a share of the commercial value of the finds and helped secure landowners' permissions^1,9.

From 1893 to 1899 Williamson and Christian handled permits, the purchase of owners' rights and the packing and division of finds for the Museum's Turner Bequest excavations. Charles Christian had asked for a quarter of the value of the finds, accepted 10 per cent of expenditure, and was later paid ten shillings a day⁶. In 1895 Williamson and Percy Christian assisted Henry Beauchamp Walters at Kourion, where 118 tombs were opened¹⁰. Museum inventory notes record gold "purchased from J W Williamson in Cairo, but probably from Enkomi 1896"⁶. He died in 1932¹.