Cyprus in the Penn Museum

The Eastern Mediterranean Gallery that opened in November 2022 significantly augments the number of Cypriot objects on permanent display in the Penn Museum. On exhibit in the gallery are 78 objects found on the island of Cyprus. A further four objects in the gallery were made on Cyprus but found at other sites in the Eastern Mediterranean—a copper ingot fragment found at Gournia in Crete and Cypriot ceramics found at Beth Shean and Beth Shemesh in Israel as well as the Baq’ah Valley in Jordan. By contrast, the Canaan and Ancient Israel gallery (1998–2021) exhibited only seven Cypriot objects, none of which came from the Museum’s scientific excavations on the island.

The Eastern Mediterranean Gallery represents a strong collaboration within the Museum, bringing the ancient world together across modern as well as ancient boundaries. Most objects in the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery, and in the previous Canaan and Ancient Israel Gallery, come from the Museum’s Near East Section. The collections of Cypriot objects, however, are in the Mediterranean Section. At the time of the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery’s opening in November 2022, 34 additional objects found on Cyprus or of Cypriot manufacture were also on view in the museum’s Greece, Rome, and Classical World galleries. Past exhibitions have also put the spotlight on the Museum’s Cypriot collections, most recently an exhibition curated by students supervised by Mediterranean Section Associate Curator Ann Brownlee, Kourion at the Crossroads (2016–2017). The Museum also hosts the online resource “Digital Kourion,” a portal into its collections of objects and archives from Kourion.

Seventy Cypriot objects in the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery come from the Penn Museum’s excavations at Kourion (1934–1954) sponsored by George H. McFadden, III. Over half of that number come from McFadden’s excavations at the Sanctuary of Apollo at Kourion (see Smith, page 44). Twenty more pottery, bronze, and ivory vessels, as well as seals, textile working tools, and a bead come from John Franklin Daniel’s excavations at a Late Bronze Age settlement of Kourion, Episkopi-Bamboula, and its tombs. Additional ceramic and bronze vessels, a lamp, and gold leaves from funerary wreaths come from other Kourion cemeteries, Episkopi-Kaloriziki and Episkopi-Agios Ermogenis, both near the base of the city’s acropolis. One lamp was found in the theater atop the Kourion acropolis, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea from the south coast of Cyprus.

The largest part of the Museum’s Cyprus collections come from Penn’s first excavations on the island. The Penn Museum commissioned Bert Hodge Hill to locate a suitable site for excavation and acquire a permit for excavation. He began excavations at Lapithos on the north coast of the island in 1931. This project was the first American scientific excavation on Cyprus. It took place at the tail end of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition (1927–1931) that set the standard for scientific excavations on the island. On display in the Eastern Mediterranean Gallery from Lapithos are a bronze weapon from the Early to Middle Bronze Age cemetery in the locality of Vrysi tou Barba and five ceramic vessels from two Iron Age burial grounds, the “Lower” and “Upper” Geometric cemeteries. Financial difficulties suspended the project in 1932. Hill acquired a new permit for excavations after McFadden announced his support for a project at Kourion.

Gifts, purchases, and exchanges also added to the Penn Museum’s Cyprus collections. Of note among the earliest acquisitions are objects purchased from Max Ohnefalsch-Richter. Ohnefalsch-Richter first arrived on Cyprus in 1878 as a journalist at a time when the island remained part of the Ottoman Empire, but had been ceded to Britain for administration. He quickly changed his focus to archaeology, becoming a prominent excavator-for-hire and seeking buyers for the collections he amassed. In 1893, curator Sara Yorke Stevenson agreed to purchase a selection of these objects for the Penn Museum, most of which come from an Early to Middle Bronze Age cemetery at Agia Paraskevi. The Eastern Mediterranean Gallery features a terracotta shrine model Ohnefalsch-Richter reportedly found at Amathus (see Object Highlights: Eric Hubbard in Expedition 64.2, page 29) and a Roman funerary bust he wrote was unearthed at Idalion.

The history of the Cypriot collection at Penn has even deeper roots going back to the earliest years of the Museum. In 1890, one of the founders of the Museum, Francis Campbell Macauley, gifted Cypriot pottery and other antiquities to the Museum. In a list of objects for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, curator Stevenson labeled selections of pottery and terracotta figurines from Macauley’s gift as “Cesnola collection.” It is possible that all of Macauley’s Cypriot collection came from Luigi Palma di Cesnola’s collection that he found or acquired during his years as American Consul on Cyprus (1865–1876). For example, one of Macauley’s objects is a limestone sculpture fragment of a hand holding a bird (MS292) that compares with similar pieces from Cesnola’s explorations of a sanctuary at Golgoi. Cesnola sold much of his collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art and was later appointed as that museum’s first director (1879–1904). Many objects from his collection were later deaccessioned and sold.

The Penn Museum later acquired ancient Cypriot pottery directly from The Met, such as a bichrome barrel-shaped jug decorated with a bird and flowers on view in the Penn Museum’s Classical World gallery (MS5711). The last vessel acquired from The Met, in 1955, is part of a large storage vessel (pithos) from the Sanctuary of Apollo at Kourion that joined with a fragment found in the Penn excavations (see Smith, page 44). Second in number only to The Met, in North America today the Penn Museum’s Cypriot collections are unique in being mostly from scientific excavations.