Depressing influence of a barren aspect
must to a certain extent affect the nervous system; but a careful
examination of the entire surface of the island subsequently modified my
first impressions, with results which these pages will describe.
There was no object in prolonging my visit to Dali; the tombs of ancient
Idalium had already been ransacked by the consuls of various nations;
and had I felt disposed to disturb the repose of the dead, nominally in
the interests of science, but at the same time to turn an honest penny
by the sale of their remains, I should have been unable to follow the
example of the burrowing antiquarians who had preceded me; a prohibition
having been placed upon all such enterprises by the English government.
It is supposed that Idalium is one of the largest and richest treasuries
of the dead in Cyprus. For several centuries the tombs had been
excavated and pillaged in the hopes of discovering objects of value. The
first robbers were those who were simply influenced by the gold and
other precious ornaments which were accompaniments of the corpse; the
modern despoilers were resurrectionists who worked with the object of
supplying any museums that would purchase the funeral spoil.
It is a curious contradiction in our ideas of propriety, which are
measured apparently by uncertain intervals of time, that we regard as
felonious a man who disinters a body and steals a ring from the fingers
of the corpse a few days after burial in an English churchyard, but we
honour and admire an individual who upon a wholesale scale digs up old
cemeteries and scatters the bones of ancient kings and queens, princes,
priests, and warriors, and having collected the jewellery, arms, and
objects of vanity that were buried with them, neglects the once honoured
bones, but sells the gold and pottery to the highest bidder.
