Wooden Box with Inlaid Carved Stone Plates – "On the Rivers of Cyprus" – Cyprus Detention Camps, 1948/1949

Wooden Box with Inlaid Carved Stone Plates – "On the Rivers of Cyprus" – Cyprus Detention Camps, 1948/1949
A wooden box with inlaid carved stone plates made by a detainee in the Cyprus detention camps, 5709 (1948/1949).
The lid of the box is inlaid with a plate depicting a group of exiles on a wooden raft, some standing and some sitting with their personal belongings. The composition is identified with works illustrating the verse "On the rivers of Babylon there we sat and we wept when we remembered Zion", depicting the exiles of Babylon mourning Jerusalem. One of the most familiar of these works is a work by E.M. Lilien, belonging to a group of works echoing Zionist themes. Presumably, the artist was inspired by Lilien's work (but possibly by other works in the same vein) when conceiving the image on this stone plate, an image expressing the situation of the illegal immigrants in the "exile of Cyprus", as it was commonly called. The exiles are not standing on the river bank as in the original but are surrounded by waves – the sea waves separating the exiles of Cyprus from Palestine, their desired country.
The side plates are decorated with the characteristic barbed wire, reading "Cyprus" (Hebrew) and the Hebrew year "5709" (1948/1949).
19.5X13.5X6 cm. Good condition. Minor blemishes and stains to plates.
Provenance: The Rimon Family Collection.