Sivadjian

The second Lapithos (Lambousa) silver treasure, found in the summer of 1902, reached Paris. Marie-Christine Hellmann identifies a dealer named Sivadjian as the man who had it there in 1903. Ormonde Dalton, writing in 1906, does not name the dealer. He says the finders hid the find and negotiated with Paris dealers, that a police raid by Ernest McDonald, Acting Commissioner of Kyrenia, seized part of it, and that the larger part reached Paris².

The name comes from the journal of Wilhelm Froehner, published by Marie-Christine Hellmann. On 26 November 1903 Froehner noted that Sivadjian had shown him part of the treasure, five dishes with reliefs. On 10 June 1904 he bought six tesserae from Sivadjian and was shown his find in gold and silver from Lapithos¹. Hellmann describes the dealer as a Turk of Armenian origin and says his name had not been known before. Froehner also bought Egyptian ivory game tesserae from him¹. His forename is not recorded.

Hellmann says the treasure waited for a buyer because of the price¹. In winter 1905 Dalton wrote that it was still unsold at "a sum running into five figures". He added, without naming the dealer, that the Cyprus Government's claim to a third could not be pressed, since it could not be proved that the dealer knew the objects had been excavated and "he was neither a British nor a French subject"². Hellmann says that J. Pierpont Morgan took it early in 1906, "semble-t-il" (it seems)¹.