People and Networks
The illicit trade in Cypriot material after the Turkish invasion of 1974 was run by a small number of people, and most of what is known about them comes from court records, a Turkish Cypriot newspaper series of 1982 and the recoveries of the 1980s and 1990s. The entries in this part of the section follow those people and the cases that recorded them. They are set beside the excavators and licensed dealers of the lawful trade, through whom far more Cypriot antiquities left the island, decades earlier and in the open.
How to use these entries
The entries are in two groups. The illicit networks covers Aydın Dikmen and the trade in church art from the occupied north, the network's local side in the north, the Dutch dealer Michel van Rijn, the American case over the Kanakaria mosaics, and the antiquities returned to Cyprus in 2025 from a London dealer's stock. The lawful trade's dealers and excavators covers Luigi Palma di Cesnola, Max Ohnefalsch-Richter, the licensed Nicosia dealer Petros Kolokasides and the Paris dealer Nicolas Koutoulakis.
Each entry states what the record shows and no more. Allegations are attributed to their source, and the legal outcome of each case is given as the court gave it: Aydın Dikmen, the central figure of the trade in church art, was never convicted of anything. The networks dealt mainly in church art, which is a different trade from archaeology; the reasons for keeping the two apart are set out in church art and antiquities. The cases themselves are told in full in the occupied north after 1974, and the lawful channels in digging and the lawful trade before 1974.
The illicit networks
Aydın Dikmen and the Church Art of the Occupied North
The Turkish dealer whose Munich stock held most of the church art recovered from the occupied north...
Mehmet Ali İlkman and the Network inside the Occupied North
The local side of the trade in church art and antiquities in the occupied north of Cyprus after...
Michel van Rijn and the Recovery of Church Art from Cyprus
The Dutch dealer Michel van Rijn (1950 to 2024): his part in the Geneva sale of the Kanakaria...
Autocephalous Church of Cyprus v. Goldberg: The Kanakaria Case in the American Courts
The Indiana lawsuit of 1989 and 1990 over four fragments of the Kanakaria apse mosaic, read as law:...
The Symes Returns of 2025: Cypriot Antiquities from a London Dealer's Stock
The twelve antiquities the Manhattan District Attorney's office returned to Cyprus on 24 March...
The lawful trade's dealers and excavators
Luigi Palma di Cesnola: The Largest Export of Cypriot Antiquities
Luigi Palma di Cesnola, American consul at Larnaca, and the roughly 35,000 objects he took from...
Max Ohnefalsch-Richter: Excavator, Dealer and the Divided Finds of British Cyprus
How the German excavator Max Ohnefalsch-Richter dug for the British administration, the Cyprus...
Petros Kolokasides: A Licensed Dealer in Nicosia
Petros Kolokasides, one of the dealers licensed under the Antiquities Law of 1935: what the licence...
Nicolas Koutoulakis and the De Clercq Collection: A Paris Dealer's Cypriot Stock
The Cretan-born dealer Nicolas Koutoulakis (1910–1996) of Paris and Geneva and his part in the...