While visiting the tomb of the kings site, the work that we are doing in EU23 was on my mind. The number of days it took to clean one wall, and the amount of time I spent finding bedrock in one tiny square. I stared in awe at the columns above me and tried to imagine excavating this site. On the way out I purchased a book called “Digging up the Tomb of the Kings”, by Sophocles Hadjisavvas, hoping it would shed some light on my curiosity. The site was originally found by a treasure hunter, by the name of Luigi Palma di Cesnola in 1870. Scientific excavation did not actually start on the site until 1915, lead by the curator of the Cyprus museum, Menelaos Markides. This first excavation was mostly exploratory with only a few tombs discovered. In 1937, the site shifted hands again the the curator of the Pafos, and this is where the mass of the excavation of the tombs took place. During this time prisoners were actually used for free labor to excavate the majority of the site. Work on the site stopped during WW2 and restarted around 1945 to finish. By 1952, three tombs were completed and several others were in the cleanup phase. After the Turkish invasion in 1974, the department of antiquities took over the excavation and by 1977 systematic work began on the site specifically to study burial customs and Hellenistic civilization. In 1980 the site was included in the UNESCO world heritage sites list. This excavation continued for 14 years until 1990 when the dig was suspended due to conservation issues within the site, and is now in the state we see today. You can see how often this site changed hands, and due to early improper excavation techniques and the erosion of rock due to the salty breeze and sand, this site remains in conservation, and it’s excavation history is just as unique as the site itself.