The Dates and Origins of Cypriote Sculpture

Abstract

Since the publication of my Handbook to the Cesnola Collection of Antiquities from Cyprus (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1914) there have been three revisions both of the chronology there suggested—which was essentially that outlined by Colonna-Ceccaldi Monuments antiques de Cypre, Paris, 1882—and of the estimate of the debt of Cypriote sculptors to Asiatic, Egyptian, and Hellenic models and influences. All three regard Hellenic influences as primary, and Oriental influences as relatively unimportant; and consequently all bring down the beginnings of sculpture in Cyprus within the archaic period of Greek sculpture, and the period of easy access to Cyprus from the Greek treaty port of Naucratis, during the Egyptian occupation of the island between 560 and 525 B.C.The same distractions which postponed the publication of the sanctuary site excavated at Levkoniko in 1913, and described at last on pp. 61–8 above, prevented me from replying earlier to these criticisms.