William James Stillman

William James Stillman (1828-1901), a reporter and former American consul at Candia in Crete, wrote the 1885 report that questioned the findspots, repairs and the "Curium Treasure" of Cesnola's collection¹. In 1880 the Archaeological Institute of America sent him to Crete to judge the prospects for work at Knossos and Gortyn, but unrest prevented it³. On 30 November 1876 a letter in The Times signed W.J.S. attacked Luigi Palma di Cesnola and Heinrich Schliemann; Cesnola told Schliemann that it was supposed to have been prompted by Charles Thomas Newton, which he said he could not believe¹.

During the Feuardent affair, a resolution proposed by Robert Hewitt in January 1885 asked Stillman, as a member of the American Numismatic Society, to examine the evidence on provenance and report^1,2. Earlier, in a letter to the New York Times dated 29 September 1884 and printed on 17 October, he relayed what Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, then in London, had told him: that Ohnefalsch-Richter had taken depositions from the agents and workmen of the late consul, including a statement from Theocharis that the Curium "treasure" was invented by Cesnola out of finds from many tombs⁶. Marangou writes that Stillman "managed to make both Theocharis and Christofis" turn against Cesnola, but Masson dates the declarations of Theocharis Koutsocheris to 14 May 1883 and of Christofis Christodoulou to June 1884, both made for Ohnefalsch-Richter before the Society's request^1,7.

Stillman gave his report on 28 March 1885. As Marangou summarises it, he held that the collection had real value but suffered from reckless attribution of findspots, concealed repairs, including the archaic sarcophagus, and an invented single "Curium Treasure" deposit; it printed the affidavit of the foreman Christofis Christodoulou¹. Adelson, quoted by Masson, judged it a full vindication of Feuardent⁷. Cesnola replied in the New York Mail and Express on 25 October 1885, and in 1886 he warned Schliemann against Stillman, by then the Times correspondent in Athens¹. In December 1888 a letter from Stillman in Rome in The Owl urged a permit system on the Italian model for a Cyprus antiquities law¹.