Otto Rubensohn

Otto Rubensohn bought Cypriot pottery in Cairo while digging in Egypt for the Berlin museums. He was born in Kassel on 24 November 1867 and died in Höchenschwand on 9 August 1964³. A classical archaeologist, he worked in Egypt from 1901 to 1907 for the Prussian museums and the papyrus commission, at sites including Abusir el-Meleq, the Fayum, Ashmunein and Elephantine⁴.

In 1905 he wrote that "very many Cypriot vases" had come into the Cairo trade, which had not been found in Egypt but had recently been brought there from Cyprus by a dealer. Matthias Recke, who quotes the remark, suggests that this trade may have been connected with the Cyprus antiquities law of 1905¹. Recke lists Cairo, with Athens and Smyrna, among the secondary markets from which German university teaching collections bought Cypriot pieces¹.

Recke dates the Cairo acquisition of Rubensohn's own Cypriot pieces to 1905 on one page and to 1901 to 1907 on another¹. They passed to the Antikensammlung of the University of Münster from his estate in 1965. The Cypriot group there comprises 56 vessels of pottery, ranging from the Early Cypriot to the Cypro-Classical period, with one terracotta, eight lamps, two metal pieces and two glass pieces. Some of it has since been lent to the Museum Grevenbroich and to the city of Gelsenkirchen¹.