Theodore Marburg

Theodore Marburg (1862 to 1946), a Baltimore jurist, is the link between a British colonial official's Cypriot collection and the museum of Johns Hopkins University². Falkland Warren, Chief Secretary of Cyprus from 1879 to 1891, had formed the group partly from excavations carried out under his supervision and partly by buying from peasants who found the pieces¹. After Warren emigrated to Canada, Marburg, a relative by marriage, bought the collection from him and presented it to the University^2,3. Masson and Buchholz date the gift to 1900; Johnston's note of 1901 says the University had recently come into possession of it¹.

Christopher Johnston, who taught at the University, described it in 1901. It held 122 pieces: 49 gold ornaments (42 earrings or parts of earrings and 7 finger rings), 13 cylinder seals, 20 gems and seals, and about 40 scarabs and small objects, spanning roughly 800 to 150 BC¹. Johnston says he had not been able to study it closely. A long Baltimore newspaper article of 1900 quoted Marburg and printed Warren's own list, which counts 35 gold ornaments, 17 engraved stones and seals, and 21 scarabs; no fuller publication followed². Buchholz adds that Warren kept the gold with him until the sale, while his large stone and pottery pieces went to the National Art Gallery in Ottawa³.

The collection later left the museum. According to Masson, it was stolen about 1950².