Editors’ Page: Thousands of Cypriot Figurines

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Some pretty rarefied books come across my desk. One that recently caught my eye is Volume 5 (B) of The Coroplastic Art of Ancient Cyprus.¹ It is a beautifully produced folio volume that is essentially a catalogue of small molded female Cypriot figurines from a period of a little more than 250 years, beginning in about 750 B.C.

The plates picture nearly a thousand of these figurines carefully classified—by site (some without provenance), by various characteristics (figures with a triangular pubis, a large collar or little eyes) or by larger rubrics (figures with arms at the side, hands cupping the breasts or hands carrying an offering, or figures playing a tambourine or a lyre, or holding a child).

What struck me is the number of these little figurines. About a thousand, just in one period (750–475 B.C.), in one basic type (made from a mold) and one sex (female), and from one small island (Cyprus). Imagine how many other figurines there are—from other periods, handmade and wheel-made, male and animals, and from the entire ancient Near East. We are talking about thousands and thousands. And that’s just one kind of object: little figurines.

Has anyone considered how these figurines—and, by extension, other ancient artifacts—are distributed around the world?

I often hear people remark when they see a particularly attractive object, “That’s a museum piece.” What they mean is that it is so rare and beautiful that it should be displayed in a museum. But people rarely stop to think how many thousands—hundreds of thousands—of ancient objects there are.

Mold-made female figurines from the Cypro-Archaic period in Cyprus are in museums all over the world—from Cyprus and the United States to Australia, Poland and Sweden. That is as it should be. After all, how many of these figurines can any one museum display? A dozen? Maybe 25? Even 25 is too many for most museums, considering all the other items asking for attention. As for those not exhibited, how can they be stored? At what cost? How can they all be conserved and made available to scholars? Just maintaining these figurines is an expensive affair.

This book and others in the same series, covering coroplastic art from Cyprus, will supply the research needs of most scholars in the future. They are unlikely to consult any significant proportion of the figurines themselves. Remember that Champollion never saw the Rosetta Stone; he managed to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics by looking at a squeeze.

Many antiquities-rich countries have laws that declare all antiquities, even those in the ground, the property of the state and that forbid the export of any antiquities. It seems to me that such laws go too far.

I can certainly understand that rare, unusual pieces should be left in the country of origin. I can understand that Cyprus would 058want the world’s finest collection of coroplastic art found in Cyprus to remain in Cyprus. But, still, in the case of many categories of antiquities, such as this one, there are plenty to go around. There should be a way for museums to easily obtain antiquities such as these figurines, to trade with other museums and to upgrade their collections.

Under a leading U.S. court decision (United States vs. McClain), any object imported into the United States in violation of the laws of the country of origin is regarded as stolen property and subject to forfeiture. This decision was harshly criticized by one of the great authorities on the subject, Paul Bator, a professor at Harvard Law School and an assistant solicitor general at the Department of Justice, who unfortunately died at a young age. It is time for other courts or the United States Supreme Court to review this decision. We need a more nuanced approach, one that distinguishes between the rare, unusual piece and the kind of object that is found in the thousands. As Bator stated, “An indiscriminate and frequent use of the McClain principle will inevitably encourage a regulatory regime that is overinclusive and unduly rigid.”² That is what we have now. Referring to antiquities that are “unnecessary to preserving the national patrimony” of archaeologically rich countries, Bator wrote, “[These objects] should be freely exportable, and, even, if they are not, import barriers should not be erected against them.”

We should urge archaeologically rich countries to change their laws to allow for easier distribution (and export) of their antiquities. If the current restrictive laws had been in force 150 or 200 years ago, the great museums of New York and London would not—could not—have been created.

The museums also need to formulate their own more nuanced positions. Instead, the discussion today is confined largely to inveighing against looters, vilifying collectors and averting eyes from anything that does not have a secure provenance. This is an abysmally failed approach—on that we should all agree. It is time to open up matters for discussion—by museums, by antiquities authorities, by archaeologists and by the public.

Some pretty rarefied books come across my desk. One that recently caught my eye is Volume 5 (B) of The Coroplastic Art of Ancient Cyprus.1 It is a beautifully produced folio volume that is essentially a catalogue of small molded female Cypriot figurines from a period of a little more than 250 years, beginning in about 750 B.C. The plates picture nearly a thousand of these figurines carefully classified—by site (some without provenance), by various characteristics (figures with a triangular pubis, a large collar or little eyes) or by larger rubrics (figures with arms at the side, hands cupping […]