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- Cyprus Exploration Fund
- Also known as
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Cyprus Exploration Fund
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primary name: Williamson, John William
- Details
- organisation; institution/organisation; British
- Biography
- Goring E. 1988, A mischievous pastime. Digging on Cyprus in the 19th century (Edinburgh).
Gill D. 2011, Sifting the soil of Greece. The early years of the British School at Athens (1886-1919). BICS Supplement 111 (London: Institute of Classical Studies).
Gill D. 2008, Cyprus Exploration Fund [with bibliography of major publications of discoveries], http://bsahistory.blogspot.com/2008/03/cyprus-exploration-fund.html
Kiely, T. 2015, 'Finds from Kouklia in the British Museum', Cahiers du Centre d’Études Chypriotes 45, 61-78 [https://www.persee.fr/doc/cchyp_0761-8271_2015_num_45_1_1622].
Kiely, T. 2019, 'From Salamis to Bloomsbury. Transporting the bull's head capital to the Briitsh Museum in 1891', in: Rogge, S., Ioannou, C. and Mavrojannis, T. (eds), Salamis of Cyprus: history and archaeology from the earliest times to Late Antiquity: conference in Nicosia, 21-23 May 2015 (Münster; New York: Waxmann), 51-73.
Kiely, T. in Karageorghis, V. and Kiely, T. (with Christophilopoulou, A., Ulbrich, A., Constantinou, G.) 2019, Salamis-Toumba. An Iron Age sanctuary in Cyprus rediscovered (Excavations of the Cyprus Exploration Fund, 1890) (Nicosia: Cyprus Institute).
- Bibliography
- British scholarly body established in 1887 to carry out scientific excavation on Cyprus under the control of subscribing academic institutions, such as the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies in London, the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and a number of leading British public schools. According to the terms of the Ottoman Antiquity Law (1874) in force in Cyprus at the time, a third of the finds were allocated to the Cyprus Museum, with the remaining two-thirds divided between the British Museum (the main recipient) and the university museums in Cambridge and Oxford, with smaller allocations being made to the schools.
The CEF explored at a variety of sites around Kouklia (Old Paphos), Amargetti, Polis-tis-Khrysokhou (ancient Marion), Limniti, and Salamis between 1888 and 1890. John Myres continued the work on a small scale at a number of sites around including Kalopsidha, Lapithos, and Larnaka in 1894.
The majority of the finds went to the British Museum as the national collection, but the subscribing museums and colleges also received a share of the artefacts recovered.
For details of the CEF and its operation, see Goring 1988, esp. 22-4, 27-9; Gill 2011, 157-64 for a longer (though in places inaccurate) account; also Gill 2008; Kiely 2019; Kiely in Kiely and Karageorghis 2019, 11-32.
