Walter Beasley

Three Cypriot pots in Walter Beasley's collection of Biblical antiquities gave James Stewart the subject of his first published paper, after the two met in Australia in 1935¹. Beasley was Managing Director of Young's Transport Agency in Melbourne¹. Powell calls him a devout Christian and a skilful businessman, aged 57 in 1945, who had visited Jericho in the 1930s and was convinced that archaeology would prove the Biblical events¹.

He was one of the subscribers to Stewart's excavation at Vounous in 1937-38, alongside Charles Hyde and Charles Marston¹. Kiely describes the private subscribers, Beasley among them, as intending their gifts to benefit public collections². In 1946 he founded the Australian Institute of Archaeology in Melbourne¹. In 1946-48 he helped fund Stewart's post at Sydney, arranged by A. D. Trendall, and agreed to fund archaeological work in Cyprus in exchange for a share of the finds, promising £2,000 before losing faith in the plan¹. Stewart was shocked at how Beasley had treated the Vounous material he received for his partial funding, splitting tomb groups¹.

From 1949 to 1951 Beasley and the Institute supported Joan du Plat Taylor's excavation at Myrtou-Pigadhes, with Sydney University and the Otago Museum, and received a share of the finds². Money from the Institute also went to Basil Hennessy's work at Stephania, and Beasley later complained about the amount and quality of what he received¹. His date of death is not recorded.