The Foundry Hoard
- Audio guide stop: 562
- Gallery: Room 72
- Audio guide: one commentary for a group of objects shown together
- Museum: The British Museum
- Image © The Trustees of the British Museum, shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.
Listen to the free audio guide
About these objects
In front of you is a remarkable collection known as "The Foundry Hoard," a group of bronze and copper objects found in Enkomi, Cyprus, dating to between 1200 and 1050 BC. These pieces include tools, ingots, parts of stands, and even fragments that may have been scrap metal for re-casting. Taken together, they reveal a glimpse into the metalworking practices and daily life of Late Cypriot society.
Among these objects, the large copper ingot—shaped like an oxhide—is especially striking. It’s covered in a maker’s mark, a kind of early branding, pressed into the metal. In the same group is a tripod stand made of bronze, with intricate soldered and cast parts, showing advanced craftsmanship. Also worth noting is a bronze ploughshare with incised signs of a now-unreadable script known as Cypro-Minoan—an early form of writing that scholars are still trying to understand.
These items were part of a hoard, or buried collection, often used for trade or as raw material for new work. The careful casting, shaping, and even marking of these pieces suggest they were valuable, not just as tools, but as symbols of a thriving industry.
See it in person
The Foundry Hoard is on display in Room 72 at the British Museum on Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, London — free to enter. Choose British Museum on audioguide.london and type its audio guide stop number, 562, from the gallery label, or take a photo of it, to hear this free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
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