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Robert Hamilton Lang and the Archaeology of Cyprus

Thomas Kiely
p. 483-523

Résumés

Cet article examine les activités archéologiques de Robert Hamilton Lang – homme d’affaires, financier et fermier écossais installé sur l’île de Chypre entre 1861 et 1872 – à la lumière de fonds d’archives inédits ou peu connus conservés au British Museum. Au cours de ces années d’activités débordantes, voire frénétiques, dans le domaine de l’archéologie, Lang a rassemblé, en partie lors de fouilles plus ou moins contrôlées, un grand nombre d’antiquités : objets votifs et funéraires d’Idalion et de Pyla, inscriptions en langues et écritures diverses (y compris la célèbre bilingue en phénicien et syllabaire chypriote) et trois grands trésors de monnaies. Ces objets ont enrichi les fonds d’antiquités chypriotes de grands musées européens (Londres, Paris, Berlin, Vienne…), mais aussi des collections privées, au cours d’une période charnière dans l’archéologie de l’île. D’autre part, sa contribution au déchiffrement du syllabaire chypriote et son rapport sur les fouilles du sanctuaire de Reshef-Apollon à Idalion, de même que différentes notices sur ses découvertes numismatiques, sont justement célèbres. Cependant, bien des détails particulièrement marquants de ses activités restent peu connus ou sont souvent mal évoqués dans les sources secondaires. En se fondant sur des lettres et des rapports conservés au British Museum, ainsi que sur ses mémoires inédits, le bilan présenté ici examine ses activités de collectionneur et d’antiquaire – en particulier pour ce qui concerne les objets qu’il a vendus ou donnés au British Museum – dans le cadre de l’évolution du commerce des antiquités à son époque. Il donne également un nouvel éclairage sur certaines découvertes, comme celle de l’inscription bilingue d’Idalion, « la pierre de Rosette chypriote », et d’autres importants documents épigraphiques trouvés dans l’île, au moment où naissaient l’épigraphie et l’archéologie chypriotes.

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Notes de l’auteur

The author would like to acknowledge with gratitude the long-standing support of Cypriot archaeology in the British Museum by the A. G. Leventis Foundation. Thanks are also due to: John and Margaret Thelwall, and Rosemary Richards, for generously making available their forebear’s papers; Francesca Hillier and Angela Grimshaw (BM Archives) for exceptional and quite indispensable help in obtaining documents during the 2020-2021 COVID restrictions; likewise, Iain Burkitt and Alex Truscott (BM Department of Greece and Rome) for equally invaluable assistance with the collection and images. Finally, the paper has been improved by numerous improving comments from Anna Cannavò, Robert Merrillees, Stephan Schmid and two peer reviewers.

Texte intégral

Introduction

  • 1 Lang, Poole 1878. Note also the rarely acknowledged footnotes by William Vaux, which clarified or c (...)
  • 2 Lang 1871a; Lang 1871b.
  • 3 Lang 1872.
  • 4 Smith 1872; on the history of decipherment, see ICS, pp. 48‑51; Pope 1975, pp. 123‑135.
  • 5 Lang 1874; reproduced in Merrillees 2001, pp. 236‑238 with discussion passim.
  • 6 Lang 1878. This was translated into French and published in Paris the following year (Lang 1879). C (...)
  • 7 Lang was praised from an early stage by individuals such as Poole (in Lang, Poole 1878, p. 25), Ohn (...)

1Robert Hamilton Lang’s discovery of a bilingual Phoenician and Cypriot Syllabic inscription at a shrine dedicated to Apollo and Reshef in the ancient city of Idalion on 30 July 1869 provided the means of deciphering the island’s unique writing system during a frenetic period in the history of Cyprus archaeology. A key motivation in antiquarian research at this time was the search for inscriptions, especially Phoenician and the as yet undeciphered Cypriot syllabic script, together with a broader interest in the ethno-linguistic affiliations of the island in antiquity, all this at a time when Cyprus lay at the centre of intellectual discussions about the origins of Greek culture and the spread of civilization from “East” to “West”. Crucially, the Idalion bilingual text, along with others in Phoenician and Greek (both alphabetic and Cypriot Syllabic), were excavated in a more or less controlled manner, along with hundreds of pieces of votive sculpture and terracotta figurines, numerous other cult items, and two important hoards of city-kingdom coins. Not only were the most important parts of the assemblage purchased by the British Museum, but in collaboration with Stuart Reginald Poole, an Assistant (i.e. Curator) at the British Museum, Lang published what can justifiably be described as the first Cypriot archaeological site report.1 Lang also wrote several seminal papers on Cypriot coinage2 and one on the Cypriot Syllabic script.3 The latter was presented at the same meeting of the Society of Biblical Archaeology in 1871 – and published in the same volume of transactions of that body the following year – as the ground-breaking paper of George Smith which proved decisive in decoding the script in the years that followed.4 Finally, based on his archaeological finds around Dhali in particular, he proposed a scheme for the classification of ancient Cypriot pottery in a short article appearing in 1874.5 Although less detailed and convincing than Sandwith’s more famous paper of 1877, Lang’s account illustrates his attempt to make sense of his archaeological finds and therefore of key historical questions of the time. This is especially clear when read in concert with the archaeological and historical sections of his 1878 book Cyprus. Its History, Its Present Resources, and Future Prospects – itself an important contribution to contemporary knowledge of the island’s among the general public which was certainly more reliable than Cesnola’s Cyprus. Its Ancient Cities, Temples and Tombs of 1877 in both social and archaeological matters.6 These various achievements, recognised from an early date,7 were due in part to Lang’s close connections with the British Museum, especially Charles Newton and Samuel Birch, respectively Keepers of Greek and Roman Antiquities and of Oriental Antiquities, but also William Vaux and Stuart Reginald Poole at the Department of Coins and Medals, who each took an interest in his discoveries and encouraged his personal research. More broadly, Lang enjoyed close personal and scholarly relations with a wide range of European scholars, and significantly contributed to the Cypriot holdings of numerous major museums (London, Paris, Berlin) just as the island’s archaeological heritage was becoming known to the public and to scholarship for the first time.

A mischievous pastime?

  • 8 ICS, p. 234‑235; Masson 1966; Masson 1968; Masson 1992; Caquot, Masson 1968. On Pyla, see also Caub (...)
  • 9 See bibliography in CCEC 27 (1997), esp. pp. 11‑13; also papers in Tatton-Brown 2001.
  • 10 Senff 1993. The reader should refer to Senff for a modern analysis of this material (though see Pry (...)
  • 11 Hill 1904 passim; Robinson 1935; Price 1969, pp. 4‑8; Arena 2003.
  • 12 Karageorghis 1993, p. 1 and passim; Karageorghis 1995 passim; listed and briefly discussed in Tatto (...)
  • 13 Merrillees 2001, p. 227; Merrillees 2014, pp. 32‑35.
  • 14 Caubet 1976 (with references).
  • 15 Bernhard-Walcher et al. 1999, pp. 40‑43.
  • 16 Karageorghis, Peltenburg 1976; Goring 1988, p. 9; Kiely, Ulbrich 2012, p. 321.
  • 17 Droop 1931; see Kiely, Ulbrich 2012, p. 321.
  • 18 Edward Gilbertson (1813-1904), banker and collector. From 1860 he worked for the Ottoman Bank in Co (...)
  • 19 Alan, Boyce 2001, A512, A524-A525’ A10‑11 are from Paphos (for details, see the online catalogue: h (...)

2Lang’s archaeological activities and the various collections he formed during the 11 years he spent on Cyprus are very well known in the history of the subject. This is not least because of the work of Olivier Masson who was the first modern scholar to focus attention in any detail on the discoveries at Dhali and Pyla,8 in addition to his broader work on the history of Cypriot archaeology,9 followed by the comprehensive publication and contextualisation of the sculpture from Idalion by Reinhard Senff.10 The coin hoards have also been described and analysed in modern numismatic literature, though the way they were subsequently treated (through dispersion but also within the British Museum), has obscured their overall nature (see below).11 By contrast, other parts of the assemblage from Dhali, not least the terracottas, are more sporadically documented and only rarely with reference to their original excavation or collection history.12 Likewise, while the items Lang supplied to museums in Berlin,13 Paris14 and Vienna15 have either been published or subjected to historiographical treatment, the extensive body of material he lent to the recently established City Industrial Museum (later the Kelvingrove Museum) in Glasgow in 1870 (and then donated in 1903) is little known, even though many items probably derive from the seminal excavations around Dhali in which Lang played such an important role (see below).16 Similarly, there are good reasons for suggesting that the limestone sculpture acquired by the Liverpool Museums in 1872 from a Captain Fothergill of the S.S. Thessalia, attributed to Cesnola by its first publisher, John Percival Droop, might actually have derived from Lang’s excavations at Idalion or Pyla.17 Finally, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter, best known as the home of the collection of Claude Delaval Cobham, holds numerous items excavated by Lang at “Idalium”; these arrived in 1882 via his associate at the Imperial Ottoman Bank, Edward Gilbertson,18 through the agency of a local banker J. C. Bowring.19 These examples illustrate how in this period many smaller collections of Cypriot antiquities were formed through a complex interplay of individual agency and international connections, quite as much as in larger museums and often involving the same networks of antiquarians and dealers.

  • 20 Summarised in Tatton-Brown 2001b, pp. 169, 173 and passim.
  • 21 Murray 2014, pp. 10, 238‑239; see Nicolaou 2013 for a recent analysis of many of these issues, wher (...)
  • 22 Demetriou 1997, pp. 18‑20 see a direct link between poverty and “treasure hunting”.

3This essay explores the evolution of Lang’s engagement with Cypriot archaeology, particularly his contributions to the emerging Cypriot holdings of the British Museum which represent the largest and most important body of antiquities deriving from his antiquarian pursuits that remains extant. It draws in particular on the largely unpublished correspondence with Charles Newton and Samuel Birch at the British Museum, together with a series of reports they made to that institutions’ Trustees during protracted negotiations over the purchase of Lang’s collection between 1869 and 1873.20 Apart from complementing, and at times correcting, various published sources – including Lang’s own accounts, and especially that of 1905 which was written long after the events described, possibly representing a chapter of his unpublished memoirs or based on lectures given around this time – these documents illuminate Lang’s discoveries and motivations in “real time” by revealing the complicated intersection of commercial and academic reactions towards archaeological finds. This approach also allows us to understand these developments within the context of pragmatic historicism, rather than the often anachronistic and presentist judgements of traditional archaeological historiography and modern professional ethics, especially on the issue of the casual excavation and trading of antiquities, and in the context of contemporary discussions of the imperial and colonial framework of 19th‑century archaeology.21 Moreover, practices that are generally condemned today, but which sometimes constituted a vital element of local subsistence during periods of economic hardship,22 were essential to the formation of museum collections and displays, the creation of scholarly networks, and eventually the development of classificatory and interpretative schemes that underpin the emergence of modern Cypriot archaeology.

A career in the ‘East’

  • 23 Space does not allow a detailed narrative of his life and career but for contemporary accounts, see (...)
  • 24 Autheman 2002; Eldem 1999.
  • 25 Apostolides, Baruh 2015; Lang 1878, chapter IX.

4As already noted, Lang’s antiquarian achievements were aided by his broad network of official and academic connections. At the same time, these successes also owed much to his natural intelligence, curiosity and attention to detail, since he was not trained in any of the areas to which he made scholarly contributions, nor did he ever become or aspire to being an academic or museum curator.23 Born in 1836, he benefitted from a traditional Presbyterian upbringing in the village of Glassford, South Lanarkshire, south of Glasgow, where his father Gavin Lang was the local Church of Scotland minister, and then from a high quality education at the prestigious Hamilton Academy. Nonetheless, Lang left school at 14 to take a job as a clerk in Glasgow, though he appears to have continued his studies as an extramural student at Glasgow University. Responding to an advertisement for a position in the Beirut branch of a company run by William Riddell, in 1856 he embarked on what would become an illustrious career as a businessman, banker and financier, mostly in connection with the Imperial Ottoman Bank (IOB) and its associates and bondholders.24 In chronological order, Lang worked first in Lebanon (1856-1861) and then Cyprus (1861-1872) where he established the first branch of the Imperial Ottoman Bank and ran a 1000-acre farm, during which time he also served as acting British Vice-Consul on a number of occasions then as full Consul (though unpaid) in 1871-1872).25 Promoted to manage the IOB in Egypt (1872-75), he was then then tasked with reforming the near-bankrupt Régie des Tabacs de Roumanie (1875-79). He and his wife Margaret MacClellan, whom he married in 1876, found themselves in Bucharest during the war between Russia and Turkey which transformed the region’s political landscape (and which ultimately led to the British annexation of Cyprus in 1878). Based in Constantinople between 1879 and 1883, Lang played a leading part in reforming the finances of the heavily indebted Ottoman state through the work at the Caisse de la Dette publique ottomane of which he became General Director. This was followed by a further period in Egypt (1887-1897) where he returned the Khedival Crown Estates to economic viability, for which he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George by Queen Victoria. Following a period as a Director of the IOB in Constantinople (1897-1902), Lang returned to London to take up a place on the bank’s board. Retiring to the village of Dedham in Essex, he died in Hampstead in north London in 1913. According to the obituary published in The Times of London (13 March 1913), Lang was praised at his funeral service by the presiding clergyman, Dr Archibald Flemming, for his “personal charm, unselfishness and warm humanity”.

  • 26 Anonymous 1909, p. 519.
  • 27 Markides 2019.
  • 28 See Lang 1890.
  • 29 See Darwin 2012.
  • 30 Anonymous 1909, p. 520.
  • 31 Lang’s work as a financier have also been discussed in modern times, especially by Christopher Clay (...)
  • 32 Ohnefalsch-Richter 1893 passim; Given 2001.
  • 33 Smith 2012; Kiely, Ulbrich 2012, p. 342; Kiely 2019 passim; papers in Schmid, Horacek 2018 (with fu (...)
  • 34 Kiely 2019a passim.

5Although his obituarist acknowledged Lang’s contributions to antiquarianism, it focused on his considerable skills as a banker and financial administrator. A profile published in 1909 in a periodical entitled The World – whose subtitle A Magazine for Men and Woman implies a broad readership – was rather more direct, crediting Lang with being the “recreator of the financial stability of Turkey, and of transforming her from a position of bankruptcy into one which makes her securities exceedingly desirable”.26 Moreover, as recently emphasized by Diana Markides,27 his intimate knowledge of Cyprus was a key element in forming British policy on the island, whose annexation she argues was strongly driven by financial considerations, including the interests of the Imperial Ottoman Bank and its bondholders, though he maintained a strong belief in the economic potential of the island (unlike many of this contemporaries).28 Likewise, his later interventions in the financial affairs of Egypt, Romania and Turkey indicate the influence of British and French economic interests far beyond areas of formal imperial control.29 There is in fact a considerable overlap between the two spheres, given that Lang’s archaeological work, although to some degree singular and restricted to Cyprus (beyond the broader collecting of antiquities and souvenirs from his overseas residence30), was facilitated by his membership of a high-ranking club of western Europeans – whether in business, finance or diplomatic service – operating within the Ottoman Empire, not least through his long-standing association with the Imperial Ottoman Bank itself.31 Their status permitted a considerable degree of freedom to collect and export antiquities, even if in Cyprus Lang and his contemporaries often complained about the restrictions placed on their work by the Ottoman authorities, though typically Cesnola openly boasted about flouting them (see below). In Cyprus alone, successive managers and employees of the IOB from the time of Lang down to the 1890s, who also served in various consular roles for Britain or other countries, were notable excavators and collectors. Demetrios Pierides is discussed in the present Cahier by Kiely and Merrillees (supra), while during the early British period, Charles Watkins was a leading patron of Max Ohnefalsch-Richter in 1880s and supplied museums in Berlin and elsewhere with Cypriot antiquities,32 while Watkins and Charles Christian (first manager at the IOB at Limassol from 1879, and later of the Larnaca branch overseeing the whole island) formed a syndicate (along with the businessman John Williamson) that commercially exploited the site of Marion-Arsinoe on a large scale in 1886.33 Christian was also a casual dealer in antiquities and, along with Williamson, organised the British Museum’s Turner Bequest Excavations in Cyprus during the 1890s due to previous contacts with its successive Keepers of Greek and Roman Antiquities, Charles Newton and Alexander Murray.34

Evolution of an antiquarian

  • 35 BM OP, 11 Sep. 1861, Lang to Panizzi; the inscription is Le Bas, Waddington 1870, p. 640 no. 2773.
  • 36 LB 1861-1879, pp. 12‑13, no. 4, 9 Dec 1861; Newton to Lang; GROL 1861-1868, fol. 408, 22 Mar. 1862, (...)
  • 37 See Kiely, Merrillees in this volume, p. ##.
  • 38 Gunning 2009, chapter 4, esp. pp. 186‑188.
  • 39 Kiely 2010, pp. 238‑241.
  • 40 Sandwith 1877; on Sandwith, see Williams 1995; Merrillees 2001; Reeve 2016; Boys Smith 2020.
  • 41 Tatton-Brown 1998; Merrillees 2017, pp. 62‑70; Schmid 2019, pp. 370‑374. The photograph, previously (...)
  • 42 Bonato 2001; Bonato 2010; Hermary 2009, pp. 104‑107 (with references).

6Appropriately for the epigraphic theme of this edition of the Cahier, Lang’s earliest occurrence in the archives of the British Museum concerns an inscription. On 11 September 1861, not long after his arrival in Cyprus, Lang wrote to Sir Anthony Panizzi, Principal Librarian of the British Museum, relating how on a recent visit to Lapithos he had been shown a Greek alphabetic inscription in honour of the Emperor Tiberius, part of which he copied (fig. 1).35 Charles Newton replied asking Lang to buy the stone for up to £5, or at least to obtain an exact copy, though the owner refused to sell. Lang sent either a squeeze or a complete transcription in March the following year, but this has not been identified in the archives of the British Museum.36 Lang’s involvement in this matter was not because of any incipient antiquarian interest, which as he noted in several publications was lacking at this time; rather, it was instead because, no sooner had he arrived in Cyprus, he was asked to serve as acting Vice-Consul before the arrival of the appointed post-holder, Horace White.37 In line with instructions commonly issued by the Foreign Office to its consular staff, and reinforced when Newton became Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities in 1861,38 Lang was therefore expected to inform the British Museum about archaeological developments on the island. Newton mostly relied on the official post-holders for this advice, successively, Horace White (1861-1864), Dominic Ellis Colnaghi (1864-1865)39 and Thomas Sandwith (1865-1870),40 after which Lang served in this role in his own right as full Consul (though unpaid) until his departure from the island in 1872. Lang’s successor as Consul (and former boss), William Riddell, was involved in the unsuccessful attempt by his Vice-Consul in Limassol, Pietro Loizo, to acquire the colossal Bes of Amathus statue in 1873 discussed in previous issues of the Cahier.41 During this time, Newton also benefitted from close contacts with Lang’s friend and fellow collector, dealer and scholar Demetrios Pierides, who supplied the British Museum with limestone sculpture, terracotta figurines and ceramics between 1855 and 1869 (see Kiely, Merrillees supra). Lang ended his first letter to Newton by mentioning the recent arrival of Melchior de Vogüé and William Waddington on their seminal archaeological excursion around the island, a sign of the rapid changes in the archaeology of Cyprus unfolding at this time.42

Figure 1 — Letter from Robert Lang to Principal Librarian of the British Museum (11 Nov. 1861) describing a Greek Alphabetic inscription from Lapithos.

Figure 1 — Letter from Robert Lang to Principal Librarian of the British Museum (11 Nov. 1861) describing a Greek Alphabetic inscription from Lapithos.

BM Original Papers, no. 11,411, 7 Dec. 1861; reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

  • 43 GROL 1861-1868, fols 783‑784 (1864-1865), White to Newton; LB 1861‑79, p. 63, no. 6, 17 Mar. 1865, (...)
  • 44 See Bonato 2000, p. 101. Pierides noted how White was willing to exchange limestone statues from Id (...)
  • 45 Lang 1878, p. 331; Lang 1905, p. 622. General Charles Richard Fox (1896-1873) was a soldier and pol (...)
  • 46 British Library, Add. 59503, fol. 117, letter of 10 Dec. 1864, Colnaghi to his parents, where Colna (...)

7The correspondence with Newton then ceases for a couple of years, almost certainly because in 1862 his official archaeological duties became the responsibility of Vice-Consul Horace White. However, the latter barely figures in the museum’s records at this time, with only a handful of letters preserved,43 though as noted by Kiely, Merrillees (supra, pp. 470‑471) he was involved in the transportation of a group of mainly limestone figures to the British Museum on behalf of Demetrios Pierides around 1864, while also forming his own collection of sculpture and coins which is otherwise poorly documented.44 Lang’s interests in archaeology appear to have continued informally during this period. In his published work he relates how his friendship with Pierides and the noted amateur numismatist General Charles Fox led to a growing interest in numismatics.45 He also participated in the archaeological activities of the British Consul Dominic Colnaghi with whom he was on excellent terms since the latter’s arrival on the island in 1864.46 The following year Colnaghi reported to his family that,

  • 47 British Library, Add. 59503, fol. 151, letter of 15 April 1865, Colnaghi to his parents.

“I returned yesterday from Pyla where I had been with Mr Lang to visit an ancient site in the neighbourhood – we hope to have a find as we have stumbled over a new city, with a temple, and picked up many fragments of sculpture, though in bad condition. We shall see, when we are able to work there steadily.”47

8It is unclear what site Colnaghi is referring to, and somewhat oddly he does not mention Pyla by name in a letter to Newton dated 15 April 1865 where he reported what appears to be the same site:

  • 48 GROL 1861-1868, A‑K, fol. 181, 15 April 1865, Colnaghi to Newton.

“We have just returned from discovering a new city I hope. The merit is not mine but Mr Lang’s. We have fallen upon the site of a temple and have found some fragments of sculpture. Unfortunately much destroyed. It may be as well to say nothing about this for fear of disappointment but I thought you would like to know what I am about.”48

  • 49 Lang 1905, p. 635.
  • 50 Boys Smith 2020.
  • 51 GROL 1861‑68, L‑Z, fol. 410, 8 Jan. 1868, Lang to Newton. see Lang 1878, p. i for his dates of serv (...)

9At face value it is possible that this was the shrine of Apollo located close to or on Lang’s farm near Pyla which he later explored in the spring of 1870 (see below), though in his 1905 account Lang states that he “stumbled upon the remains of another temple [i.e. near Pyla]” only after the cessation of his work at Idalion.49 Following Colnaghi’s departure for Italy later that year, Lang served as acting Vice-Consul on several subsequent occasions during Thomas Sandwith’s term of office,50 but it was only early in 1868 that the surviving correspondence with Newton resumes. Significantly, this was in order to forward a letter by the French Consul Tiburce Colonna-Ceccaldi offering for sale some antiquities which the latter had excavated around Idalion, though the letter of 8 January 1868 dates to before Lang formally took on Sandwith’s consular duties on 15 April 1868.51 Lang may therefore have been acting more as a general contact of the British Museum, or even simply as a friend of Colonna-Ceccaldi, rather than in any official capacity.

“Our houses became like earthenware shops”.52 Excavations in the Dhali area

  • 52 Lang 1878, p. 332.
  • 53 Bonato 2019, esp. pp. 332‑333. The present author recognised the original photographs in the GR pho (...)
  • 54 Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882, p. 25.
  • 55 Cesnola 1877, chapter II (though vague and unreliable); Lang 1878, pp. 331‑333 (inverting Cesnola’s (...)
  • 56 Cesnola 1877, p. 82‑83; Bonato 2019, p. 330.
  • 57 Bonato 2019, pp. 330‑331, pp. 333‑335.
  • 58 Lang 1878, p. 331
  • 59 See Kiely, Merrillees supra pp. 469ff.
  • 60 OP, various reports submitted to the Trustees’ meetings of 11 October 1869, 13 November 1869, and 1 (...)
  • 61 Cesnola’s claims have been taken at face value by more recent scholars working in the area. Wright (...)
  • 62 This was mentioned by Deutsch in his report to the Trustees prepared during his visit which began o (...)

10The objects Colonna-Ceccaldi offered to the British Museum had been discovered in 1867 when he began excavations on the acropoleis of the ancient site (fig. 2a‑c),53 but it was only early in 1868 – specifically in January according to Georges Colonna-Ceccaldi54 – that the discovery of tombs around Dhali led to something of an archaeological gold rush in the area, first by the villagers, and then by the antiquarian community of Larnaca (see also Kiely, Merrillees supra). This is memorably evoked in published accounts by Cesnola and Lang, as well as the Colonna-Ceccaldi brothers.55 Yet, despite their familiarity to archaeological scholars, the surviving accounts of the excavations around Dhali are somewhat vague and sometimes contradictory, leading to a degree of inaccuracy and confusion in contemporary historiography, including for Lang’s activities. To begin with, while Cesnola’s account suggests that the initial discovery of tombs in this area occurred as early as 1866-186756 – though perhaps in order to imply that his archaeological activities were more extensive and pioneering than they were in reality – the accounts of the Colonna-Ceccaldis,57 Lang58 and Pierides,59 together with several reports to the Trustees of the British Museum,60 make it abundantly clear that the spate of tomb digging by the consular community actually began several years later in 1868 and, perhaps apart from Cesnola, did not continue significantly beyond 1870.61 Certainly, Sandwith’s seminal paper on the classification of ancient Cypriot pottery, which existed in some form by spring of 1869, suggests that many of the major discoveries had already been made around Dhali and elsewhere on the island by this time, and certainly on a sufficient scale to allow him to make his highly perceptive comments on cemeteries of different periods.62

Figure 2a‑c — Photographs of his collection sent by Tiburce Colonna-Ceccaldi to Charles Newton via Lang in 1868.

Figure 2a‑c — Photographs of his collection sent by Tiburce Colonna-Ceccaldi to Charles Newton via Lang in 1868.

BM GR archives, Miscellaneous Photographs 2, p. 58; reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

  • 63 GR 1872,7-26.5-12 (glass from the Slade Collection).
  • 64 Note the transcription of Lang’s paper in Merrillees 2001, p. 237 gives the distance as 12 miles, p (...)
  • 65 See survey in Overbeck, Swiny 1972; Catling 1982 (sites listed in 1963 under Ayios Sozomenos); Fort (...)
  • 66 I am grateful to Robert Merrillees for this suggestion and further help with the placenames.
  • 67 Catling 1963, p. 155, MC no. 31, p. 162, LC no. 44 (CS 425). According to Dr Despina Pilides, this (...)
  • 68 Sandwith 1877, pp. 3ff: Class 1 (EC‑MC): “one [cemetery] a few miles from Dali…, and the other two (...)

11Surprisingly, in his surviving letters to Newton, Lang makes little direct reference to his involvement in these excavations, nor did he offer any of the finds to the British Museum. As we will see however, numerous items from his cemetery excavations were included in the collections acquired in 1872-1873, other objects were acquired indirectly in the years that followed,63 and further artefacts from the area were donated in 1903 and 1913 (see below pp. 516ff). We therefore rely mainly on published sources of information for the location of the cemeteries which are far from consistent. In his 1878 book, Lang simply states that the site of Laksha Nicoli, where the splurge of tomb digging began, was located on a hill to the north of the village of Dhali, while the 1905 account (p. 623) provides no details at all apart from noting the participation of the Dhaliots which implies close proximity. Later in the latter text however, he states that the cemetery he explored at Alambra was “about equidistant with that of Laksha Nicoli from the present village of Dali but on the other side of it” (p. 624). This would imply a distance of around 3 miles in each direction. Confusingly however, in his 1874 report Lang states that Laksha Nicoli was located 1½ miles to the north of Dhali, therefore rather closer to the village than implied by his comparison of the distance with that of Alambra, though the same paper gives the distance between Alambra and Dhali as 3 miles which is broadly accurate.64 Finally, Georges Colonna-Ceccaldi states that in January 1868 rock‑cut tombs were found 2 miles from the village in the hills north of Dhali (though without giving a toponym) which is likely to refer to the same general area, albeit imprecisely located and possibly referring to more than one burial ground. As the crow flies, and allowing for some latitude in terms of direction, a distance of 1½ miles north-west, north and north-east brings one to a number of small hills south and south-west edge of Ayios Sozomenos plateau. Two miles due north is closer to Kafkallia/Nikolidhes which forms part of a rich Bronze Age landscape remains focused on the Ayios Sozomenos plateau, including the cemetery surveyed by Overbeck and Swiny.65 The connection between the names of Nicoli and Nikolidhes may also be relevant here and actually refer to the same site or area.66 Finally, Sheet 10 of Kitchener’s 1885 map of Cyprus marks the presence of “wells”, without a toponym, at a distance of 3 miles to the north of Dhali. Lang also came into the possession of LBA tomb material from a tomb which he donated to the British Museum in two separate lots: the first, in 1903, is described in the register as “[f]rom a tomb near Agia Sozemena”, and the second in 1913 as from “between Ayios Sozomenos and Laksha” (see fig. 5). The latter presumably refers to Laksha Nicoli, in which case the material acquired by the BM in 1903 and 1913 came from another burial ground to the north-east of Dhali. Interestingly, the MC‑LC cemetery of Ayios Sozomenos-Muttaes recorded by Catling lies approximately halfway between the village and Kafkallia-Nikholides and may be the same source as Lang’s group.67 As for tombs of later date, Lang simply said in his 1874 account that “[c]lose to the village of Dali itself were also found extensive cemeteries”, while the details are also sparse in Sandwith’s otherwise more expansive paper and Cesnola’s statements are impossible to verify.68 Finally, these sites are very possibly the sources of the material lent to the Glasgow Industrial Museum in 1870.

  • 69 Emmanuel Deutsch (1829-1873), German-born Jewish scholar of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and of (...)
  • 70 OP, Report, 8 Oct. 1869. This was part of a much longer illustrated account of Deutsch’s visit to t (...)
  • 71 Kiely forthcoming.
  • 72 GROL 1869-72, L‑Z, fol. 571, 17 Mar. 1869; see Merrillees 2001, p. 227. https://www.inha.fr/fr/ress (...)

12There is however another previously unknown source of information on this subject. Late in April 1869, Emmanuel Deutsch, the noted orientalist from the British Museum’s Department of Printed Books, visited Cyprus in order to inspect the finds from the first phase of Lang’s excavations at the sanctuary of Apollo-Reshef in Idalion and from Cesnola’s collection.69 In his report to the Trustees, after noting the recent explosion of archaeological discoveries (which oddly he dates to the beginning of the current year rather than the previous one), Deutsch drew their attention to an account on the tombs of the island which Sandwith had written at his instigation.70 There are significant differences between his text, which is generally more precise on the location of tombs from the Dhali area, and Sandwith’s report. Whatever the reason, according to Deutsch what appears to be the site called Laksha Nicoli by Lang was said to be located 10 miles to the north of Dhali. Based on the discussion given above, this is clearly incorrect, and might simply be a mistake in the transcription of Deutsch’s original notes. He then mentions an Iron Age burial ground located a quarter of a mile to the south-west of the village, and a third group of cemetery, measuring 250 × 70 yards, apparently of tombs of Hellenistic or Roman date, a further 150 yards from Dhali (though whether in the same direction is unstated). Finally, two more tomb fields were located a mile and a mile and a half to the south, whose contents were said to be similar to the preceding. Deutsch also described some finds from Luigi Palma di Cesnola’s collection – parts of which were formed from these same cemeterie – and which were already available for sale.71 As noted above, Cesnola’s own account of his activities is vague in terms of chronology, while his descriptions of the location and nature various cemeteries are mostly opaque, making no mention of the Laksha Nicoli cemetery at all, though he and his agents no doubt explored extensively in the Dhali area. However, he did not sell any of his finds from the Dhali area to the British Museum at this time. Nor, as we will see, did Lang – indeed only a small quantity of items likely to be from his tomb excavations ended up in London. This was possibly because, in 1868 and 1869 respectively, Pierides and Sandwith sent consignments of Bronze Age to Roman pottery and lamps to Newton and Birch (and who politely declined offers of further consignments), and these might have been regarded as sufficient to the museum’s requirements and limited acquisition budget (see Kiely, Merrillees supra p. 476). At the same time, in 1869, Sandwith told Newton how Eugène Piot had recently “carried off” 5000 francs worth (about £20,000 in modern terms) of material from both Cesnola and Lang.72

From collector-dealer to antiquarian

  • 73 Bonato 2019, p. 354.
  • 74 Karageorghis, Peltenburg 1976.
  • 75 I am grateful to Brian Weightman for copies of the original registers.
  • 76 GROL 1861-68, L‑Z, fol. 409, undated (but belongs in summer 1868).

13The full extent of Lang’s commercial dealings remains to be investigated, though they were unlikely ever to have been on the scale as those of Cesnola, for whom this was an almost full‑time occupation.73 Nonetheless, despite the lack of a detailed epistolary record of Lang’s earlier excavations in the British Museum archives, he was clearly operating in the Dhali area, and with commercial intent, though as noted above he also lent a significant collection of material of Bronze Age to Roman date to the City Industrial Museum in Glasgow in 1870.74 It is unclear if this was on deposit with a view towards a future sale, or else an example of his philanthropy and interest in archaeology, especially since the collection remained in the museum until 1903 when Lang formally donated it.75 The following letter is highly instructive for understanding his commercial attitudes to antiquities, but also illuminates the source of items previously attributed to the Sanctuary of Apollo Reshef which is relevant for a later section of this paper. The text is given in full here with annotations.76

  • 77 GR 1868,8-30.1; Walters 1903, no. A231; Karageorghis 1993, pp. 68‑69 no. 235.
  • 78 Aimé Péretié (1808-1882), French diplomat and collector-dealer who supplied numerous collectors and (...)

“My friend Mr Sandwith has mentioned to me the interest which you took in a Phoenician head which he had from my collection and which I believe he presented to the Museum.77 I had two more of the same but gave them with some extremely interesting objects to Mr Peretie [sic].78 I regret this now that I find they would have been prized by our National Collections. All that remains to me or to any one here are the pieces badly represented in the accompanying Photograph [fig. 3]”.

Figure 3 — Photograph of terracottas from Lang’s collection sent to Newton.

Figure 3 — Photograph of terracottas from Lang’s collection sent to Newton.

BM GR archives, Miscellaneous Photographs 2, p. 51; reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. Top (left to right): GR 1872,8-16.42 (Karageorghis 1993, no. 224); 1873,3-20.92; 1873,3-20.87 (Karageorghis 1993, no. 174); 1872,8-16.41; 1872,8-16.58. Bottom: 1873,3-20.104; not identified; 1873,3-20.148.

  • 79 This is Louvre MNB 316 (Hermary 1989, no. 617), a fine example of a “Zeus Ammon” figure.

“Mr Peretie [sic] was most anxious to have them but I could not then make up my mind to part with them – they form quite a little series and are objects which I have no hope of ever finding again. The pieces on the left side of the hand holding a lyre are of a beauty and fineness in material and ornament which I have not found in any other piece. I have besides the pieces in the Photograph, a stone statuette about 1 foot high of Jupiter, I suppose, sitting with a skin of an animal thrown over his head as in the coins of Alexander, holding in his right hand a patera and in his left an instrument resembling a Cornucopia. His seat is supported by two animals on the head of one of which rests the patera and the other the instrument. The piece is in the most perfect conservation – the eyes face and head intact.79 Another very curious archaic piece in terra cotta should go along with those in the photographs or rather in style and workmanship with the head you got from Mr Sandwith. It represents a female figure with twisted ringlets hanging down on breast as a work of art of course it has no beauty but is from the same hands as the piece Sandwith gave you. I may mention that those in the photograph as well as that of Mr Sandwith were all got together [i.e. found together in the same site/context].”

  • 80 This statement is the first recorded expression of Lang’s feelings that he preferred to support the (...)

“My desire was to keep them as a series but I have since become convinced that they would be better in your museum where with other pieces which you have they would form a more perfect collection.”80

“I know a niggardly parliament does not supply you with the funds which the national museum of a Great Nation you ought to have at disposal, and for the payment of any value you might be inclined to affix to the pieces in the photograph it does not matter to me whether it lies over for even a year – for the statuette of Jupiter as you have nothing whereby to judge it I would send it with the other pieces and if you were pleased with it would present it to the museum.”

  • 81 Vogüé 1868, pp. 499‑502. This is the silver spatula incised with a Cypriot Syllabic inscription (GR (...)

“In the article of the Count de Vogüé in the June no. of the Journal Asiatique you may have seen mention made of a spatula in my possession for which I have been offered frs. 200.81 Is it a piece which you would prize? Personally I would these things went to English collections but somehow out here Frenchmen are more watchful in picking up the good pieces that turn up – and I have little connection with the English collectors.”

  • 82 Williams 1996; Kiely 2010.
  • 83 Boys Smith 2020.

14The letter illustrates a number of key points in the evolution of Lang as a collector and dealer but also some of the ambiguities in understanding the source of material acquired by the British Museum. First of all, we see Lang donating items to friends and fellow collectors, such as Vice-Consul Sandwith, whose gift to the museum in turn can be seen in terms of his official duties (but also no doubt as a means of enhancing his status in the eyes of Newton and the Foreign Office and ensuring promotion82). Second, his connections with Péretié, a well-known source of artefacts for collectors and museums, especially the Louvre which subsequently acquired the Zeus Ammon figure, are also typical. Finally, Lang’s instincts were partly commercial and, although financially independent, unlike the mildly impoverished Sandwith,83 he was nonetheless shrewd about his business transactions and could not simply give items to the British Museum. This approach was however tempered by the wish to help the “national museum of a Great Nation”, whether for general patriotic reasons or because he believed his finds would contribute to “a more perfect collection” – in other words, recognising that having large and comprehensive sequences of objects in one place contributed to better understanding the Cypriot past.

“I have to tell you of a considerable find of statuary made by my men lately at Daly”.84 The excavation of the sanctuary of Apollo-Reshef

  • 84 GROL 1869-72, L‑Z, fol. 358, 27 April 1869, Lang to Newton.
  • 85 On 19th-century approaches to shrines, see Ulbrich 2001.
  • 86 There are too many references to list here, but see, e.g. Pryce 1931, p. 2; ICS, p. 31; Masson 1968 (...)
  • 87 Lang, Poole 1878, p. 2.
  • 88 Lang 1905, p. 602.
  • 89 Lang 1878, p. 333; Lang 1879, pp. 226‑227.
  • 90 Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882, pp. 29‑30, p. 197.
  • 91 GROL 1869-1872, fol. 358, 27 Ap. 1869, Lang to Newton.
  • 92 See above notes 60, 62, 70.
  • 93 Lang 1905, p. 639.

15Lang’s most famous archaeological achievement, the excavation of the sanctuary of Apollo and Reshef, has been widely discussed in scholarly literature, given that it was the first shrine in Cyprus to be explored and recorded under controlled circumstances and published reliably.85 However, as with the accepted account of the tomb discoveries mentioned above, some aspects are less certain than is commonly assumed, and several much-repeated factual details are in fact incorrect. This includes the basic chronology of the discovery and excavation of the sanctuary which most modern authors give as occurring in two phases between 1868 and 1869.86 The confusion begins with Lang himself, since the initial date of 1868 is given in Lang and Poole’s report,87 while the two-year duration is explicitly described in his 1905 account.88 On face value, the former in particular might be expected to be entirely reliable, since it was based on a paper first delivered on 15 November 1871, just a few years after the excavation (however much it was modified in the years leading up to publication in 1877). However, it is clear from a multitude of contemporary sources (published and archival) that the discovery of the colossal limestone statue of a bearded male – undeniably the single most impressive sculpture from the site – which led to the extensive exploration of the shrine occurred only in the spring of 1869. These include: (1) Lang’s monograph on Cyprus (both English and French editions);89 (2) several of the papers gathered in Monuments antiques de Chypre, de Syrie et d’Égypte (and indeed Tiburce’s letter to the Revue Archéologique dated 22 April 1869 speaks of the discovery having occurred “ces jours derniers”90); (3) Lang’s own letters to Newton, beginning on 27 April 1869 (see below);91 (4) various subsequent reports made to the Trustees of the British Museum.92 These sources make it abundantly clear that the discovery of the site took place in spring of 1869, and that the main excavation was concluded in the summer or early autumn of that year after a break for the harvest. The latter pause is explicitly noted by Emmanuel Deutsch in his above mentioned report – significantly, he arrived on the island a few weeks after the discovery of the cache of sculpture, but had left the island before the resumption of the excavations. It was during this second phase, represented by Lang in his 1905 account as happening the year after the discovery of the site, that the architectural remains of the shrine were uncovered, and during which the inscriptions and coin hoards were found and the overall layout of the shrine ascertained. The bilingual text was explicitly reported by Lang as having been unearthed on 30 July 1869.93 Karl Friederichs reported to Paul Schröder in the Autumn of 1869 that the discovery had taken place “recently”, and in a following letter (March 1870) stated that Lang had excavated the shrine “in the autumn of the past year” (see Cannavò, Schmid supra p. 165), presumably referring to the second phase.

  • 94 Lang 1878, p. 335; Lang 1905, p. 635; see Masson 1966, pp. 11‑12; also IG XV 2,1, p. 88.
  • 95 Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882, p. 198.
  • 96 Information kindly provided by Dr Stephan Schmid (see also Schmid 2019).

16These corrections have a knock‑on effect on the chronology of Lang’s exploration of the sanctuary of Apollo at Pyla which is explicitly said to have taken place after that at Idalion.94 Logically, this too must have been no earlier than 1869, though confusingly Georges Colonna-Ceccaldi stated that the GA inscription from the site was found there in 1868,95 having earlier given the correct year for the excavation of the Idalion shrine. Either the discovery of the inscription led to more intensive exploration at the site at a later stage, though this again contradicts the idea that the site was found after the excavations in Idalion, as Lang clearly implies, or else Colonna-Ceccaldi’s date is simply an error. Schröder’s testimony again is vital in clarifying matters, for in his diary of 18 March 1870, he stated that Lang had found many statues at Pyla “a few weeks ago.”96

  • 97 Lang, Poole 1878, pp. 16‑17, pl. IV, top row, middle and pl. V, top row.

17While the chronology of the main excavation at Idalion is certain, the matter is further complicated by a number of significant details. First of all, while it is now clear that all the major finds, and of course the inscriptions and coin hoards, were unearthed in the course of 1869, it is possible that Lang was already working in the general areas, and/or on the lower part of the eastern acropolis, prior to the spring of 1869. In their 1878 article, Lang and Poole reproduce images of two remarkable terracotta pieces that were attributed to the shrine as if they were uncovered in the same excavations as the limestone sculpture that dominate the discussion and illustrations; these were also discussed by Lang in his part of the paper as part of the overall corpus of finds from the shrine.97 These were in fact discovered the previous year, if not earlier, since they appear in a photograph Lang sent to Newton in the summer of 1868 (presumably fig. 3, unless Lang sent a second photograph at a later stage). In the accompanying letter (cited above p. 498) Lang stated that the entire group was found together, so they must predate the formal excavations in the Apollo-Reshef shrine. It is possible that Lang’s later discoveries made him realise that the findspot of the terracotta heads was in fact part of the shrine, though in the published reports he does not indicate that they were found in a different manner, or at a different time, to the main assemblage.

  • 98 According to an unpublished paper by A.M. Pagan, a relative of the Lang’s, entitled “Diary of a Vic (...)
  • 99 Lang 1878, p. 333.
  • 100 GROL 1861-1868, fol. 411, 22 Dec. 1868, Newton to Lang. See also Kiely, Merrillees supra for simila (...)

18Equally puzzling is the fact that up to this time Lang and his colleagues (such as Pierides) seem to have been preoccupied with the excavation of tombs described earlier. Indeed, this is a central narratological element of Lang’s story about the discovery of the shrine. Just as he and his colleagues – including presumably his unmarried sister Anna who kept house for Lang at this time98 – were getting “tired of the pottery and glass finds”,99 a new and exciting discovery signalled a change in direction. This looks suspiciously like a literary trope – subtler and more believable perhaps than some of the tales recounted by the Cesnola brothers, but nonetheless over-simplifying the narrative for dramatic effect. Nonetheless, in December 1868, Lang announced that for several months now, “the end of the Phoenician from Dali has been reached”100 – in other words, discoveries of Bronze Age tomb material that had occupied the antiquarian community throughout the first half of 1868, though the area also produced masses of Iron Age, Hellenistic and Roman material and perhaps continued to do so. Nonetheless, the drying up of sources of “Phoenician” pottery might well have caused a shift in interest on Lang’s behalf who deployed his workmen elsewhere in the Dhali area, especially since Tiburce Colonna-Ceccaldi’s work on the acropoleis, and that of Duthoit, but also the unknown sources of material acquired by White and Pierides mentioned earlier, indicate that a perhaps considerable number of shrines had been profitably excavated in the area long before the advent of large-scale tomb digging in 1868.

From collector-dealer to excavator

19Regardless of the previous history of the excavation of Lang’s sanctuary, the discovery of the cache of sculpture in spring of 1869 began what appears to have been a more focused period of involvement with the British Museum, in which Newton exercised considerable influence on Lang’s activities. Newton replied to the original announcement thus:

  • 101 LB 1861-1879, p. 176 no. 26, 2 June 1869, Pierides to Lang.

“If it is suits you to go on excavating and keeping your collection together instead of parting with it piece-meal I will do my best at some future time to make proper provision for it in my estimates and there is no doubt that it will be ultimately far more valuable if kept together with clear notes of the provenance [original emphasis] of the several objects than if you allow it to be dispersed.”101

20The language remains that of a prospective purchase, though he was clearly inclining Lang to keep the collection intact. A subsequent communication, made in response to a now lost letter (with photographs) where Lang reported the finds from the second phase of work, which included the inscriptions, was rather more direct:

  • 102 Cypriot artefacts were exhibited in this gallery, originally created to display Assyrian remains (s (...)
  • 103 On firmans, see also below.
  • 104 Cyprus Museum Inscription 125. See Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882 (originally published 1874), pp. 196‑198 n (...)

“I rejoice to think that the excavation is in such good hands. I at once communicated your letter to Mr. Birch who, as you know, as Keeper of the oriental antiquities, is more immediately concerned with Phoenician objects than I am. Mr. Birch begs me to say that, if you are disposed to part with your Phoenician inscriptions, he will be very happy to treat with you as he has a portion of his grant for this year still unexpended. If you could send him photographs or paper inscriptions of them, he would be much obliged to you. The heads of figures of which you sent me photographs are, like those in the Salle Asiatique of the Louvre102 of various dates, some decidedly archaic, others, apparently, as late as the Macedonian or even the Roman period, as for instance the three heads No. 5. I should like very much when you have completed your excavations to have the refusal of all which you wish to part with and with this view I would include your antiquities in my estimate for the sum I shall require for the financial year commencing April 1, 1870. I shall be obliged to you if you could give me an idea of the value you set on your collection by the first of October next when we propose our estimates. By combining with Mr Birch I hope to be able to secure all the best things at a price which will be a fair compensation to you for your outlay. I will endeavour to visit Cyprus next Spring. With regard to the plan of your operations I think you cannot do better than pursue the lines of the foundation walls as far as they will carry you. When the whole has been laid bare, a photographic view of the ruins will be very valuable. A plan ought certainly to be made of these. I hope you will be able to carry out your operations without having resource to the Porte for a firman which would be very undesirable to apply for just now, as the Porte seems indisposed to grant this firman for the future: but probably your local influence does instead of a firman.103
“I shall be very glad to have a copy as soon as possible of the Greek inscription you mention.”104

  • 105 GROL 1869-1872, L‑Z, fol. 360, 15 Sep. 1869, Lang to Newton.
  • 106 OP, attached to report of 11 November, letter of 8 Oct. NB: the postscript of 12 Oct is filed as GR (...)

21Lang’s excavations continued into the autumn of 1869, but the precise date he ceased work is not clear from the correspondence with Newton and Birch. In a letter of 15 September, he finally agreed to send squeezes of the inscriptions to Birch and discusses how his collection might be properly studied and displayed, and indeed hoped for organised excavations at Dhali and other sites by the British Museum. This might imply that the work had been largely finished. Yet in a postscript, Lang announced the discovery of the two coin hoards, asking for Newton’s upmost secrecy on the matter, which suggests that the excavations were continuing in some form.105 Indeed, in a letter of 8 October to Newton, he says that, as a means of brushing off Friederichs who was repeatedly making offers for parts of his collection for the Berlin Museums, especially the colossal male statue, Lang told him that he could not make any decisions until November when his excavations would be finished.106 While Lang was thus dissimulating, perhaps not wanting to reveal that he was negotiating with the British Museum, he may well have continued to work at Dhali into the final months of 1869.

  • 107 Lang 1905, p. 636. See Cesnola 1877; McFadden 1971, esp. pp. 95‑88.
  • 108 GROL 1869-1872, L‑Z, fol. 362, 27 Oct. 1869, Lang to Newton.
  • 109 Donkow 2004.
  • 110 GROL 1869-1872, L‑Z, fol. 360, 15 Sep. 1869, Lang to Newton.
  • 111 Lang 1878, p. 339.
  • 112 Wright 2001, p. 261.

22At the same time, Lang himself said that after Pyla “I excavated no other temple in Cyprus”, and in the same account described how he yielded the option of excavation around Athienou (Golgoi) to Cesnola to give him the opportunity of a great find”.107 The late date of this statement might include a degree of nostalgia and conceal more complicated reasons for Lang’s decision. As early as 27 October 1869,108 Lang alluded to problems encountered by British excavators – possibly referring to Wood’s work at Ephesos109 – while also noting that ever since Cesnola managed to obtain a fresh permit to work anywhere in the island, “orders have been given by the Pasha to render Cesnola’s crew, who are legion, facilities everywhere”, with the result that the local authorities assumed that other diggers such as him had no authority to do so. The latter comment is interesting given that a number of other statements in the correspondence point to the relative ease with which Lang was able to operate. Back in August of the same year, Newton also mentioned the official obstacles to obtaining firmans (again probably with Ephesos in mind), though Lang replied that, “I have had no difficulty whatsoever and carry on my operations as quietly as possible. Unless upon special superior orders the local authorities would not in the least interfere with me.”110 This recalls the exchange between Lang and the local governor related in his 1878 work: “…[W]hen the governor told me one day, during excavations at Dali, that he ought to stop me because I had no firman, I answered him jokingly that he needed a firman to stop me, which he had not.”111 Wright correctly interpreted this not as arrogance or condescension on Lang’s behalf but instead as a correct appraisal of the ambiguous nature of firmans, especially prior to the 1874 Ottoman Law of Antiquities, not to mention Lang’s own position and status within the island of which he was well aware.112

  • 113 Lang, Poole 1878, pp. 10‑11. This of course happened in 1874 with the introduction of partage into (...)
  • 114 Lang 1905, p. 638.
  • 115 MEC 1868-1881, no. 3570, 25 May 1872, Lang to Birch.
  • 116 GR 1917,7-1.143; Pryce 1931, C12.
  • 117 Description too vague to identify. See Tatton-Brown 2002, pp. 250‑251 for a list of the largely unp (...)
  • 118 Actually male. GR 1873,3-20.347; see Reyes 1992, p. 252 no. 38. See list in Tatton-Brown 2002, p. 2 (...)
  • 119 Faience amulets and glass beads of Phoenician type in the form of ‘demon’ heads (e.g. GR 1873,3-20. (...)
  • 120 I am grateful to Professor José-Ángel Zamora López for confirming this information.
  • 121 GR archives, S. R. Poole, Inventory of Mr Lang’s collection, no. 368.

23At the same time, in his 1878 paper, much of which dates from when it was read in 1871, Lang stated his hope to extend the excavations to the west of what he regarded as the oldest part of the shrine: “I trust that some day my desire in this respect may be gratified, should the late stringent orders of the Sublime Porte be relaxed.”113 The only other recorded digging after this time is just before he left the island for his new post in Alexandria, when he decided to do some final exploration at Idalion since he still owned the land which he had purchased. Although this is briefly mentioned in his 1905 account,114 this episode has been overlooked, though it adds further nuance to the history of Lang’s work at Idalion. Attempting and failing to get a firman, he nonetheless put about 30 men to work for a week, “in pretence of clearing away stone”.115 The results were largely unsuccessful, though Lang’s workmen did unearth a very fine Egyptianising head which he donated to the British Museum, “for it would be unbecoming to bargain over the money value of such a worthy fellow”.116 This short season also produced a “small Terra Cotta head (Archaic type),117 a curious little Bronze woman seated also archaic,118 a lot of Amulets and Cabeiri119 and some other curious little pieces.” Perhaps most intriguing is the post-script to this letter, where he noted, “I have just seen a small piece of marble with about a dozen letters in Phoenician.” No further details are given, but this inscription did not come to the British Museum and is otherwise unknown to Phoenician scholars. Nothing corresponding to this description was published in CIS I, which included numerous items still in private hands, nor does Lang appear to have retained it for his own collection, including several inscriptions in Cypriot Syllabic and Greek alphabetic script, which he gave to the British Museum in stages from 1902 onwards (see below).120 In this respect, Poole’s inventory of Lang’s collection intriguingly mentions an architectural fragment “with traces of Phoenician inscription” which is not mentioned elsewhere and whose whereabouts are likewise unknown.121

  • 122 Lang 1905, pp. 635‑636; see Bernard-Walcher et al. 1999, pp. 40‑43.

24If Lang’s final excavations at Dhali were relatively unfruitful, he was rather more successful in exporting his final discoveries, “little by little and under various pretences…over the next few months” as he reported in the same letter. This seems rather more discrete than the well-known account he gave in 1905 of how he exported his finds with the help of an Austrian sea captain, whose reward was the magnificent limestone statue now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.122 Nonetheless, as early as December 12 1872, in a letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, comparing the advantage Cesnola enjoyed in obtaining firmans, and commenting perhaps ironically on the impotence of the British Embassy, Lang noted that,

“What I was enabled to do was done under the grave disadvantages of ‘want of authority,’ and in the constant fear of having my operations interfered with and my discoveries confiscated, both of which might have been legally done at any time. To the inconvenience of risking my money and labour, I had at last to charge my conscience with the crime of contraband in order than the objects should reach our national museum.”

  • 123 GROL 1869-1872, vol. 2 (L–Z), fols 367‑368, 10 May 1872, Fox to Lang.
  • 124 GROL 1869-1872, L‑Z, fol. 362, 27 Oct 1869, Lang to Newton.
  • 125 MEC 1868-1881, fol. 3577, 18 Dec. 1872, Lang to Birch.
  • 126 McFadden 1971, chapter 13.
  • 127 See above note 104.
  • 128 MEC 1868‑81, no. 3577, 18 Dec. 1872, Lang to Birch.

25At the same time, Lang was evidently not concerned about the many fragmentary items he had accumulated by the time he left the island. Writing to General Fox, he confided how he had swapped with Cesnola some 1500 pieces of pottery and sculpture in exchange for a dozen smaller pieces, noting that “[h]e is busy making noses for the heads which want them and bringing them all into an attractive state for the Yankee antiquarian!”123 This was not necessarily a jibe at Cesnola’s expense so much as praise for his entrepreneurship, for in the letter cited above in regard to his firman (p. 503), Lang added, “I don’t however grudge him it – every man is right to make the best of his position. Nor would I dream of rivalling him.”124 He related the same information to Birch – “And on leaving Cyprus I gave Cesnola over 1500 fragments and pieces which I could do nothing with but which he doctored and made count.”125 Although here Lang is being sarcastic, as is well known the question of Cesnola’s restorations subsequently developed into a major scandal.126 Many may have been limbs and torsos and other commonplace fragments that would indeed be useful for completing other figures, and relatively few examples of which can be found in the British Museum groups; this also explains why Poole’s inventory of 1869 comprised only 372 items, presumably the most marketable or unusual items, rather than the 1000 pieces mentioned in his 1878 site report. Lang also decided to leave behind in Cyprus the Greek alphabetic inscription found at the shrine.127 This was not sent to England because, as he explained to Birch, “your value of these inscriptions is so small that I doubt whether it would repay the freight.”128 How or when the inscription made its way to the Cyprus Museum is unknown. It was not mentioned in Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter’s catalogue of 1899, nor in any of the subsequent catalogues written by Dikaios. It is possible that Lang left it in the British consulate or gave it to a friend or colleague who later donated it to the Cyprus Museum. Demetrios Pierides would be the obvious candidate, though there are no indications that he ever possessed the inscription.

  • 129 Masson 1966, pp. 22‑30 (with previous references). However, GR 1903,12-18.8 was not known before Ma (...)

26The items Lang received from Cesnola in return is unknown but this transaction may explain how he came to possess a number of objects, notably several alabaster vessels with Cypriot Syllabic inscriptions, claimed by Cesnola to have been found at Golgoi and Kythroi, though Masson suggested that he may have received them after the exhibition of Cesnola’s collection in London in 1872.129 Whatever the truth, Lang retained these items until 1903 when they were donated to the British Museum (see below p. 516). While they had been published as forming part of Cesnola discoveries before this time, they were subsequently overlooked until the 1960s when they were represented by Olivier Masson. It is also interesting to speculate if Lang gave the missing Phoenician inscriptions mentioned above to Cesnola who then failed to acknowledge their origins and findspot – though the two men were on good relations, and Cesnola certainly liked to boast of his connections with follow collectors.

Negotiations for the collection130

  • 130 For efficiency of citation, unless otherwise stated, the reports referred to in this section are al (...)
  • 131 Cesnola 1877, pp. 105ff; Lang 1905, p. 636.
  • 132 Lang 1905, p. 630; on Friederichs, see Merrillees 2001, pp. 229‑230; Merrillees 2014, pp. 32‑35.
  • 133 Cook 1997, pp. 15‑16; Kiely 2010, pp. 236‑237.
  • 134 Newton constantly complained about having no money to spend, also visible in his negotiations with (...)

27The formal process began on 13 November 1869 when reports on Lang’s collection by Samuel Birch, Charles Newton, and William Vaux were submitted to the Trustees, advising that the owner valued the group at £1600. Newton outlined the contents of the collection, stressing the importance of the inscriptions but also of the limestone sculpture and bronze figurines, which he regarded as “the most complete and the most important collection of Graeco-Phoenician antiquities which has ever been found” – this of course before Cesnola’s discoveries around Atheniou in 1870.131 Newton specifically listed 12 inscriptions in total: nine from Dhali, namely, the Greek alphabetic text mentioning Apollo Amyclaeus already mentioned (IG XV 2, 377) and the fragmentary votive column in honour of Arsinoe (IG XV 2, 378); five in Phoenician script (CIS 90‑94); the bilingual Phoenician and Cypriot Syllabic (CIS 90; ICS no. 220); and a Cypriot Syllabic inscription described as comprising “8 lines complete”, though this should read “8 letters” and refers to ICS no. 221. Three more Cypriot Syllabic texts were listed as coming from Paphos though these are surely those from Dhrymou – one is said to have 38 characters (= IG XV 1, 160 or 162) and the second 28 (= IG XV 1, 161) – and the silver spatula from Idalion (ICS no. 219). Confusingly, the two Cypriot Syllabic inscriptions from Dhrymou acquired by the BM in 1872 both comprise 38 letters, suggesting that Newton was aware only of one at this time, or else that Lang offered only one for sale, while the text with 28 characters remained in Lang’s collection until 1903. No doubt to excite an element of urgency, Newton noted that Karl Friederichs, sent by the Prussian government to collect Cypriot antiquities, had made repeated offers to Lang which were rejected only because he had offered Newton first refusal. Newton also noted that that Friederichs intended to return to the island with Professor Lepsius to push the negotiations.132 This warning was repeated in the final line of the report, as if to drive home the danger to the museum’s interests. At the same meeting, Birch requested that a sum of £1000 be added to the Estimates for the acquisition budget of his department for 1870-1871; this was usually a mere £250, another sign of the perceived importance of the collection. Newton by contrast spent between £1500 and £2000 every year, but also regularly asked for much larger supplementary grants to acquire large collections.133 Newton however did not allocate any money from his own budget for Lang’s collection at this time, presumably because of other acquisition priorities.134

  • 135 OP, Report 13 Nov. 1869, Letter of 8 October 1869, Lang to Newton.
  • 136 Caygill 2004.
  • 137 Poole 1878b. Note also his comments on the politics of the island in an article in the same periodi (...)
  • 138 Lang, Poole 1878, p. 13.

28However, given the fact that none of the three individuals had seen the items in person, and that Lang himself had only reluctantly named a price,135 Stuart Reginald Poole136 was dispatched to Cyprus to inspect and value the collection. Poole stayed on the island from 2 to 22 December 1869, during which he created an inventory of the collection, assessed the condition and value of each item, as well as writing a more general report on the significance of the material. Although Poole worked as a numismatist in the British Museum, like his colleagues Newton and Birch he was a polymath with detailed knowledge of Eastern Mediterranean history and archaeology, not least because of his notable family of orientalists, comprising his mother, uncle and brother. This is visible in the report to the Trustees and in his commentary in Lang, Poole 1878, but also in his paper published in the Contemporary Review in 1878, essentially a review of Cesnola’s Cyprus with insights from Lang’s discoveries.137 As noted above, Poole’s inventory only included 372 numbered items, excluding the inscriptions, while Lang mentions some 1000 pieces in his contribution to their 1878 paper.138 Poole’s report was clearly based on a selection rather than the entire assemblage, though he was also quick to state that the coins, which had been mentioned in Newton’s report of November 1869, were not part of the collection for sale, since Lang had offered first refusal to General Fox.

  • 139 Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882, pl. 1. This version rather than the one published in Lang, Poole 1878 is mor (...)
  • 140 See Lang 1905, p. 627.
  • 141 GR 1917,7-1.125/1872,8-16.21; Pryce 1931, C164.

29Space does not allow for a detailed analysis of Poole’s report, the interpretative sections of which were repeated in the published paper, and which would repay further research as it is difficult to precisely identify the items based on the written descriptions. One noteworthy fact is that the text is illustrated with a preliminary sketch plan of the shrine – on which are marked the findspots of the most important finds – which would later appear in the final report (fig. 4). Unless copied from a plan made by Lang himself, this was presumably made during Poole’s visit when the site was still exposed. While much less polished than the one published by Colonna-Ceccaldi,139 it presumably formed the basis of the latter plan, though there are numerous differences. Most notably, Colonna-Ceccaldi’s plan clearly shows the spoil from both phases of work massed around the edge of the excavated area which Lang mentioned in his description of how the layout of the sanctuary was established in the summer of 1869.140 Another interesting point is that the text was submitted along with photographs, whether those previously presented by Newton in his earlier report, or fresh ones taken on the spot by Poole. While some were probably among those engraved in the published paper of 1878, it would be interesting to know what exactly Lang (or Poole) chose to photograph as a way of determining their understanding of what was important within his collection, and which would also be relevant in understanding how he commercially valued the material. Poole valued the 372 inventoried items, in addition to the 12 inscriptions (which were numbered 373 to 384 but not described in the inventory itself), at some £1625 5s which was greater than Lang’s figure of £1600. What is striking about the prices attributed to each item, which had had a direct impact on their reception by Newton and the Trustees, is the extraordinary range in price and the hierarchies of values. Poole’s inventory cannot be precisely matched with the actual collection, but some general comments can be made. For example, the twelve inscriptions were valued at £340 in total, ranging from £250 for no. 373 – presumably the bilingual given its importance – to a mere £5, the latter possibly for the fragmentary Cypriot Syllabic inscription ICS no. 221. The colossal male statue was valued at some £450, but the next most valuable item was just £50 (probably one of the fine Cypro-Classical heads); £40 for one of the large Hellenistic votive heads; and £30 for the best preserved Temple Boy.141 The better preserved standing votaries and heads were valued at between £4 and £10 but many of the less complete or worn pieces were deemed to be worth no more than between 10 shillings and £2. By contrast, the best bronze statuettes were judged to be worth between £4 and £5, though one of the two weights in the shape of animals was valued as £10.

Figure 4 — Sketch plan of the Idalion shrine from Stuart Poole’s report on Lang’s collection.

Figure 4 — Sketch plan of the Idalion shrine from Stuart Poole’s report on Lang’s collection.

BM GR archives, R. S. Poole, Inventory of Mr Lang’s Collection; reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

  • 142 OP, Trustees meeting of 11 November 1869, letter of 8 October 1869, post-script of 12 October. In a (...)
  • 143 LB 1861-79, pp. 233‑234, no 33, 4 July 1870, Newton to Lang.

30Poole’s report was not formally submitted to the Trustees until the meeting of 11 February 1870 along with Deutsch’s memorandum on the inscriptions; this was made on the basis of the squeezes sent by Lang, since Deutsch never revisited the island as he had hoped. Deutsch’s account suggests that drawings, or perhaps the squeezes themselves, were presented to the Trustees along with the report, but these have not survived. There are some small but significant differences in the items included in his inventory. While the Phoenician and Greek Alphabetic inscriptions are the same as those in Newton’s earlier report, the Cypriot Syllabic texts are not. The silver spatula is not mentioned, but what is described as a fragmentary text with 12 characters appears to be the now missing ICS no. 88 (IG XV 1, 164, now reconstructed with 13 signs). This inscription had come into Lang’s possession sometime in October 1869, since in a hasty postscript to the letter to Newton he noted, “I have just time to add two new inscriptions received from Paphos. The one entirely perfect and the letters monumental. The other more injured. The former contains 39 letters; the latter 12.”142 Birch and Newton wrote additional reports on the material but displayed a rather cooler attitude than before. Both continued to stress the historical importance of the collection, though in a less forceful way than back in November, and in particular they demurred as to its value. Newton observed that there were numerous “duplicates” but also that many items were in poor condition. He suggested that Lang be offered only £1000 and then only when they were shipped on board a “British or European” ship, implying that Lang had to guarantee that they could be exported without hindrance (though at the expense of the Trustees). Newton’s attitude seems at variance with what he informed Lang in a letter of 4 July where he insisted that “no one can regret more than I do the issue of the negotiation between the Trustees and yourself, because, as you are aware, I recommended the purchase of your antiquities originally in the strongest manner.”143

  • 144 Lang 1905, p. 639.
  • 145 Parry 2004. Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke (1811-1982) was a somewhat illiberal Liberal Party (...)
  • 146 BM Central Archives Trustees Minutes, 30 April 1870.

31Newton’s ambiguous (if not disingenuous) stance may be explained in part by a comment of Lang in his 1905 account.144 Here he says that in a private letter of January 1869 Newton advised him that the notoriously parsimonious Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Robert Lowe,145 was opposed “to any proposal to enlarge the British Museum at his expense.” Newton’s reduction in the value of the collection might therefore have been strategic, knowing that the Trustees would be unwilling to spend as much as £1600, especially since Birch already had previously requested the sum of £1000 for this purpose. Finally, the Trustees’ deliberations are not recorded, only their decision, so it is difficult to gauge what sort of discussions were had, especially in the light of habitual pressure from the Treasury to reduce the museum estimates. Whatever their feelings, having deferred their decision several times, on 12 March 1870 they finally declined to purchase the material at the price requested. Lang offered to reduce the price, but the Trustees refused to make him a lower offer.146 In response to this news, Lang, in a rare outburst of annoyance, he noted that “[i]t would have saved me some hundreds and the museum at least a hundred if the Trustees had earlier ascertained their lame condition! which I as sincerely regret as they can,” though he ended his letter in a conciliatory tone: “I have to thank you for the interest you have shown in this whole matter knowing well that the unsuccessful issue is wholly owing to circumstances quite out of your control.” At the same time, he also asked for the return of his squeezes, stressing “I need scarcely remind you that according to our arrangement no copies or notes whatever of these should remain in the possession of any one,” presumably because he was now at liberty to negotiate with other interested parties that he had previously rebuffed.

  • 147 Lang 1905, p. 629.
  • 148 Lang 1905, p. 630.
  • 149 MEC 1868-81, fol. 916, Birch to Cesnola. Other letters suggest that Birch had advised Cesnola to se (...)
  • 150 See Lang 1905, p. 639.

32There follows a highly frustrating gap in the correspondence, though the surviving documentation allows the reconstruction of the story in outline. First of all, while Lang allowed Paul Schröder to inspect his collection and make an inventory of the inscriptions, though not to make copies147 (see Cannavò, Schmid supra p. 165), he claims to have resisted offers from de Vogüé for the bilingual148 perhaps having been privately assured by Birch and Newton that his collection could still be secured for the British Museum. Presumably on their request, in the course of 1871 Lang sent the most import parts of his collection to London so they could be studied in person by Newton and Birch (and perhaps be shown to key Trustees whose influence could be useful in securing funding). Indeed, in a letter to Cesnola on 4 Oct. 1871, Birch stated that Lang had send the greater part of his collection to London and that he hoped to purchase it the following this.149 Birch submitted another report to the 13 October 1871 meeting of the Trustees, recommending the resumption of the negotiations. Apart from stressing the importance of the inscriptions in particular (though here he says there were only two Cypriot Syllabic examples in addition to the bilingual), he also warned the Trustees of the likely impact of the recent ban of excavations by the Ottoman authorities – “the opportunity of obtaining such remarkable monuments if now lost might never be recovered.” This was followed up by a report on 10 November where he informed the Trustees that, since his previous communication, two papers had been delivered on the Cypriot script, by Lang and George Smith at the Society for Biblical Archaeology on 7 November (and a few weeks earlier, on 19 October, Lang’s paper on the sanctuary had been read at Royal Society of Literature). Birch appears to have been alerting the Trustees to the danger that greater publicity would increase the likelihood of competition from other sources. Furthermore, in a somewhat unusual move, the Principal Librarian of the museum, J. Winter Jones, intervened, reminding the Trustees of the £1000 budgeted for Lang’s collection back in 1869 which had later been spent by the Department of Prints and Drawings when the negotiations with Lang fell through. Newton and Birch proposed that a sum of £800 be provided in the Estimates for the financial year 1872-1873, which was approved a few weeks later and which eventually cleared all the relevant administrative hurdles in Parliament. Finally, on the 11 January 1873, following further interventions from Birch and Newton, the Trustees approved the expenditure of another £200 to acquire the residue of Lang’s collection, this time from Newton’s unspent purchase budget for the 1872‑73 financial year.150

Mr Lang’s collection

  • 151 Registered as, respectively, CM 1870,11-2.1-35 and CM 1871,7-1.1-56.
  • 152 CM 1871,11-7.1-44 and CM 1872,7-13.1-57.

33What did the Trustees get for their money and, moreover, what did Lang retain for other purposes including his personal collection? The final section of this paper outlines the registration groups in which Lang’s material was inventoried by the museum, with a view to clarifying the nature of the material acquired by the British Museum between 1870 and 1913. First, as noted above, the coins from the three hoards discovered by Lang (two at Dhali and one near the Larnaca Salt Lake) were sold piecemeal in a commercial manner typical of the numismatic trade, with the British Museum taking only a selection of types not represented in the collection. A total of £550 was spent on a selection of the silver coins from the Dhali hoards, mainly the large denominations from the first hoard, in two batches (£280 in 1870 and £270 in 1871).151 These were bought through Rollin and Feuardent and, although the findspot is mentioned, Lang’s name is omitted from the registers. Although speculative, it is possible that Lang’s contacts at the British Museum advised him to sell his numismatic material to the museum through this mechanism, rather than as a direct sale, given that separate sources of funds could be drawn on and from different departments. There is no surviving correspondence on this matter, largely because of the loss of much of the archives of the Department of Coins and Medals during World War II (and therefore any letters between Lang and Vaux or Poole). Two selections of coins from the Larnaca hoard were acquired in 1871 and 1872, respectively for £154 and £199 10s.152 These by contrast were purchased directly from Lang, though by this time his article on the Larnaca hoard, and that on the Dhali hoards, had both appeared, so his association with the material would have been public.

  • 153 See Reyes 1992 on the Cypro-Archaic examples; the list in Tatton-Brown 2002 is incomplete.
  • 154 ICS, p. 148.
  • 155 Lang 1905, p. 639 says the 2 May but this is probably the date of the letter from the Trustees who (...)
  • 156 GR 1872,8-16.91.

34Turning to the non-numismatic material the group registered as GR 1872,8‑16 comprised 99 of what might be regarded as the finest or most archaeologically important of Lang’s finds from the sanctuary – the best quality or most intact sculpture, including the large-scale standing figures, most of the reported inscribed objects – but also the two stone stele from Dhrymou and the silver spoon from Idalion – but significantly not the two Greek alphabetic dedications. There are also nine anthropomorphic bronze figurines and a bull-shaped weight, though another nine statuettes and a foot were registered the following year, well in excess of the numbers recorded in initial reports on Lang’s collection.153 Most intriguingly, this registration group also contains the funeral stele decorated with an archer in relief and bearing a Cypriot Syllabic epitaph, said to be from Salamiou, but which was nowhere mentioned in previous correspondence. Masson assumed that Poole saw the stele in 1869, perhaps because it was described and illustrated in the paper of 1878,154 but it was not included in Poole’s report to the Trustees, or in Deutsch’s epigraphic memorandum, or indeed in any of Newton’s and Birch’s reports to the Trustees, despite its remarkable nature. Its absence from the correspondence is especially odd, since one might assume that Lang would at least have informed Newton and Birch about items even if they were not for sale. The archer stele was however included by Schröder in the inventory of Lang’s inscriptions attached to his letter to Justus Olshausen of 28 March 1870 (see Cannavò, Schmid supra pp. 172‑174). It is possible that the stele had come into Lang’s possession quite recently and that, in the light of the prolonged negotiations over his collection, he decided to keep it separate from his Idalion material, though as noted earlier he did not receive his final refusal from the Trustees until sometime in May 1870.155 Finally, the 1872 registration group includes a Timurid-period cooper padlock in the form of a horse.156 This was either an intrusive or surface find from the shrine itself, or else an accidental inclusion in the group, since it is unlikely that Lang would have consciously sent such a random find from the antiquities market (as opposed to focused acquisitions such as inscriptions) which is the other obvious source for this object.

  • 157 Listed in Tatton-Brown 2002; Karageorghis 1993 passim; Karageorghis 1995 passim.
  • 158 See above note 118.
  • 159 GR 1873,3-10.204; IG XV 2, 402. Dr Alan Johnston (forthcoming) kindly provided the author with a co (...)
  • 160 Caquot, Masson 1968, pp. 303‑306.
  • 161 MEC 1868-1881, fol. 3569, 27 Ap. 1872, Lang to Birch (= GR 1913,2-12.34).

35The second group registered as GR 1873,3-20.1 to 347 raises further questions of provenance. Combined with the earlier sequence, the total number of items considerably exceeds the 384 inventoried by Poole. It comprises the remaining limestone and terracotta statuary and figurines from the shrine of Apollo-Reshef (and a few more items explicitly stated to be from Pyla), though as noted earlier some of the terracotta figures in this group (such as GR 1873,3-20.194) were already in Lang’s possession before work began at the Apollo-Reshef sanctuary, even if they nonetheless originated somewhere in the nearby vicinity. In addition there were many of the smaller finds: the nine bronze figurines mentioned above, a range of smaller terracotta figurines and models,157 many beads and pendants,158 miscellaneous cult items, and at least 35 ceramic pots, the latter most almost certainly from funerary rather than votive contexts (see below). Of key importance are two inscriptions. One is a Greek alphabetic votive inscription on a large pithos sherd which was noted in Poole’s inventory but not mentioned in any of the corresponding reports, perhaps because of its small size.159 The source of the bronze L‑shaped base or implement incised with a dedication to Reshef Mikal is more confusing (see Cannavò, Schmid supra p. 185).160 This was unknown to the editors of CIS I and apparently overlooked until it was rediscovered by Richard Barnett and then published by Masson and Caquot. While the registration group, and especially the nature of the dedication, both suggest it came from Idalion, as with the archer stele the lack of any mention in surviving documents is perplexing. While it might have been a casual acquisition from the antiquities market, it is still surprising that Lang made no mention of it, especially since he discussed with Birch the cuboid lead weight with Cypriot Syllabic characters, which remained in Lang’s collection as late as 1913.161

  • 162 Listed in Tatton-Brown 2002 who, however, attributes them to the sanctuary.
  • 163 Sandwith 1877, pl. XIII; Lang and Poole 1878, p. 36 = GR 1873,3-20.208; Walters 1912, C755.
  • 164 Giessen 2001, p. 33‑34, 42.
  • 165 Reyes 1992 gives an incomplete survey of the figurines; GR 1873,3-20.325 is a small figurine depict (...)

36As already noted, the 1873 group contains a considerable number of items likely to be from funerary rather than votive contexts, especially in the context of what we know about Lang’s extensive activities in the cemeteries around Dhali.162 These include a Red Polished III bowl (but no other Bronze Age ceramic material) and a much larger group of CG‑CA vessels (mainly White Painted, Bichrome, Black-on‑Red, Bichrome-Red wares) but also a fragment of an Attic White Ground Lekythos, as well as several lamps (one CG, the others Roman). Among the pots is the White Painted III amphora illustrated in Sandwith 1877 and in Lang, Poole 1878 which undoubtedly came from a tomb.163 Among the ceramic repertoire are numerous White Painted and Black-on-Red juglets and amphoriskoi, which do occur in votive contexts, but their intact condition suggests otherwise for these examples. In addition are three CA bronze fibulae, which could derive from a votive context (and which is how Giesen discusses them),164 and some Iron Age figurines and statue fragments consonant with a votive deposit, though there is a broader array of metal items, mainly Bronze Age, but also several iron items and some later Hellenistic and Roman material.165 Since no material pre-dating the later CG period is described in any of the reports on the sanctuary, these items must be regarded as coming from other sources. One explanation might be sought in his comments to Birch and Fox mentioned above where he gave 1500 fragments of limestone sculpture to Cesnola. It is also likely that, although not a dealer on the same scale as Cesnola, Lang nonetheless possessed a stock of antiquities from a number of sources which could be deployed in a variety of ways when required (whether as gifts, sales or exchange items). At the same time, when it was clear he was leaving Cyprus in 1872, Lang perhaps decided to send some “leftovers” to Newton, just as he had with Cesnola, rather than going to the expense and inconvenience of taking low value items such as pottery to Egypt. Moreover, the gaps in the correspondence and lack of information about undocumented conversations with Newton and Birch over his collection, may conceal broader reasons that induced Lang to include additional material in the 1872 and 1873 groups, especially given his generally good disposition towards the British Museum which he repeatedly stated trumped any financial considerations about his collection. Finally, his move to Egypt represented a considerable promotion, so perhaps monetary interest in his collection was increasingly secondary to patriotic and archaeological concerns.

  • 166 GR 1872,8-16 nos 8, 49, 52; GR 1873,3-20 nos 8 and 49. NB: the findspots are not mentioned in the o (...)
  • 167 Several items were sold at auction in London in 1871 (Sotheby’s 1‑2 May 1871, lots 296‑297 and 300, (...)
  • 168 Caubet 1976.
  • 169 Bernhard-Walcher et al. 1999, no. 76; see Lang 1905, p. 638.
  • 170 Lang 1905, p. 636.
  • 171 See Senff 1993, p. 79.
  • 172 See Caubet 1976, pl. XXVII.
  • 173 ICS, p. 302, no. 304 (with references). See also Cannavò, Schmid supra p. 182 n. 81.

37On the other hand, Lang seems to have handled the material from his excavations at Pyla in a totally different manner to that from Idalion. While a few pieces were sent with the 1872 and 1873 groups,166 the majority of the finds from this site, which are not mentioned in any of his surviving letters to the British Museum (despite their iconographic and epigraphic importance), were sold or donated piecemeal to Cesnola,167 the Louvre,168 the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna,169 and probably other institutions. Lang also relates that he sent two heads to Hoffmann in Paris who fled to London when the Franco-Prussian war broke out, where he later sold them, one to the British Museum, the other to a “Frenchman who bought it as a sculptor’s model.”170 The accuracy of this story is moot: the only head from Pyla acquired from a public sale was purchased at Cesnola’s sale in 1871 by Augustus Franks (see note 167) – but not from Hoffman who was a buyer at this auction (including of one of the Pyla sculptures, lot no. 297). At the same time, several items conventionally attributed to Idalion – the statues of “Artemis” (GR 1873,3-20.47; Pryce 1931, C370) and “Pan” (GR 1872,8-16.35 = Pryce 1931, C231)171 – are not described in Poole’s inventory nor in any of the published accounts. While the latter are admittedly short on details of any of the possible cult images, and indeed in some places statues of votaries are described as deities, both the singular nature of “Artemis” and “Pan” iconography, and the fact they find more ready parallels in the Pyla corpus, including GR 1873,3-20.49 (= Pryce 1931, C371), suggest they derive from the latter site.172 Further research into the original records, including Poole’s inventory, is required to disentangle confusion over the provenance of items in both the 1872 and 1873 groups, but these examples serve to caution against published provenances which cannot always be confirmed in the archival records. Lang’s overall treatment of the Pyla material is perplexing because, even if he decided to reserve these items (especially the unpublished inscriptions) for other potential purchasers, it is strange that he did not at least inform Newton and Birch about his discoveries (including the important Greek alphabetic and Cypriot Syllabic texts). Moreover, the excavations of Pyla took place before the rejection of Lang’s collection by the Trustees. Lang’s reluctance to inform the British Museum about, or enter in negotiations for, a second collection cannot then be put down to bad feelings. At the same time, Lang did share information about inscriptions from the site with Pierides – who may well have been given the now missing ICS no. 304, since Isaac Hall says he saw it in Pierides’ house, though its subsequent fate is unknown.173

  • 174 Some have been published before but not in the context of the overall group. Details at www.british (...)
  • 175 Bombardieri, Panero forthcoming, no. 77.
  • 176 Burn, Higgins 2001, no. 2954.
  • 177 Masson 1966, pp. 22ff.
  • 178 Matthäus 1985, nos. 325, 273.
  • 179 Murray, Smith, Walters 1900. BM Trustees Minutes 3 December 1903.

38Despite these sales and disbursals, Lang retained numerous Cypriot items in his personal collection long after he left the island. Many were donated to the British Museum between 1902 and 1913 and are briefly described here to draw attention to the overall shape of the collection.174 One group, now spilt between a number of departments, GR/ME 1903,1215.1–33, consisted of: (1) a Parthian relief; (2‑3) two Cypriot Syllabic inscriptions, respectively, from Dhrymou (ICS no. 86 = IG XV 1, 161) and Idalion (ICS no. 221); (4) the fragmentary Doric votive capital with Greek alphabetic inscription in honour of Arsinoe from Idalion (IG XV 2, 378); (5) a marble relief depicting boxers of Roman date; (6) a CA terracotta group of ring dancers175; (7) a Hellenistic terracotta plaque showing a mounted youth176; (8‑16) various Iron Age to Roman stone vessels, including four bearing Cypriot Syllabic inscriptions177; (17) a fragmentary LBA ivory mirror handle from the tomb between Ayios Sozomenos and Laksha discussed above p. 495; (18‑19) two CG‑CA bronze bowls178; (20‑24) typical Hellenistic-Roman bronze disc mirrors; (25) a LBA(?) bronze figurine in shape of bull (= 1927,3-18.55); (26‑40) numerous BA bronze spearheads and daggers, several deliberately “killed”; (41) a BA bronze awl; (42) a small BA bronze axe; (43) a fragmentary BA bronze tongs; (44‑47) four Hellenistic-Roman bronze paddle spatulae; (48) a CA bronze D‑shaped fibula (Giessen Type X); (49) a simple bronze ring; (50‑63) bronze and silver coins, IA to Ptolemaic (no longer identifiable in the BM collection); (64) an iron key; (65) the handle of a Black-on-Red ware vessel; (66) a bronze cylindrical bar or handle. In gratitude for this donation, Lang was sent a copy of the recently published Excavations in Cyprus.179

  • 180 Price 1969. Gaps in the registration records have obscured this association with Lang and the natur (...)
  • 181 GROL 1913, fol. 361, 22 February 1913, Lang to Arthur Hamilton Smith.

39A much larger number of items was donated in 1912‑13 to several departments: Egyptian and Middle Eastern scarabs and seals and other objects now divided across several departments (ME 1912,10-15.1-3; ES/ME/BEP 1913,2-10.1-21); Coins and Medals received the bulk of the second Dhali hoard, other Cypriot coins (some perhaps from the first Dhali hoard), and a number of non-Cypriot issues presumably from Lang’s broader collection (CM 1912,10-13.1-46 and 1913,2-12.1-446);180 and finally a group of items was given to Greek and Roman Antiquities (GR 1913,2-12.1–34) (fig. 5). This consists of 15 items of LBA gold jewellery from the tomb between Ayios Sozomenos and Laksha (nos. 1‑15), earrings of Hellenistic to Roman date (nos. 16‑28), Roman gems and cameos (nos. 29‑33), and a lead weight with Cypriot Syllabic signs of unknown provenance mentioned above (no. 34). The specific provenance of some of these items donated between 1902 and 1913 is known, though others are merely said to be from Cyprus (and so perhaps were acquired on the antiquities market), while others may have been collected during Lang’s long period of residence in Egypt, Romania and Turkey, if not from contacts and dealers closer to home. Taking these groups together however, what is striking is that Lang retained not just coins (arguably his main personal collection interest), inscriptions (likewise, a subject that informed his broader interest in the history and ethnic affiliations of ancient Cyprus), and numerous small portable items such as gems, but he also held on to a range of material of more exclusively archaeological interest, such as the prehistoric metalwork; none of these latter items can be described as high quality collection material and they presumably derived from his excavations. Despite the nostalgia and occasional inaccuracy, his 1905 account indicates that he retained an abiding interest in broader archaeological matters down to the end of his life, just as he did for Cyprus itself. Indeed, in a letter written just a few weeks before his death, in relation to his recent donation to the British Museum, he modestly stated “It was to me a great pleasure to [? admit] any thing, however insignificant, to our great National Collection, to which I owe such a great debt of gratitude”.181

Figure 5 — BM GR archives, Register of Antiquities, Vol. 6, June 1912-Dec. 1923, p. 18.

Figure 5 — BM GR archives, Register of Antiquities, Vol. 6, June 1912-Dec. 1923, p. 18.

Conclusion

  • 182 Pope 1975, p. 126.
  • 183 See Goring 1988, pp. 3‑4.
  • 184 See Bonato 2019, p. 354; Kiely forthcoming.
  • 185 Lang 1886a; 1886b.
  • 186 See Pearce 1992, chapter 4; Jasanoff 2005; Yallop 2011.

40Robert Hamilton Lang is regarded by most modern scholars as something of a pioneer, and the only major detractor has been Maurice Pope who described his career as a “compendium of archaeological vice”.182 Given Lang’s central role in the decipherment of the CS script, and its contextualisation within a relatively controlled excavation, Pope’s assessment lacks balance or any deeper understanding of 19th‑century archaeological practices. In any case, the truth no doubt lies in between,183 and the archival record explored in this paper is an important means of nuancing and balancing modern attitudes to Lang’s antiquarian activities, and those of his contemporaries, with 19th‑century realities. It is certainly important to distinguish between their activities, attitudes and personalities: Lang was a shrewd businessman but had no financial or professional need to engage in antiquity dealing at the same level as Cesnola, for whom this was something of a full‑time activity and a vehicle for personal advancement (and which would lead to a significant career as a museum director, something to which Lang never aspired).184 Lang’s evolving engagement with antiquities during his 11‑year residence in Cyprus, which continued to echo throughout his life in various ways (such as the archaeological displays at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886185 and in his late donations to the British Museum and Kelvingrove Museum), represents a complex and indeed inextricable weave of personal, commercial and academic motivations. He was a composite figure – collector, excavator, dealer and amateur scholar – who does not easily fit into modern typologies.186 These often to fail to take into account the broader arc of individuals’ lives, experiences and opportunities, in particular of “amateurs”, but also the element of serendipity, and broader socio-economic and political conditions, that spurred individuals in search of antiquities and other collectibles. The fact that neither Lang nor his peers, such as Pierides or the Colonna-Ceccaldi brothers, or even the notorious Luigi Palma di Cesnola (whom Lang nonetheless admired for his initiative and skill), admit of easy definition is a salutary reminder to view these individuals in the context of their time – and especially of 19th‑century attitudes towards both antiquarians and commercially-motivated excavation – however much we keep sight of modern critical approaches to their activities and to the emerging discipline of Cypriot archaeology which, faute de mieux, they helped to establish.

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Bibliographie

Abbreviations

BM: British Museum.

CIS I: Corpus inscriptionum semiticarum I. Paris, 1881.

BEP: BM Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory

CM: BM Department of Coins and Medals

ES: BM Department of Egypt and Sudan

GR: BM Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, later Department of Greece and Rome.

GROL: BM GR archives, Original Letters (incoming).

ICS: O. Masson, Les inscriptions chypriotes syllabiques. Recueil critique et commenté, 2nd ed., Études chypriotes 1. Paris, 1983 (1st ed. 1961).

IG XV 1,1: A. Karnava, M. Perna, adiuvante M. Egetmeyer, Inscriptiones Graecae XV. Inscriptiones Cypri Insulae. Pars I: Inscriptiones Cypri Syllabicae. Fasc. I: Inscriptiones Amathontis, Curii, Marii. Berlin, 2020.

IG XV 2,1: M. Kantirea, D. Summa, Inscriptiones Graecae XV. Inscriptiones Cypri Insulae. Pars II: Inscriptiones Cypri Alphabeticae. Fasc. I: Inscriptiones Cypri Orientalis: Citium, Pýla, Golgi, Tremithus, Idalium, Tamassus, Kafizin, Ledra. Berlin, 2020.

LB: BM GR archives, Letter-book (outgoing letters).

ME: BM Department of the Middle East, previously part of Oriental Antiquities.

MEC: BM Department of the Middle East Archives, Correspondence (incoming/outgoing letters).

ODNB: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. https://www.oxforddnb.com/.

OP: BM Central Archives, Original Papers.

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Notes

1 Lang, Poole 1878. Note also the rarely acknowledged footnotes by William Vaux, which clarified or corrected some of Lang’s statements.

2 Lang 1871a; Lang 1871b.

3 Lang 1872.

4 Smith 1872; on the history of decipherment, see ICS, pp. 48‑51; Pope 1975, pp. 123‑135.

5 Lang 1874; reproduced in Merrillees 2001, pp. 236‑238 with discussion passim.

6 Lang 1878. This was translated into French and published in Paris the following year (Lang 1879). Cesnola 1877, which was followed by multiple editions and translations, was however far more popular and influential. 

7 Lang was praised from an early stage by individuals such as Poole (in Lang, Poole 1878, p. 25), Ohnefalsch-Richter (1893, p. 17) and Myres (1914, pp. xiii‑xiv).

8 ICS, p. 234‑235; Masson 1966; Masson 1968; Masson 1992; Caquot, Masson 1968. On Pyla, see also Caubet 1976.

9 See bibliography in CCEC 27 (1997), esp. pp. 11‑13; also papers in Tatton-Brown 2001.

10 Senff 1993. The reader should refer to Senff for a modern analysis of this material (though see Pryce 1931) and to the online database of the British Museum for individual details of all collection items (www.britishmuseum.org).

11 Hill 1904 passim; Robinson 1935; Price 1969, pp. 4‑8; Arena 2003.

12 Karageorghis 1993, p. 1 and passim; Karageorghis 1995 passim; listed and briefly discussed in Tatton-Brown 2002.

13 Merrillees 2001, p. 227; Merrillees 2014, pp. 32‑35.

14 Caubet 1976 (with references).

15 Bernhard-Walcher et al. 1999, pp. 40‑43.

16 Karageorghis, Peltenburg 1976; Goring 1988, p. 9; Kiely, Ulbrich 2012, p. 321.

17 Droop 1931; see Kiely, Ulbrich 2012, p. 321.

18 Edward Gilbertson (1813-1904), banker and collector. From 1860 he worked for the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople and later served on the board of the IOB in London and the Improved Hardwood Paving Company. In 1994 the British Museum was given 980 coins from his collection, including numerous items from the Larnaca hoard, registered as CM 1994,9-15 passim. (https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG10112; see Arena 2003).

19 Alan, Boyce 2001, A512, A524-A525’ A10‑11 are from Paphos (for details, see the online catalogue: https://rammuseum.org.uk). I am grateful to Jenny Durant and Thomas Cadbury for their help, including providing copies of unpublished documents.

20 Summarised in Tatton-Brown 2001b, pp. 169, 173 and passim.

21 Murray 2014, pp. 10, 238‑239; see Nicolaou 2013 for a recent analysis of many of these issues, where she argues for a less monolithic approach to the question of imperial/colonial archaeology in places like Cyprus.

22 Demetriou 1997, pp. 18‑20 see a direct link between poverty and “treasure hunting”.

23 Space does not allow a detailed narrative of his life and career but for contemporary accounts, see Bassett 1901; Anonymous 1909; Lang 1905; obituary, The Times 13 March 1913. I am grateful to John and Margaret Thelwall and Rosemary Richards for proving access to their descendant’s unpublished memoirs and other invaluable documents. See also details in ICS, pp. 20ff; Masson 1966, pp. 11ff; Masson 1968, pp. 386ff; Masson 1992; Merrillees 2001; Merrillees 2014; Kiely 2010, pp. 240‑241; Kiely, Ulbrich 2012, pp. 317ff and fig. 3 (showing Lang and his wife around 1876).

24 Autheman 2002; Eldem 1999.

25 Apostolides, Baruh 2015; Lang 1878, chapter IX.

26 Anonymous 1909, p. 519.

27 Markides 2019.

28 See Lang 1890.

29 See Darwin 2012.

30 Anonymous 1909, p. 520.

31 Lang’s work as a financier have also been discussed in modern times, especially by Christopher Clay (2000) and Diana Markides (2019), within its broader socio-economic and political context.

32 Ohnefalsch-Richter 1893 passim; Given 2001.

33 Smith 2012; Kiely, Ulbrich 2012, p. 342; Kiely 2019 passim; papers in Schmid, Horacek 2018 (with full references).

34 Kiely 2019a passim.

35 BM OP, 11 Sep. 1861, Lang to Panizzi; the inscription is Le Bas, Waddington 1870, p. 640 no. 2773.

36 LB 1861-1879, pp. 12‑13, no. 4, 9 Dec 1861; Newton to Lang; GROL 1861-1868, fol. 408, 22 Mar. 1862, Lang to Newton.

37 See Kiely, Merrillees in this volume, p. ##.

38 Gunning 2009, chapter 4, esp. pp. 186‑188.

39 Kiely 2010, pp. 238‑241.

40 Sandwith 1877; on Sandwith, see Williams 1995; Merrillees 2001; Reeve 2016; Boys Smith 2020.

41 Tatton-Brown 1998; Merrillees 2017, pp. 62‑70; Schmid 2019, pp. 370‑374. The photograph, previously said to be missing, is in fact preserved in the National Archives in Kew, London in the Larnaca consular despatches for 1873 (FO 79/2293, p. 256; see also FO 321/1 for other letters relating to this matter, some discussed by Tatton-Brown and Merrillees).

42 Bonato 2001; Bonato 2010; Hermary 2009, pp. 104‑107 (with references).

43 GROL 1861-1868, fols 783‑784 (1864-1865), White to Newton; LB 1861‑79, p. 63, no. 6, 17 Mar. 1865, Newton to White. These are omitted from Tatton-Brown’s (2001a) otherwise very comprehensive survey of archival documents related to Cyprus in this period.

44 See Bonato 2000, p. 101. Pierides noted how White was willing to exchange limestone statues from Idalion for Seleucid coins, “of which he is a zealous collector”, and had written to Waddington about them. He also wrote to William Vaux at the British Museum about a gold coin of Evagoras of Salamis (Bonato 2000, p. 104) and with Vogüé about exchanges (p. 106). He sold the statues to a London dealer, and obtained £100 for the coin from the British Museum (Bonato 2000, p. 107; see Hill 1904, p. 56, no. 51).

45 Lang 1878, p. 331; Lang 1905, p. 622. General Charles Richard Fox (1896-1873) was a soldier and politician, as well as a leading numismatist: see http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/fox-charles-1796-1873; Manville 2009, pp. 100‑101.

46 British Library, Add. 59503, fol. 117, letter of 10 Dec. 1864, Colnaghi to his parents, where Colnaghi described Lang’s kindness as “above all praise”.

47 British Library, Add. 59503, fol. 151, letter of 15 April 1865, Colnaghi to his parents.

48 GROL 1861-1868, A‑K, fol. 181, 15 April 1865, Colnaghi to Newton.

49 Lang 1905, p. 635.

50 Boys Smith 2020.

51 GROL 1861‑68, L‑Z, fol. 410, 8 Jan. 1868, Lang to Newton. see Lang 1878, p. i for his dates of service. Colonna-Ceccaldi’s letter is GROL 1861-1868, A‑K, fol. 150, 7 Jan. 1868 (see Masson 1990, pp. 137‑138; Bonato 2019, pp. 345‑346).

52 Lang 1878, p. 332.

53 Bonato 2019, esp. pp. 332‑333. The present author recognised the original photographs in the GR photographic archive after the appearance of Bonato’s article. They are reproduced here as fig. 2a‑c to complete the dossier (Miscellaneous Photographs 2, p. 58).

54 Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882, p. 25.

55 Cesnola 1877, chapter II (though vague and unreliable); Lang 1878, pp. 331‑333 (inverting Cesnola’s chronology); Lang 1905, p. 623; Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882 passim (see also Bonato 2019, pp. 330‑337).

56 Cesnola 1877, p. 82‑83; Bonato 2019, p. 330.

57 Bonato 2019, pp. 330‑331, pp. 333‑335.

58 Lang 1878, p. 331

59 See Kiely, Merrillees supra pp. 469ff.

60 OP, various reports submitted to the Trustees’ meetings of 11 October 1869, 13 November 1869, and 12 February 1869.

61 Cesnola’s claims have been taken at face value by more recent scholars working in the area. Wright (in Stager, Walker, Wright 1974, p. xxvii) states that “the first excavator of Idalion who can be considered at least an antiquarian if not a scholar was General Louis Palma di Cesnola”, thereby ignoring the sources of material acquired by Henry Christy (see Ulbrich 2011), Horace White, and Demetrios Pierides (see Kiely, Merrillees supra) in the 1850s and 1860s and in particular the French expedition of 1862 and 1865, while also repeating the ludicrous fiction that Cesnola excavated 15.000 tombs in the area.

62 This was mentioned by Deutsch in his report to the Trustees prepared during his visit which began on 27 April 1869 (see below), as well as in letters between Newton to Sandwith (LB 1861-1879, p. 174 no. 24, 1 June 1869; GROL 1869-72, fol. 572, 25 June 1869). Newton suggested the paper might be published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, but it was read to the Society of Antiquaries on 7 May 1871, after Sandwith had left the island, then revised on one or more occasions in the following years before being published in Archaeologia (see Merrillees 2001, p. 225, though note that volume 45/1 was in fact published in 1877 rather than 1880, the year that volume 45/2; Reeve 2016).

63 GR 1872,7-26.5-12 (glass from the Slade Collection).

64 Note the transcription of Lang’s paper in Merrillees 2001, p. 237 gives the distance as 12 miles, presumably a typographical error for 1½ miles in the original text.

65 See survey in Overbeck, Swiny 1972; Catling 1982 (sites listed in 1963 under Ayios Sozomenos); Fortin 1995; Stager, Walker, Wright 1974; Stager, Walker 1989. The best documented cemetery in this vicinity is Ayios Sozomenos-Nikolidhes (Cyprus Survey 415) (see Myres, Ohnefalsch-Richter 1899, p. 2; Gjerstad 1926, p. 6 (though omitting any mention of Lang’s Laksha Nicoli); Catling 1963, EC no. 19, MC no. 24, LC no. 41 (likewise, no mention of 19th-century work in this area); Overbeck, Swiny 1972, who dated the site from advanced MC to LC, observed 110 visible tombs, nearly all previously emptied. Finally, Dr Despina Pilides has kindly informed me of another cemetery, possibly MC in date, located to the north of the Kafkallia fortified settlement and with the same toponym though now largely destroyed (CS 417).

66 I am grateful to Robert Merrillees for this suggestion and further help with the placenames.

67 Catling 1963, p. 155, MC no. 31, p. 162, LC no. 44 (CS 425). According to Dr Despina Pilides, this site was relocated during recent surveys but the archaeological visibility is very low. 

68 Sandwith 1877, pp. 3ff: Class 1 (EC‑MC): “one [cemetery] a few miles from Dali…, and the other two not far from Larnaka…”; Class II cemeteries (LBA) were more common, one “in the neighbourhood of Dali, two more in the central plain…and two a few miles from Larnaka”; Class III (IA to Hellenistic) was more widespread, but few sites are named apart from Dhali, Makrasyka and Salamis (pp. 10‑11) or else were “found in the neighbourhood of three several [sic] temples, from which inscriptions in the Cyprian characters have been excavated”; while no sites represented by class IV (Hell.-Roman) were specifically named (though Dhali is implied by reference to his criticism of Cesnola’s interpretations on pp. 15‑16 [cf. Cesnola 1877, p. 83 note *]; see Merrillees 2001, p. 227).

69 Emmanuel Deutsch (1829-1873), German-born Jewish scholar of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and of Oriental languages (and Near Eastern subjects more generally). He served as an assistant in the British Library for 17 years starting in 1855 for 17 years, during which time he produced many articles on the Talmud which had a wide audience (see Brier 2004; Alexander 2017). His commission to inspect Lang’s collection was of great personal importance, allowing him to visit the Holy Land for the first time.

70 OP, Report, 8 Oct. 1869. This was part of a much longer illustrated account of Deutsch’s visit to the Near East which is of considerable interest.

71 Kiely forthcoming.

72 GROL 1869-72, L‑Z, fol. 571, 17 Mar. 1869; see Merrillees 2001, p. 227. https://www.inha.fr/fr/ressources/publications/publications-numeriques/dictionnaire-critique-des-historiens-de-l-art/piot-eugene.html.

73 Bonato 2019, p. 354.

74 Karageorghis, Peltenburg 1976.

75 I am grateful to Brian Weightman for copies of the original registers.

76 GROL 1861-68, L‑Z, fol. 409, undated (but belongs in summer 1868).

77 GR 1868,8-30.1; Walters 1903, no. A231; Karageorghis 1993, pp. 68‑69 no. 235.

78 Aimé Péretié (1808-1882), French diplomat and collector-dealer who supplied numerous collectors and museums with antiquities (see Cassimatis 2001).

79 This is Louvre MNB 316 (Hermary 1989, no. 617), a fine example of a “Zeus Ammon” figure.

80 This statement is the first recorded expression of Lang’s feelings that he preferred to support the national collection which becomes apparent in his patience during the protracted negotiations with the British Museum over his collection.

81 Vogüé 1868, pp. 499‑502. This is the silver spatula incised with a Cypriot Syllabic inscription (GR 1872,8-16.99; ICS no. 219). Lang bought it from a villager, though gives two different dates, either in 1864 (Lang 1905, p. 630) or 1868 (Lang 1878, p. 330). The latter makes more sense on the grounds that it was in this year that Lang began to take particular interest in the Dhali area. Also, de Vogüé inserted the item into his paper on Cypriot inscriptions at the very last minute, suggesting that it was a recent find that he or Lang wished to publicise. The precise findspot is unknown, though Masson suggested it was found in the same area as the famous bronze writing tablet, that is, in the western acropolis (ICS, p. 234; see also Bonato 2019, p. 337).

82 Williams 1996; Kiely 2010.

83 Boys Smith 2020.

84 GROL 1869-72, L‑Z, fol. 358, 27 April 1869, Lang to Newton.

85 On 19th-century approaches to shrines, see Ulbrich 2001.

86 There are too many references to list here, but see, e.g. Pryce 1931, p. 2; ICS, p. 31; Masson 1968, pp. 386‑388 (many later authors deriving their primary information from these sources); Senff 1993, p. 1.

87 Lang, Poole 1878, p. 2.

88 Lang 1905, p. 602.

89 Lang 1878, p. 333; Lang 1879, pp. 226‑227.

90 Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882, pp. 29‑30, p. 197.

91 GROL 1869-1872, fol. 358, 27 Ap. 1869, Lang to Newton.

92 See above notes 60, 62, 70.

93 Lang 1905, p. 639.

94 Lang 1878, p. 335; Lang 1905, p. 635; see Masson 1966, pp. 11‑12; also IG XV 2,1, p. 88.

95 Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882, p. 198.

96 Information kindly provided by Dr Stephan Schmid (see also Schmid 2019).

97 Lang, Poole 1878, pp. 16‑17, pl. IV, top row, middle and pl. V, top row.

98 According to an unpublished paper by A.M. Pagan, a relative of the Lang’s, entitled “Diary of a Victorian lass” in the Lang archive held by his descendants (see also Boys Smith 2020).

99 Lang 1878, p. 333.

100 GROL 1861-1868, fol. 411, 22 Dec. 1868, Newton to Lang. See also Kiely, Merrillees supra for similar statements from Pierides.

101 LB 1861-1879, p. 176 no. 26, 2 June 1869, Pierides to Lang.

102 Cypriot artefacts were exhibited in this gallery, originally created to display Assyrian remains (see Caubet 2001). By this date, this gallery would presumably have included the finds from the expeditions of 1862 and 1865 along with other acquisitions made in the preceding decade or so (Hermary 1989; Caubet 1993; Caubet 2012).

103 On firmans, see also below.

104 Cyprus Museum Inscription 125. See Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882 (originally published 1874), pp. 196‑198 no. 1; Masson 1968, pp. 397‑400 (d); Senff 1993, p. 88 no. 9; IG XV 2, 377; also note 127.

105 GROL 1869-1872, L‑Z, fol. 360, 15 Sep. 1869, Lang to Newton.

106 OP, attached to report of 11 November, letter of 8 Oct. NB: the postscript of 12 Oct is filed as GROL 1869-1872, fol. fol. 360, following the letter of 15 Sept 1869; see also Masson 1990, p. 35; Merrillees 2014, pp. 33‑34.

107 Lang 1905, p. 636. See Cesnola 1877; McFadden 1971, esp. pp. 95‑88.

108 GROL 1869-1872, L‑Z, fol. 362, 27 Oct. 1869, Lang to Newton.

109 Donkow 2004.

110 GROL 1869-1872, L‑Z, fol. 360, 15 Sep. 1869, Lang to Newton.

111 Lang 1878, p. 339.

112 Wright 2001, p. 261.

113 Lang, Poole 1878, pp. 10‑11. This of course happened in 1874 with the introduction of partage into the arrangements government excavation permits.

114 Lang 1905, p. 638.

115 MEC 1868-1881, no. 3570, 25 May 1872, Lang to Birch.

116 GR 1917,7-1.143; Pryce 1931, C12.

117 Description too vague to identify. See Tatton-Brown 2002, pp. 250‑251 for a list of the largely unpublished terracottas from the site, though some are included in several of Karageorghis’ volumes of coroplastic art (Karageorghis 1993, p. 129; Karageorghis 1995, p. 166, though with no discussion of the findspot).

118 Actually male. GR 1873,3-20.347; see Reyes 1992, p. 252 no. 38. See list in Tatton-Brown 2002, p. 251.

119 Faience amulets and glass beads of Phoenician type in the form of ‘demon’ heads (e.g. GR 1873,3-20.271–275); see Tatton-Brown 1981 passim; also Tatton-Brown 2002, p. 251. Note also the group of Egyptianising faience amulets (GR 1873,3-20,278-291).

120 I am grateful to Professor José-Ángel Zamora López for confirming this information.

121 GR archives, S. R. Poole, Inventory of Mr Lang’s collection, no. 368.

122 Lang 1905, pp. 635‑636; see Bernard-Walcher et al. 1999, pp. 40‑43.

123 GROL 1869-1872, vol. 2 (L–Z), fols 367‑368, 10 May 1872, Fox to Lang.

124 GROL 1869-1872, L‑Z, fol. 362, 27 Oct 1869, Lang to Newton.

125 MEC 1868-1881, fol. 3577, 18 Dec. 1872, Lang to Birch.

126 McFadden 1971, chapter 13.

127 See above note 104.

128 MEC 1868‑81, no. 3577, 18 Dec. 1872, Lang to Birch.

129 Masson 1966, pp. 22‑30 (with previous references). However, GR 1903,12-18.8 was not known before Masson’s 1966 publication.

130 For efficiency of citation, unless otherwise stated, the reports referred to in this section are all from Original Papers series of the British Museum Central Archives, organised by date, while the inscriptions are cited according to CIS, ICS or IG XV. See also Cannavò, Schmid supra on Lang’s Phoenician inscriptions.

131 Cesnola 1877, pp. 105ff; Lang 1905, p. 636.

132 Lang 1905, p. 630; on Friederichs, see Merrillees 2001, pp. 229‑230; Merrillees 2014, pp. 32‑35.

133 Cook 1997, pp. 15‑16; Kiely 2010, pp. 236‑237.

134 Newton constantly complained about having no money to spend, also visible in his negotiations with Pierides (Kiely, Merrillees supra p. 475).

135 OP, Report 13 Nov. 1869, Letter of 8 October 1869, Lang to Newton.

136 Caygill 2004.

137 Poole 1878b. Note also his comments on the politics of the island in an article in the same periodical which also mentioned its antiquities (Poole 1878a).

138 Lang, Poole 1878, p. 13.

139 Colonna-Ceccaldi 1882, pl. 1. This version rather than the one published in Lang, Poole 1878 is more frequently reproduced, though Ohnefalsch-Richter included both in his 1891 thesis and the extended 1893 work.

140 See Lang 1905, p. 627.

141 GR 1917,7-1.125/1872,8-16.21; Pryce 1931, C164.

142 OP, Trustees meeting of 11 November 1869, letter of 8 October 1869, post-script of 12 October. In an earlier letter to Newton, he had noted “besides the inscriptions found at the ruins[,] I possess and can obtain several other monuments in the Cypriote Alphabet, all which would interestingly combine with the things lately found at Daly” (GROL 1869–1872, L‑Z, fol. 360, 15 Sep. 1869, Lang to Newton).

143 LB 1861-79, pp. 233‑234, no 33, 4 July 1870, Newton to Lang.

144 Lang 1905, p. 639.

145 Parry 2004. Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke (1811-1982) was a somewhat illiberal Liberal Party Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1868 and 1873 who, like William Gladstone, advocated low taxation government expenditure.

146 BM Central Archives Trustees Minutes, 30 April 1870.

147 Lang 1905, p. 629.

148 Lang 1905, p. 630.

149 MEC 1868-81, fol. 916, Birch to Cesnola. Other letters suggest that Birch had advised Cesnola to send his collection to London where it could obtain as good a price as in New York (see also MacFadden 1971, p. 130).

150 See Lang 1905, p. 639.

151 Registered as, respectively, CM 1870,11-2.1-35 and CM 1871,7-1.1-56.

152 CM 1871,11-7.1-44 and CM 1872,7-13.1-57.

153 See Reyes 1992 on the Cypro-Archaic examples; the list in Tatton-Brown 2002 is incomplete.

154 ICS, p. 148.

155 Lang 1905, p. 639 says the 2 May but this is probably the date of the letter from the Trustees who made their decision only on 30th April 1870 and it would have taken at least two weeks for a letter to reach Cyprus.

156 GR 1872,8-16.91.

157 Listed in Tatton-Brown 2002; Karageorghis 1993 passim; Karageorghis 1995 passim.

158 See above note 118.

159 GR 1873,3-10.204; IG XV 2, 402. Dr Alan Johnston (forthcoming) kindly provided the author with a copy.

160 Caquot, Masson 1968, pp. 303‑306.

161 MEC 1868-1881, fol. 3569, 27 Ap. 1872, Lang to Birch (= GR 1913,2-12.34).

162 Listed in Tatton-Brown 2002 who, however, attributes them to the sanctuary.

163 Sandwith 1877, pl. XIII; Lang and Poole 1878, p. 36 = GR 1873,3-20.208; Walters 1912, C755.

164 Giessen 2001, p. 33‑34, 42.

165 Reyes 1992 gives an incomplete survey of the figurines; GR 1873,3-20.325 is a small figurine depicting Envy, while the fragments .331 and .335 are likely of CC or Hellenistic date. Although requiring more detailed study, these include BA, IA and Roman tools, weapons, vessels and implements.

166 GR 1872,8-16 nos 8, 49, 52; GR 1873,3-20 nos 8 and 49. NB: the findspots are not mentioned in the original registers but are recorded in Pryce 1931 whose accuracy is not always certain. For example, one large female head with a sphinx crown attributed to Lang (C312; 1917,7-1.147) is actually from a group of items from Dhali supplied by Pierides (GR 1867,10-10.26), while the provenance of numerous images of male subjects attributed to Achna is also unlikely (Kiely 2018, pp. 399, 416).

167 Several items were sold at auction in London in 1871 (Sotheby’s 1‑2 May 1871, lots 296‑297 and 300, the last of which was purchased by Augustus Franks and donated to the British Museum [= GR 1871,5-6.1; Pryce 1931, C366]).

168 Caubet 1976.

169 Bernhard-Walcher et al. 1999, no. 76; see Lang 1905, p. 638.

170 Lang 1905, p. 636.

171 See Senff 1993, p. 79.

172 See Caubet 1976, pl. XXVII.

173 ICS, p. 302, no. 304 (with references). See also Cannavò, Schmid supra p. 182 n. 81.

174 Some have been published before but not in the context of the overall group. Details at www.britishmuseum.org.

175 Bombardieri, Panero forthcoming, no. 77.

176 Burn, Higgins 2001, no. 2954.

177 Masson 1966, pp. 22ff.

178 Matthäus 1985, nos. 325, 273.

179 Murray, Smith, Walters 1900. BM Trustees Minutes 3 December 1903.

180 Price 1969. Gaps in the registration records have obscured this association with Lang and the nature of the hoard itself but there is little reason to doubt that all of the coins in this registration group, especially the small fractions, are from the second hoard.

181 GROL 1913, fol. 361, 22 February 1913, Lang to Arthur Hamilton Smith.

182 Pope 1975, p. 126.

183 See Goring 1988, pp. 3‑4.

184 See Bonato 2019, p. 354; Kiely forthcoming.

185 Lang 1886a; 1886b.

186 See Pearce 1992, chapter 4; Jasanoff 2005; Yallop 2011.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1 — Letter from Robert Lang to Principal Librarian of the British Museum (11 Nov. 1861) describing a Greek Alphabetic inscription from Lapithos.
Crédits BM Original Papers, no. 11,411, 7 Dec. 1861; reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cchyp/docannexe/image/536/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 357k
Titre Figure 2a‑c — Photographs of his collection sent by Tiburce Colonna-Ceccaldi to Charles Newton via Lang in 1868.
Crédits BM GR archives, Miscellaneous Photographs 2, p. 58; reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cchyp/docannexe/image/536/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 475k
Titre Figure 3 — Photograph of terracottas from Lang’s collection sent to Newton.
Crédits BM GR archives, Miscellaneous Photographs 2, p. 51; reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. Top (left to right): GR 1872,8-16.42 (Karageorghis 1993, no. 224); 1873,3-20.92; 1873,3-20.87 (Karageorghis 1993, no. 174); 1872,8-16.41; 1872,8-16.58. Bottom: 1873,3-20.104; not identified; 1873,3-20.148.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cchyp/docannexe/image/536/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 485k
Titre Figure 4 — Sketch plan of the Idalion shrine from Stuart Poole’s report on Lang’s collection.
Crédits BM GR archives, R. S. Poole, Inventory of Mr Lang’s Collection; reproduced courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cchyp/docannexe/image/536/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 577k
Titre Figure 5 — BM GR archives, Register of Antiquities, Vol. 6, June 1912-Dec. 1923, p. 18.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/cchyp/docannexe/image/536/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 605k
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