A few years ago an official of the Archaeological Institute of America publicly chastised Cyprus’s leading archaeologist, Vassos Karageorghis, for including photos of artifacts from private collections in a catalogue of ancient Cypriot figurines. Now Karageorghis (who is a member of this magazine’s Editorial Advisory Board) has gone further, by publishing a volume of Cypriot pottery and figurines that are all from a single private collection. Will the purists who advise us not even to look at unprovenanced artifacts (because their purchase on the antiquities market encourages looting) simply ignore this volume? Will a public spanking once again be Karageorghis’s reward?
The volume catalogues the collection of the Severis family, Greek Cypriots who fled from northern to southern Cyprus when the island was invaded by Turkey in 1974. Many of the pieces were in effect ransomed; if they had not been purchased by responsible Cypriots, they would probably have gone underground and left the island surreptitiously.
This beautifully produced full-color volume reflects the care that has gone into collecting and preserving the pieces. Of course, much is lost when we don’t know the provenance of artifacts; but their aesthetic quality continues to inhere in them. This is sometimes forgotten by those who reproach fellow scholars for publishing unprovenanced artifacts: There is indeed much to learn from these pieces.
Thanks to excavations that have established a chronology of forms, most of the pieces can be accurately dated. They range in date from the Chalcolithic period (about 4000 B.C.) to the Cypro-Classical II period (about 300 B.C.). Leafing through this catalogue is a wonderful way to begin to understand the beauty of line and form, the variety of geometric decoration and the art of the potter’s craft.
We shall never know what was in the minds of those who, thousands of years ago, created and used these figurines. But somehow we can understand their longing, not unlike ours, to understand life’s mysteries. We can only be grateful to Vassos Karageorghis for continuing these groundbreaking publications despite the vilification to which he has been subjected.
Ancient Cypriote Art in the Severis Collection
You have already read your free article for this month. Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.