Reginald Stuart Poole

The British Museum Trustees sent Reginald Stuart Poole to Cyprus to report on the collection that Robert Hamilton Lang had found at Dali (Idalion). Born in 1832, Poole was then Assistant Keeper in the Department of Coins and Medals, and he became its Keeper in 1870, holding the post until 1890; he died in 1895^1,2. Reeve places his visit in November 1869 and has him meeting Thomas Backhouse Sandwith at Larnaca; Olivier Masson dates a call on Lang and on Luigi Palma di Cesnola to December 1869, with no objects bought or given^1,4.

Poole wrote a manuscript report on Lang's excavations, dated 9 February 1870 and bound into the "Inventory of Mr Lang's Collection". The Trustees' minutes record his report on Lang's coins of 12 October 1871 and further reports on coins from Larnaca on 25 and 26 July 1872. The purchase of the collection was completed on 13 July 1872, on the report of Samuel Birch². Lang wrote that, "by the kindness of Mr. Poole", he found 99 types in the Larnaca gold-stater find that the Museum's collection lacked⁸.

Lang's account of the Dali temple was read at the Royal Society of Literature in 1871 and printed in 1878 as Narrative of excavations in a temple at Dali (Idalium) in Cyprus, "with observations by R. S. Poole" (pp. 30-79); Thomas Kiely calls it the first Cypriot site report^3,9.

In December 1883 his deposition was read at the New York trial of Feuardent v. Cesnola. As Keeper of Coins and Medals he said that restoration to raise the market value of an antiquity was improper and that repairs to statues must be distinguishable¹¹.