A catalogue raisonée of the natural history, ethnological specimens, and curiosities collected by Lady Brassey, during the voyages of the "Sunbeam", 1876-1883, exhibited at Sir Thomas Brassey's rooms, School of Fine Art, Claremont, Hastings / by Bryce Wright.

  • Wright, Bryce.
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A catalogue raisonée of the natural history, ethnological specimens, and curiosities collected by Lady Brassey, during the voyages of the "Sunbeam", 1876-1883, exhibited at Sir Thomas Brassey's rooms, School of Fine Art, Claremont, Hastings / by Bryce Wright. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    towns, and later on, about tbe time of or after the Trojan war, came the Greeks, wbo seem to have driven out tbe Tlienicians and to have divided the island into ten independent though probably confederate states. From time to time in succeeding centuries Cyprus fell for longer or shorter periods under the dominion of Syria, Egypt, and Persia ; and under the native Greek king Evagoras and his successors, who ruled thus over Salamis from 410 b.c. to 332 b.c. the island seems to have enjoyed comparative rest and considerable prosperity. At the end of that period it acknowledged the sway of Alexander the great, and after his death became the subject of dispute between Ptolemy Lagus and Antigonus, the former prevailing, and the island becoming about 295 b.c. an Egyptian dependency until it was declared a Roman province in GO b.c. On the division of the Roman empire it became part of the Byzantine province and was governed by dukes, the last of whom was Isaac Comnenus. In 1191 Richard Coeur de Lion made the island over to Guy de Lusignan, and the Lusignan dynasty lasted for nearly 350 years, when the government was ceded to the Venetian republic, under which it remained until conquered by the Turks in 1571. The story of its connection with the British empire is a matter of the most modern history. The custom of burying with the dead the ordinary things which men used during life is of very high antiquity ; reaching back to the earliest ages of the Greeks, who themselves may have borrowed the custom from Egypt. Thanks to it we find in tombs nearly all the details of the social life of ancient days—manuscripts, paintings, objects of worship, ex voto offer¬ ings, dresses, ornaments, money, jewels, musical instruments, furniture, vases of all kinds, toilet necessaries, mirrors, lamps, domestic utensils, toys, arms, horse trappings, even fruit and nuts and wine ; in fact, things of all descriptions in gold, silver, bronze, iron, glass, stuffs, ivory, wood, etc. From these we