This Week in Cypriot Archaeology: 5–11 October 2026

Two 14th-century icons stolen from Kyrenia after the 1974 invasion came back to the Metropolis of Morphou, and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford opened its Aphrodite exhibition with loans from Cyprus. In Nicosia, two museums presented exhibitions of coins and of Armenian church treasures, ministers visited the site of the new Cyprus Museum, and the University of Cyprus won a European doctoral network on pottery.

Map of Cyprus

This week's stories

• Heritage crime
• Museums
• Events
• Ground above 200, 500, 1,000 m

N

50 km

Sites on this map

1. 1Asinou valley (approx.)
2. 2Kyrenia
3. 3Nicosia
4. 4Limassol (approx.)
5. 5Kalavasos-Tenta

Heritage crime

On 9 October the Metropolis of Morphou said that icons of the Evangelists Matthew and Mark, 14th-century panels from the Panagia church at Asinou in the Troodos, were back in Cyprus (our brief). They had been moved before 1974 to the palace of the Metropolis in Kyrenia and were stolen from it after the Turkish invasion. Traced to the United Kingdom, they were handed back to the Church without payment, with help from the Department of Antiquities, the police and Interpol. Peter and Paul, from the same set, came home from New York in 2007; four more panels are still missing.

Research

The Archaeological Research Unit of the University of Cyprus will coordinate SOPHIA-DN, a doctoral network on ancient and traditional pottery worth €4.3 million from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of Horizon Europe, the university announced on 7 October. Led by Athanasios K. Vionis and Maria Dikomitou-Eliadou, the four-year project will train 15 doctoral candidates in a consortium of 20 partners, pairing experimental work on ceramics with artificial intelligence.

Museums

The Ashmolean Museum opened "Aphrodite: The Making of a Goddess" on 8 October; it runs until 11 April 2027 (our brief). More than 150 objects follow the goddess from Cyprus to modern art, and the Department of Antiquities has lent pieces including a votive figurine of c. 600–450 BCE, from a sanctuary of Aphrodite, of a woman giving birth attended by two midwives. The curator is Anja Ulbrich, and the A. G. Leventis Foundation is the lead supporter.

The Leventis Municipal Museum of Nicosia and Alpha Bank presented "Messages on Metal. A timeless dialogue with Cyprus" to the press ahead of its run from 16 October to 10 January 2027. Of its 136 coins, 110 come from the Alpha Bank Numismatic Collection, 23 from the museum and three from the Leventis Gallery, set out in three sections: Transactions, Narrative and Symbolism. Dr Dimitra Tsangari, curator of the Alpha Bank collection, is responsible for the display and its bilingual catalogue.

The Byzantine Museum in Nicosia opened "Faith and Identity: Treasures from the History Museum of Armenia" on 9 October, organised with the museum in Yerevan and open until 9 April 2027. Among the loans are a bronze censer of the 10th–11th century from Ani and a glazed plate of the 12th–13th century from Dvin. Shown alongside is an Armenian gospel from the monastery of St Makarios in the Pentadaktylos, in the occupied north, which was taken to Munich after the 1974 invasion and returned to Cyprus in 2013.

On 7 October the Deputy Minister of Culture, Clea Papaellina, and the Minister of Transport, Communications and Works, Evie Tsolaki, toured the construction site of the new Cyprus Museum in Nicosia. A week earlier, on 30 September, MPs on the House education committee had heard that the building would not be delivered before 2028 (our brief).

In Limassol, the artist Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, a professor at the Cyprus University of Technology, is showing "Tracing Angel's Men" at Pylon Art & Culture, as part of Alessandro Cassola's project "An Archaeological Museum at the Threshold" on the Cyprus Museum as it prepares to move.

Events

CAARI announced that Kalavasos will remember Ian Todd, director of the Vasilikos Valley Project, with an evening of talks at the village museum on Saturday 7 November at 5 pm. Alison South is to speak on Todd and on the project's digs at Tenta and elsewhere, after which members of the team and people from the village will share memories and photographs.

The Department of Antiquities announced a second series of five free Artist Talks in Greek for children aged 7 to 12 at the Cyprus Museum, on Saturday mornings from 24 October to 12 December. Each session links an invited artist's work with exhibits that depict animals; places are limited to ten and must be booked.