Glossary Collecting and the antiquities trade
Firman
An Ottoman imperial decree; in nineteenth-century Cyprus, the personal permit that let a foreigner excavate and sometimes export the finds.
Before the Ottoman antiquities regulations of 1869 and 1874, permission to dig in Cyprus was granted by an individual firman. A well-drafted firman could exempt the finds from customs duty, which in effect authorised their export, so the terms of each document mattered more than any general law.
Luigi Palma di Cesnola dug under firmans in the 1860s and 1870s. Told in 1871 that his firman obliged him to send half his finds to Constantinople, he bought the land at Athienou where his diggers were working, so that as landowner he could keep them. The half-share rule was a term of his personal firman; the 1869 regulation itself imposed only a ban on export.
Full entry: The Legal Export of Cypriot Antiquities
Related terms
- Partage
The division of excavated finds between the host country and the excavators, the system by which many Cypriot antiquities lawfully went abroad.
- Export licence
An official permit allowing an antiquity to leave its country of origin; in Cyprus, issued by the Department of Antiquities from 1935.
- Antiquities Law (Cyprus)
The Cypriot statute governing excavation, ownership, dealing and export of antiquities, first enacted in 1905 and recast in 1935.