Cyprus was thus a final goal of any external ambition and in consequence managed to preserve her insular qualities in a way which has always been a surprise and to some extent a puzzle to students of history, archaeology and art. The history of archaeological research in the island is a strange and sad history. It begins, for all practical purposes, with the enterprises, better perhaps described as depredations, of General Cesnola. Of the Early Iron Age nothing was known except from tombs, while for the Orientalizing and early Archaic periods scholars had to depend on tomb finds and sanctuary finds, and nothing at all was known of the manner in which the Kings of Cyprus lived in their kingdoms, this last perhaps the most serious gap of all. From 1896 to 1913 little more of importance was done and on the basis of previous work archaeologists had come to certain general conclusions.