Guide to the collection
Tomb groups and contexts
Material purchased from W.T Ready
Although small in number, this group of material is of extremely high quality and archaeological importance, comprising several impressive Mycenaean Pictorial Style kraters, faience bowls with painted decoration imported from Egypt, and an engraved cylinder seal imported from Babylonia dating to the 19th or 18th century BC. Their exact findspot is unknown, but they must have come from wealthy tombs excavated before the British Museum team arrived.
Tomb groups from F.B. Welch’s excavations
Fewer than one-third of the objects from the British Museum Klavdia excavations can be assigned tomb numbers, and the sequence of tombs itself is incomplete, even allowing for the fact that some groups were assigned to the Cyprus Museum.
Finds from other contexts
Material from Arpera
A number of vases were given to the Museum by C.D. Cobham around the same time as Crowfoot’s excavations at Hala Sultan Tekke. Their exact provenance is not stated in the Register, but in the letter from Crowfoot to Murray mentioned above the District Commissioner describes very extensive excavations in the Arpera area from which he appears to have acquired some objects. The vases, a large Red Polished jug and a Red Polished pouring vessel in the shape of a deer, date to the EC III or early MC period, and may therefore come from this area, but this must remain a tentative suggestion.
Material from the cemetery at the mouth of the Pouzis river
Only a handful of items from this apparently quite productive cemetery can be now identified in the British Museum collection. However, other items of LBA date in the Dept of Greece and Rome collection acquired around this time, whose provenance is unknown, may well have come from this area.
Registration numbers
1898,10-20.1–15: vases and jewellery purchased from William Talbot Ready in 1898
1899,12-99.27–135: material excavated for the British Museum by F.B.Welch in 1899 at Klavdia and the Pouzis valley cemetery
1925,11-1.1–2: Two Red Polished vessels, probably from one of the ancient cemeteries of Arpera chiftlik
1978.6-17.1: Mycenaean pottery jug possibly from Klavdia found unregistered in this year.