This Week in Cypriot Archaeology: 1–7 June 2026

Greece returned 48 Cypriot antiquities to the Cyprus Museum on 1 June, and an exhibition opened in Barcelona on 5 June setting ancient Cypriot pottery beside Picasso's ceramics. In Nicosia the first volume of the Tombs of the Kings excavation report was presented, and the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation set out its programme for European Archaeology Days.

Repatriation

At a ceremony in the Cyprus Museum on Monday 1 June, the Greek Minister of Culture, Lina Mendoni, handed 48 Cypriot antiquities to the Deputy Minister of Culture, Dr Vasiliki Kassianidou. They are pots and limestone figurines dated from the Early Bronze Age to the medieval period, obtained in Cyprus in the 1960s and 1970s. The Deputy Ministry announced the return the next day.

The pieces belonged to the collection of the late Greek ambassador Christos Zacharakis. After his death his heirs handed them over voluntarily to the Greek state so that it could consider returning them to their country of origin. Mendoni said the return was made under the 1970 UNESCO Convention and a bilateral agreement the two ministers had signed a year and a half earlier. The handover coincided with an informal meeting of EU culture ministers in Nicosia during the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the EU. Earlier returns, from the United States, Britain and Germany among others, are set out under repatriations 2023–2026.

Museums

Kassianidou opened "Picasso and Cyprus: Encounters with Ceramics of the Mediterranean" at the Picasso Museum in Barcelona on Friday 5 June. Part of the cultural programme of the Cyprus Presidency, it sets a selection of Picasso's ceramics beside clay vessels from ancient Cyprus whose forms, techniques and symbols the organisers connect with his work in clay. Picasso never visited Cyprus; he knew its antiquities from the large European collections and the archaeological books of his day. The curators are Eftychia Zachariou, Curator of Antiquities at the Department of Antiquities, the art historian Dr Androula Michael and Dr Emmanuel Guigon, a former director of the museum.

In Nicosia, the new archaeological museum opposite the House of Representatives, begun in January 2023 and first due in July 2026, was by early June running about 13 months late, with the contractor working to a December 2027 finish. By September MPs were told it would not be delivered before 2028 (our brief).

Books

On 3 June the first volume of the final publication of the Tombs of the Kings at Paphos, by Dr Sophocles Hadjisavvas, was presented at the A. G. Leventis Gallery in Nicosia, a week after its release. It covers the Department's excavation seasons of 1977–1981 in the Hellenistic cemetery (our brief).

Events

The Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation announced free events in Nicosia for European Archaeology Days, 12–14 June, on the theme Animals-Plants-Archaeology. They include a tour of the Cyprus Insula exhibition on the animals and plants shown on its objects, an open-air screening of a documentary on the Cypriot cow, a workshop on animal and flower motifs on Cypriot coins at the History of Cypriot Coinage Museum, and a family programme in which children excavate fragments of replica clay vessels buried in soil. Bookings are by telephone on 22128175 or 22128163.